TL;DR
- If your data is siloed, inconsistent, or just plain messy, no automation tool will be able to save you.
- The middle of the funnel is often overlooked but crucial for connecting your lead generation and sales efforts.
- Email is still a powerhouse for nurturing leads, driving personalization, and increasing deal size and urgency.
- Marketing automation is not a plug-and-play solution; building an effective MoFu engine takes time, effort, and strategy.
- A successful MoFu engine drives predictable revenue by ensuring smooth transitions from awareness to sales readiness.
In the world of B2B marketing, automation has become the buzzword that promises efficiency, scalability, and growth. But here’s the catch: while most companies dive headfirst into generating leads and closing deals, they often overlook the critical stage that connects these two efforts—the middle of the funnel. Guaranteed, if you’re not investing in the middle, you’re leaving revenue on the table.
The Middle is where the magic happens, where the sparks fly, and where your leads become ready buyers. And guess what? This is also where marketing automation can drive the most meaningful impact on your business growth.
The Underestimated Middle of the Funnel (MoFu)
When most businesses think about their revenue funnel, they’re focused on two things: filling the top and closing deals at the bottom. Top-of-funnel (ToFu) tactics like programmatic ads and content syndication get the spotlight because they’re measurable and exciting. Who doesn’t love seeing the clicks, impressions, and conversions roll in? It’s sexy.
And, of course, at the bottom of the funnel, you’ve got sales teams converting those leads into customers. That’s where revenue lives, so it’s easy to measure performance and impact. But somewhere between “Hello, my name is” and “Yes, I do,” there’s a whole lot of work to be done, and that’s where the middle of the funnel comes into play.
The MoFu isn’t as glamorous as ToFu, and it can be tough to measure—but that doesn’t mean it’s less important. It’s where leads go from curious prospects to sales-ready opportunities, and the main tool you have to make that transformation happen is email.
Email: The Workhorse of the Funnel
The term “email marketing” often gets a bad rap. We all know the complaints; inbox overload, irrelevant messages, and straight-up spam. But despite its reputation, email remains a crucial—and effective—tool for nurturing leads and driving revenue. In fact, email is the one channel that brings your entire funnel together, guiding prospects from awareness to action.
When done well, email allows you to hyper-target and personalize your communications based on your leads’ behaviors, demographics, and preferences. Unlike a phone call that demands attention in real-time, email lets your audience consume content on their terms. You can dig deep, provide value, and do it all at scale. This is where the middle of the funnel shines—by leveraging thoughtful email campaigns to educate, build trust, and push leads further down their journey.
The Challenge of the Overwhelmed Marketer
Let’s be real: we’re all trying to do more with less. Every year, goals become more aggressive, budgets get tighter, and resources are stretched thin. This is why marketing automation is so attractive—it offers the promise of scalability, efficiency, and smarter use of resources.
But here’s the thing: automation doesn’t mean auto-magical results. Building a marketing automation engine is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires upfront planning, strategizing, and a deep understanding of your customer journey. And yes, this is a lot of work at the outset, but the payoff is significant. Once built, a well-oiled MoFu engine will drive scalable results and allow your team to do better work, faster.
The Engine That Powers Your Funnel
Think of your funnel as a well-planned city. Your top-of-funnel efforts bring people to the outskirts of town, but your middle is the infrastructure—the roads, bridges, and neighborhoods that lead them to the center. Without a solid middle-of-the-funnel engine, all your traffic will just circle the city without ever reaching their destination.
At Tegrita, we work with our clients to map out their entire customer journey and develop a strategic plan to nurture leads through the funnel. And we don’t stop there—we also build the engine to make that journey smooth and seamless. It starts with a strong foundation of data. If your data is siloed, inconsistent, or just plain messy, no automation tool will be able to save you. A single source of truth for your data is non-negotiable.
From there, it’s about orchestrating touchpoints to guide leads down the right path based on where they are in their journey. Are they new to your brand, lukewarm, or already well-acquainted with your offering? Your messaging needs to be personalized to meet them where they are and help them overcome objections before they even arise. And when it’s done right, this middle-of-the-funnel engine becomes the beating heart of your marketing strategy.
Building the Case for Personalization and Hyper-Targeting
One-size-fits-all email campaigns are a thing of the past. Today, buyers expect a personalized experience—they want to see content that speaks directly to their needs and challenges. If your email campaigns aren’t tailored, your audience will tune out, hit “delete,” and your carefully crafted message will be lost in the noise.
Personalization isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a revenue driver. I’ve seen firsthand how an effective email nurture sequence can take a potential customer who was interested in a lower-tier product and upsell them to a higher-tier plan—just because the right message hit their inbox at the right time. Not only did this lead to a higher transaction value, but it also created urgency, shortening the sales cycle. This is what happens when your middle of the funnel is optimized: bigger deals, faster closes.
The Real Cost of Overlooking the Middle
Many companies make the mistake of neglecting their MoFu because it’s not as measurable or exciting as other stages of the funnel. But let me break it to you: underinvesting in the middle is a massive risk. When your middle is weak, your top-of-funnel spend is diluted, and your bottom-of-funnel sales suffer.
If you’re spending millions on lead generation, but don’t have a strong MoFu to connect those efforts to your sales team, you’re essentially throwing money out the window. On the other hand, if you focus on building a middle-of-the-funnel engine, you’ll be able to put less into the top and get more out of the bottom. This means happier sales teams, more closed deals, and a healthier marketing budget year over year.
Is Your MoFu a Well-Oiled Engine?
It’s time to look under the hood. If you find that there’s finger-pointing between your marketing and sales teams—leads aren’t converting, sales says the leads are “bad,” and marketing says sales isn’t following up—that’s a sign you’ve got a middle-of-the-funnel problem. Or if you’re struggling to connect your efforts to revenue and can’t clearly see how leads flow from one stage to the next, your MoFu engine likely needs an overhaul.
Optimizing your MoFu isn’t just about throwing up a few nurture campaigns and hoping for the best. It’s about building a system that’s predictable, measurable, and scalable. And once you have it running smoothly, the impact on your revenue will speak for itself.
Automation isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it solution, but with the right strategy, tools, and a focus on the middle of the funnel, it can transform your marketing efforts. If you want to dive deeper into this topic and hear some real-world examples of MoFu optimization in action, check out my episode of the B2B Tech Marketing Talks podcast, “Automating B2B Tech Marketing with Brandi Starr from Tegrita,” presented by Filament.