Building Your Email List and Sales Funnels

Responses from people that are saying maybe not so productive things or not nice things. So we, we put all this pressure on ourselves to grow the list because everybody's like, the money's in the list. The money is in the list. But then it's like, okay, but like, how does, how does it translate? Like, how do we go from here to over here and, like, make the list turn into money? When we're afraid of emailing our lists and when we do it sporadically, but then we don't want to only email them to, to sell to them. So it's figuring out, you know, it's kind of like a one size fits you. Like, what do you want to do with your email list? What can you actually commit to doing? And at a minimum, if you can send your list an email weekly, and even if you just put something in your calendar for Friday mornings, and it's like a roundup of things that you've seen on the Internet or, you know, if you're creating content, a blog post or, or a podcast you created or somewhere where you were a guest expert or something that you think would be interesting just to get, almost just to train yourself to be consistent in email marketing and not being afraid of your email list because it is, as a business owner, it is the only thing. Maybe not the only thing, but one of the things that we can own that will allow us to reach back out. And of course, it's different depending on what country you're in. You know, if you're part of the GDPR where that's being enforced, there are a lot of rules around how you can email people, and if you're even allowed to follow up with people or build your email list. But for my expertise as someone in the United States, we can collect email addresses in our database that as long as they are not unsubscribing, we can email them basically whenever we want. There are people that I get emails from every single day that I don't unsubscribe from because I think they're interesting, I think they're fun. I learned things from them. There are good stories. There's one guy that's in, like, the fitness industry, and he's talking about his membership every day via email. But he has like a funny spin or a funny story or something that's relevant for an event that's happening in the world. He always ties it in. And at the end it's like, oh, by the way, did you know I am doing this in my membership right now? Or did you know, that I have, have this going on or this promotion. And he always comes up with a reason to make noise about his membership, but he's emailing me every single day and I like it. So for people who think like, oh, you know, I, I would never send out an email every day or people would hate it, or even weekly, like, people don't want to hear from me that much. Yes, they, they really, truly do. The other thing, when people are focusing on growing their email list and they've got, you know, either like an opt in of some sort, you know, what they call like the ethical bribe. I'm going to ask you for your email address. You're going to give me your email address in exchange for something that's valuable to you. So before I started talking about tiny offers a lot, it was freebies, like a free PDF that you could get, you know, like a webinar putting on a webinar that involves a registration form, that's an email opt in as well. Tiny offers, by far they are my favorite email email growth strategy. But anytime that there is a form that has something that they're getting in exchange for giving up or providing you with their name and email address, that's a list building strategy. So a lot of people will come up with what is their list building strategy and then they'll get the, the name and the email on their email list and they're like, oh my gosh, what do I do next? I can't email them like they just signed up. How soon should I email them? What if I email them right away and they don't want to hear from me that fast. But the biggest thing to remember is like, they will never be as excited about you and about finding you and being on your email list as they are immediately after this new thing that they found. So the novelty, the dopamine is strong when they've just come on your email list. So you need to email them as fast as possible. You need to get back in front of them, provide something else. You know, just think about your, your experience on the email list of someone that you truly love, not someone that annoys you, that you want to unsubscribe from right away. But think about as a consumer, what kind of emails do you like to get? What do you always open and why, like, what do you always like, delete without even looking at? And why Is it the subject line? Is it the, the person? Is it like not remembering you were even on that email list? So you can start saving emails that you really like inside of my inbox we have all these different folders and I'll subscribe to certain people because I like their cadence of how they send emails or their tone or what they talk about in their emails. And I'll save them as like a swipe file for later for inspiration so that I can look at the content or I can figure out what was it that I liked about this email and how can I use it in my own strategy. So as far as email marketing, getting them on your email list is the first thing to figure out. Like how do you want to build that strategy? Do you want to grow your email list with a tiny offer funnel? Do you want to have a freebie of some kind? Do you want to give them a free, could be a free video, free PDF, free training series that is delivered over three days. It's really not up to me to tell you what to do because you've got to know how you want to show up. You have to know what you're willing to do, what you're willing to commit to, and what you're willing to create. I of course love tiny offers because it is a form. The way I set it up, it has a two step order form. So I get people's name and email on the first step of the form and then payment information on the second step of the form. So whether or not they end up buying my tiny offer, I'm still getting all of those leads from the first step of the order form. So that's something to think about because that is, you know, the other name for a tiny offer funnel is a self liquidating offer funnel. The goal is to liquidate your ad spend. So if you're considering running ads to anything, that's a really good way to make sure that some portion, if not all of it is covered by what you're paying to Facebook is coming back to you and what people are purchasing after they've opted in. So always thinking about is there going to be an upsell after your freebie? If you're doing something like a freebie and then a small product that's more of what they call like a tripwire funnel. So not a true self liquidating offer. I think people get those confused a little bit. But also knowing that if you're promoting a live webinar or an evergreen webinar, or you know, even asking them to fill out an application, all of these are just different strategies to get people onto your email list and hopefully find content at some point that's going to Connect with them enough to encourage them to become a client of yours or a customer of yours. So when it comes to sales funnels, and I was just talking to someone about this in my Instagram DMs earlier today, she was asking for help with funnels and I was like, okay, which part of funnels? When you say funnel, what does the word funnel mean to you? Because I know it's kind of an open ended thing. There's a lot of different pieces of a funnel. So if you think about there's almost three different phases to what you'd call like a sales funnel. So there's getting traffic to the funnel that would be like your organic content or your ads or something that's getting people to the landing page or sales page and then from there there's some, some kind of exchange that happens within the sales funnel. Some you know, ethical bribe, what I called it earlier, where they're giving you their contact information and permission to contact them again and you're giving them something valuable in return that's a part of the funnel. Of course if there are sales that can be made after that step, you know, if they're going to watch a webinar and then buy a product potentially if it's a tiny offer funnel and there's an offer suite that's going to be created and offered after that if it's a high ticket application funnel. So they're applying to book a call with a member of your team to get know a free strategy call. There's only so many like funnel recipes that exist. So that's like the, I'd say like the design and the exchange of information part of the funnel. And then there's the email sequence which is where a lot of your actual sales and you know, connection is going to happen is after, after the like beautiful part of the funnel or the designed part of the funnel that takes place in the web browser and then it shifts to email. So from email then it's like how many emails are you going to send them in between? Are you going to be able to move people from one funnel to another funnel? Since we know there's only so many funnel recipes, can you move them from a self liquidating offer funnel to getting emails now about a webinar that you're putting on and then watching the webinar and maybe buying a course and then once they're in the course, can you email them and connect with them to show that the next step that might be ready for them or that they might be ready for is joining, you know, something that's higher ticket. So when you think about like the grand scheme of funnels, it could be a two year long process. Like someone could come in, they could meet you, they could fall in love with you, but as their business grows, you remain top of mind so that when they're ready for the next level, you're still top of mind, you're still the one that they're going to hire for the highest ticket thing, even if that's not where they came in. So there's like this really, really long theory of a funnel, but also knowing that people might not all come in at the same place. And I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions that I had about funnels is it's not always going to start with the freebie. For example, I'm not going to always or not everyone's going to be the person that comes in through a freebie and then two months later an email catches my attention and then I buy a bigger course. Three months after that I finished the course, I've completed the work and now I'm ready for some coaching to take it to the next level. People might come in at different points, so someone might come in, get a freebie and never ever do anything else. Someone else might see you somewhere in the Internet land sphere and they might say, this person has exactly the knowledge that I've been looking for. Their expertise is exactly what I need. Give me your highest ticket thing right now. Because I'm not in the place where this freebie makes sense for me. I don't need a course, I just need the coaching. So they might jump right in with your highest ticket thing. So that's where the differentiation happens in how you're thinking about it. Sometimes the funnel can take two years worth of nurturing and you have to know all the ins and outs of the client journey and what they're thinking and what would help someone to kind of jump lanes into the other offers that you have versus having the funnel set up. So if someone sees you and they want to come in just for your, you know, high ticket application funnel that you have, that's available too. This is a really hard place to start. However, I am like three years, probably two or three years into building funnels for my business. And granted I move really slow because I have three children and like when something works I, I will just run with it for a really long time. So I'm not always creating new funnels and optimizing new things. And when something works, I will just run with it for as long as possible until it breaks and then I have to think of something new out of necessity. But it does take time and it takes clarity and it takes listening to your audience to know what they need at each point. And I recently joined the Inner Circle, which is clarity. Clickfunnels Mastermind with Russell Brunson and on my like, intake call, I guess it was, it was a sales call, but it was also them qualifying me in a way to see if I was ready, if I would be, you know, a great addition to this Mastermind because it is very like, it's a peer. You want to make sure that there's peer help too. So like, I can take information from it, but I can also provide valuable information and make sure that it's like a reciprocity community full of helpers. So they're like trying to gauge what I've created or what I've done too. And they said like, al, you have the most built out value ladder of anyone that we've seen in all of the Inner Circle applications. And I was like, that's cool. But it took a really long time to get to that point. So I don't want people to watch what I'm doing and be like, okay, she's got a high ticket, she's got a course, she's got a group program, she's got this tiny offer. I have to do everything all at once because as we all know, that that like creates this cycle of spinning and not actually finishing and launching anything. Sometimes, you know, then we're like jumping from topic to topic and like, oh, I have to think about this funnel and I have to think about this funnel. So my biggest advice is like, don't think about the, the two year long version of your funnel. Don't think about that whole customer journey of what happens when someone comes in and they're brand new to me, they're brand new to the subject, pain point, whatever. How am I going to help them make this? I keep saying two years, but how, how am I going to convert people from all this whole journey? It's like, where can you make the biggest impact for the most profitable amount of money for you for where you're at right now? And of course I love tiny offers. I love having that ad strategy. But more and more, as ads get crazier in the iOS 14 update and there's a lot of volatility in the advertising world, I would much rather have people who are watching here get a really solid higher ticket. Offer, set up something that they can sell and make, you know, 5 or $10,000 of profit off of that and then take that and reinvest it into the assets that you would need to be able to test your ads on the front end. Of course, at some point they will all, you know, all work together and all feed into each other. But it's a really hard place to start when you're trying to like, launch it all at the same time, Shiloh says. Can't get caught up in not being you yet. Yet. There's this podcast that my kids listen to that's about growth mindset and there's this whole episode about the power of yet. And we always say like, yet you're not there yet or you're not, you know, you don't know, you're not a multiplication table expert yet or whatever. So it's like, that's a really great reframe because it's all possible, it's all learnable. But it does take a huge amount of patience with ourselves to be okay with being at the beginning stage. Because being at the beginning stage stinks. Like, it's not fun. It's not as exciting as being in the expert phase where you get to talk about, you know, it's like all of your dreams coming to fruition. It stinks to be at the beginning. So if you're at the beginning, hold tight and like hold the vision and just keep chugging along, putting one foot in front of the other. Shiloh says. Which site do you use to build your funnels? I use clickfunnels and I also use, I don't want to confuse you guys, I use clickfunnels for my front end funnels because I like how easily I can get in and build those. But I've also built other funnels on WordPress using ThriveCart embedded. So ThriveCart is one to look at if you're just getting started because they just opened up Learn and I think they were calling it like learn@thrivecart. I don't know if that's the exact name, but now they have like a whole platform for being able to build your course out on using ThriveCart so people can check out and then get instant access to their like, learning management software. So it can be a really seamless thing and it's pretty affordable. I think it's like maybe a couple hundred dollars to get that set up and then you get a lifetime access. I have to look and I have special links for you if you want it I think, I think there's some benefit to using my affiliate link. I'm not sure. Benefit to you and me. I should say so. So if we're talking about email marketing and funnels, it's like what, what is the one funnel recipe that you want to create right now? So it's, how do you like to show up what is going to be the most profitable for use? It's ultimately a sales funnel is like showing a big offer, showing an offer to a group of people and then a few people will drop off because it's not quite right. And then a few more will drop off because it's not quite right. That's why it's funnel shaped right, because people fall off a little bit at each step. So knowing I think as I'm like, I always think in terms of tiny offers. So I'm like if I were to create a new tiny offer or as I'm thinking about mentally planning for like what my next tiny offer is going to be, it's going to be about offers because if you can, if you can nail your offer, if you can start and figure out what is your result, like what is the best case result that you can get for people, then you can imagine what's the high ticket delivery version of this result. Like if I'm going to give everyone the most amount of my attention and the most amount of impact, maybe not impact, but most amount of contact with me, personal contact with me, what would they get to get to that end result? And then you kind of like slowly take your availability and your, their ability to get direct, like face to face contact with you out a little bit, they get a little bit less as the price goes down. So for me it's like the result is always having a successful online business that sells group programs and courses and coaching. Essentially that's the end result is like your, your business is successful. The delivery vehicles that people get it in are different. Like my highest ticket thing, they get Voxer, they get, you know, one on one zoom calls, they get my team building out things. So that's highest ticket, the lower ticket is a group program. So now they get group access to a zoom call. And ultimately those two groups could get the same result. There's also a course where if they're doing all of the work themselves, they don't, you know, they get like a Q and A with me on Facebook. So not even like face to face, it's like face to computer. And then there's the tiny offers that it's all on Them like it's just content and my membership is the same thing where it's just recorded content, where I'm not live anywhere but I'm, you know, it's like recorded stuff. So you can kind of see how like when you pull back your time and attention, direct attention and direct feedback and coaching, as that, that becomes less and less, the price gets lower. So you can figure out like if you're going to launch one offer and you know, have your email strategy to build up towards that offer, get the right people in for that offer that would be interested in that offer. Picture that little like section, that little piece of the timeline for what you want to create and what those people who are ready to jump in at that point of their journey. How does that look or what does it look like to create that like little segment of the customer journey and then create an offer that, that matches that. So in creating offers or having my own tiny offer about offers, you know, it's so meta, but it's like a tiny offer about tiny offers. We did that too, so why not? But it would be like, how do you design an offer that you can turn into a tiny offer or an offer that you could scale into a high ticket program? I had someone, I think probably a year, maybe a year and a half ago go through Tiny Offer Lab when it was at, it was at the $6,000 group program level and she didn't like the idea of running ads. She didn't like, she was very uncomfortable with like the visibility of having ads going. And you know, there's some. We, I worked with her for a very long time and we realized like a year later that it was a mindset thing of like I've only ever gotten clients from direct referrals and like after knowing them very, very well. So it felt uncomfortable for her to attract strangers. So she kind of like pull back and didn't want to do it because it was, it felt weird. But she ended up taking the content that she was going to sell for her tiny offer and she added some coaching sessions, she added a little bit more contact to it, kept the content the same and then she turned around and sold it for $10,000. So it was like based on the teaching from Tiny Offer Lab and she repurposed the offer. So I was like, huh, that's really interesting that you can take, you know, take something that was supposed to be a tiny offer. As long as the offer is solid and the offer is scalable and the framework is there and the result is there. Like you can take your offer and turn it into any type of cash injection you want. Like if you're having a month where you've got a vacation you want to go on or something that you want to save and say you want to remodel your kitchen and you're. This is something I actually did. You can launch something that's higher ticket and charge more as long as you've got the email list built up. And you can, you know, you have a system like a sales funnel system to get the right people and you could launch any version of your offer at any time to get a cash injection inside your business. So thank you. Thank you. That's awesome. I just got it done. I appreciate that. After, after months and months of like trying to not get my. Not trying but not being able to go in and get my hair done, just with crazy schedules and kids home all the time, I finally got some mama self care time in. So that's awesome. Thank you. All right, hopefully this has been helpful. I know it's, it's not. If you want like more specific, tangible advice of like this is what an opt in landing page conversion rate should be. We could, we could do that kind of training sometime. But this is like the 10,000 foot view of funnels and email marketing strategy as I see it. But we can always do something more specific to you. Awesome. Well, I hope you guys have a great rest of your day. I'm going to hop on a group coaching call for tiny offer accelerator and yeah, let me know how this sits if you have any questions about anything and I will see you all inside of this group later. Thanks everybody. Bye.