Follow-Up Funnels
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The often overlooked “second funnel” that is invisible to the naked eye…

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---Transcript---

What's up everybody. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today we're going to talk about what I call The Often Overlooked Second Funnel That's Invisible to the Naked Eye. We also call these Follow-Up Funnels, and I'm going to show you guys a really cool case study about how I basically made $16 and 49 cents for every $1 we made inside of our actual funnel. That is the power of Follow-Up Funnels.

All right, everybody. So you've probably heard me talk about Follow-Up Funnels before, but I want to tell you just kind of the history behind this and why it's important and what you should do, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. So when I first got started on online marketing way back in the day, back then everyone used to use email auto responders, which... We still use variations of those today, but I remember when it came out and what would happen is that you had... Someone would subscribe to your email list and then you'd write a pre-written out email sequence. Right? So, what we used to do back in the day when I first got started was I was like, "Sign up for my free five day eCourse." That was the thing everyone did. Everyone had a free five day eCourse.

So, someone would opt in and then they give you the email address. Then the Follow-Up Funnel was a five day email course. Day number one, you'd be like, "Here's this first thing, second thing, third thing, fourth thing, fifth thing." And the fifth day, you'd ask them to buy the thing you were trying to sell. That's how this thing first started for me. Then I remember, fast forward, who knows, a year or two later, I was hanging out with a guy named Matt Bacak and Matt told me at the time, I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something like... He was like, "Yeah, I sat down and wrote out 600 emails. I built an email sequence. So if someone joins my list, they get an email everyday for 600 days, or something." I was like, "Holy cow." That's insane. Imagine, if I just did that once, I write this huge sequence and then put people through it, I'll never have to worry about writing emails again. I'll just add people to my list. That was my thought.

So then I started trying to write a huge Follow-Up Funnel like that, a huge email sequence. And I got five days in and I was like, "I want to die. This is really, really hard." So I stopped. And then over the next two decades of my career I tried so many times to start one. I'd start writing one and then I get tired and then I write it and then... I remember one time I wrote it and I put all inside of GetResponse, excuse me, it's Aweber. First I wrote a, I don't know, 20 emails sequence and Aweber and I was going to keep adding to it. And so I built it out. I started adding my list and then Aweber canceled my account. And I was like, "What the dump." I was so mad. And so, then I went over and I rebuilt the entire sequence in Getresponse, but I was going to import my same list. I couldn't do the same emails. I had to rewrite the entire thing.

So, I spent like two weeks rewriting that same email sequence then imported my list. They start getting emails. And within like two days, Getresponse canceled my account. I was like, "I'm going nuts." IT's like, "I can't keep doing this." And so I gave up on it again. And then ClickFunnels came out. One of the powerful things about Clickfunnels is when you build out your, your follow-up sequence, you can plug in any SMTP. So that's basically, you can plug in, send grid or you can plug in Amazon S3 emails, you can plug in... And there's a bunch of ones you can plug in. So that way, one of the reasons why we did that, because I had had so many headaches where we had launched an email sequence and our emails software shut us off and he'd go rebuild it. It was a nightmare. Whereas in ClickFunnels, let's say you, you build out your sequence, you upload a list of customers and start getting an email sequence. Let's say, SendGrid shuts you down. You can just plug into different SMTP and the emails keep going and you won't lose a beat.

We built that because I was like, "That's how I need for myself because I don't want to write these again." So we did that, the initial email sequence that probably, I don't know, 10 or 12 days. And then that's all I ever got to. And about that time when we launched this in features, Clickfunnels. We need a name for it. Is it an auto-responder sequence? Is it marketing automation? What is the... We need a name. And we kept trying back and forth. And this was before Funnel Hacking Live 2017. We need a name for this, what's it called? And I remember Stephen Larson's here in the office and he was like super stressed out. "I'm trying to figure out this name, I'm trying to figure out this name." And I think he totally went and he prayed in the corner, something.

Came back two minutes later, he's like, "What about follow-up funnels?" I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's what this is. Like someone comes in, they give you your email address. They go through normal funnel and then they're added to your follow-up funnel. You follow up with them, you take them through a sequence." And so we built followupfunnels.com and that became the thing and that became the branding. And so ever since 2017 now, so at 21… no not 21 years, four years. Four years, I've been calling them Follow-up Funnels. And so for me, that's what it is, you have your funnels and then your follow-up funnels. And so, it was interesting as I was writing the DotCom Secrets book, actually, prior to that, I was doing a presentation for Funnel Hacking Live 2017. And I actually shared this case study in the DotCom Secrets book.

I want to share with you guys right now, is I want to see like how valuable is an actual follow-up funnel. As we started looking at our funnels, how much money they make when somebody comes through a book funnel, right. And looks through that revenue and then said, "Okay, over the next 30 days from our email follow-up funnel, how much money do we make?" We started looking at the math and the numbers and what was crazy in the snapshot I took, this was 2017. I think it was December of 2016. I took the snapshot. And what was crazy is that for every $1 that we made inside of an actual funnel from a book funnel or a webinar funnel, whatever it was, every $1 remains side of a funnel within 30 days made $16 and 49 cents through our followup funnel. What? What the dump, right?

If you guys never heard me say that expression before, it's a weird one. I had a friend in college who used to always say, "What the dump" and it's stuck, and it's weird. I don't know, but you're getting it today. So, I was like, "What the dump? That's amazing. That's for every $1 I put in, I get $16 and 49 cents back out. It doesn't make any sense." And it started getting me really excited about the concept of follow up funnels. And so for years I sat down and kept like mapping out, “Okay I’m going to write, I'm going to build...” You know, not like a Matt Bacak, 600 email sequence. I want to build a sequence that goes through all my core offers, my products and something that's kind of... I start looking at that. And so we started sitting down and building one out and every time I tried to build out, I got so big.

I was like, "It's going to be 50 emails, 60 emails." And I get stressed out. And I was like... Anyway, I'm sure you guys have gone through that. It's kind of overwhelming and stressful. But finally last year during COVID, I was like, "All right, we're building this thing out. And so we sat down and I mapped out, okay. If someone comes to my world, what did all the offers and the videos and YouTube videos or the podcasts websites, what are the best things that I have. What Would be the sequence I would send somebody through, like if my mom joined my list, what would I want her to have first, and second, and third? And I mapped out the sequence and the sequence ended up being about 60 emails. And then, I went through and I was like, "How am I going to write 60 emails? "

That just sounds like pain. I want to die just thinking about it. Right. So I got out Voxer and I would Vox each email. So, I just kind of say it and I had my go and get it all transcribed and send me back the transcripts. Then from there, I'd take these, these transcripts, I could write emails a lot faster. And so, I started doing that and we started building out the sequence and it was like I said, 60 emails going over about a three month period of time. So, it wasn't every day, but sometimes it was three or four days in a row. And we'd take three days off and the back and forth. We built out this really, really cool sequence and it got it done. And then over the last 60 days or so, they slowly added people into the top of this sequence. In fact, as of Friday, we had added 1,734,577 people into this funnel.

And we were getting an average overall engagement, 22%. 22% people were opening every single email, which is pretty exciting, but that was 1.7 million. And still have another, I think a million and a half that was being added in over the next, probably next 30 to 45 days being added to the top of the funnel trying to go slowly, so that all of a sudden we don't blow up our email. If you go off and start sending a million emails it just... anyway. So, we've been slowly adding these people in every single day. And as 1.7 million have gone into it, 20% open rate. And now, they're getting a sequence of 60 emails for the next three months and what's been crazy and cool and exciting is that first off, I haven't had to write an email for a long time, which is kind of nice.

Second off, I'm watching this now because I have a lot of funnels, so my email sequence links people to different funnels, and then videos and podcasts episodes. So again, somethings are selling somethings are trained. Some things are free. Some things are paid, but just kind of moving them through the logical sequence of offers, of content, of things I want people to get into experience and it connects people to all these different things. And then, how it's fun is I'm watching this now. And now this is done, every single funnel across our business now is lifting. It's really crazy. Our best converting videos are more people where views are popping and they're spiking. And , it really seems like the entire company as a whole is lifting in revenue in engagement and all these things all by placing the thing in place. And it... I've been fighting this for, I mean, honestly, it's been two decades because I finally first want to do this, though I actually finally did it, excuse me. And now it's just insane watching what's happening.

And we plugged in, so if someone opts into any of my funnels, anywhere at any given time, they go through that little meet. Usually someone opts in a funnel is a little mini sequence they go through for three or four days and then drops them to this big, major sequence that takes them through all of the offers in chronological order. And so we're adding again about 1000 to 2000 people a day. And actually more than that, excuse me. Pretty close to 3,500 or so, opt-ins a day are being added in his funnel as well. So it keeps growing and growing and growing. And I'm watching this now as the entire ecosystem of ClickFunnels is all rising together because of this, this funnel that's in place.

And that's nice because it's 60 days long. Everybody who goes into my world is going to be getting these for the rest of time until I decide to change them or updating or tweaking. And hopefully I never will because I spent so much time and so much effort working on them. And it's just really, really cool. So a couple of things. Number one, if you've been getting a new email sequence from me, pay attention, okay. I think I'm going to eventually put this whole email sequence into a book and call it Followup Funnels. It'd be a really cool product, but right now you guys are getting it for free. So, if not, go opt into any of my forms and eventually you'll start getting it. The first email says something about marketing secrets, like "What's marketing secrets?" And so, that's the first email coming through, but it's powerful, man is blowing our business away.

So, I want to share with you guys, cause I want you start thinking, now that you've been creating more things, right? You got some funnels, you got some videos, you got a podcast, you got content, you got things you're putting out there. Think about this. My thought when I was creating this follow-up funnels, "If my mom was to come to my world, what would be the first thing I'd want her to engage with? And then what's the second thing. And the third thing, and the fourth thing, I would look at this, this logical sequence of events. And then from that, that's how I wrote my email sequence. And then you get it all together. And when it's done, man there's this thing that's just literally, hand-holding all your dream customers around the logical sequencing of your content in your offers.

And how powerful is that? What would that do for your business if you have that right now? I tell you for us here at ClickFunnels it is... We're already seeing this in this entire lifting across the board and it's powerful. And somebody will come to our world and like they see a webinar and that's all they know. And they see a book and they see something random, but they don't have the context of everything we're doing. So by doing this, puts everybody into a sequence where they're getting step-by-step piece by piece, the stuff we want them to understand in the order, we need them to understand them. And that's really the magic and the power. So anyway, I want to share with you guys, because I'm pumped about it. It's working. If you don't have your own follow-up funnels, now is the time to start building out, creating them, plugging into click funnels, I guess, to do it in the click funnels.

So you don't risk getting shut down, which happens in pretty much every other autoresponder sequence I've ever had. In fact, I think in the slides I talked about that, because this is the very first time I told people about our follow-up funnels inside of ClickFunnels, we announced it. So, in the past Aweber shut me down six times, Getresponse four times, Icontact shut me down nine times, two and Fusionsoft two times, ActiveCampaign, two times, MailChimp should be about three times. And that's it. And so I would be careful of using any other outside responders for that reason. We have some crazy updates come in Click funnels in the very near future with our followup funnels and stuff. I think you were going to go crazy for, I can't announce that yet, but anyway, good stuff's coming.

So I just want to share with you guys because it matters. It's important. It's something that I fought forever and I wish I had done this 10 years ago and just read it every year, re-tweaked it every single year, whatever that might be, but now it's done. And now it's just insane. So again, from the snapshot December, for every $1 we made inside of our, our core funnel or drive people who made $16 and 49 cents follow-up funnel which is crazy. And what I'm finding now, now I have sequences even better. Those numbers are just going up. And so I want to share with you guys, hope this helps kind of build a follow-up funnel. Inspires you, motivates you and gets you excited to build the often overlooked second funnel, that’s invisible to the Naked Eye. It's called the Follow-up Funnel. With that said, I appreciate you all. And I'll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

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