Today on the podcast, we’re talking about a topic I can get pretty chatty about: making money in your sleep with sales funnels! Whether you know what sales funnels are or if you have no clue where to even start, I think you’ll love this episode. Sales funnels are one of the biggest ways I’ve automated sales in my business and have truly transformed my business. It’s been about a year since I launched my signature course, the Reels Mini Course. Because of our sales funnels, income has been really consistent from this product for the last year. So today, let’s dive into what sales funnels are, how I set mine up, some practical tips, and the steps you can do immediately after this episode to get started!

What’s a Sales Funnel?

Sales funnels are related to emails. They’re essentially a series of emails that get triggered and sent automatically to someone who joins your email list. These sales funnels can get very specific – tied to a certain product or freebie – or they can be more general. If you’re familiar with live launches for products, think about this as putting your live launch on evergreen. You’re taking those 5 or 6 emails you sent during your live launch and turning them into a sequence someone receives anytime they download your freebie or buy a product – pushing them towards another paying product.

What Does a Sales Funnel Look Like?

Let’s say someone downloads your freebie. The first email delivers that freebie to them. Maybe it’s a template or something. From there, a five day email sequence would be triggered that relates to that freebie (since they were obviously interested in that!). That email sequence will highlight the product you’re trying to sell. For example, if someone completes our Reels Quiz, they’ll be put into a funnel that then sells them the Reels Mini Course. Sales funnels are generally 5 days long, but you could certainly do something longer or shorter if it works better for your business. But, I’ve found a lot of success with simple five day funnels.

We keep ours pretty simple, but we’ve also been building our big nurture sequence. I’m so excited about this! One of the best parts is that we can filter our audience so they don’t get emails for products they already own. I love that we won’t waste their time. Instead, we can do check-ins with them about how the course is going or feedback/testimonials. We can have all of this on autopilot and still serve our students really well, without having to remember to send out emails every week.

What’s Included in a Sales Funnel?

When I start thinking about setting up a new sales funnel, it’s important to decide which product or offering I’m going to be pitching through the funnel. Sales funnels can be for products, offerings, or services and they can be very pitch heavy or more like a launch with more exploration first. With that in mind, I start with the product or offering. The first three days of emails are all about how I can get my subscribers to like, know, and trust me AND the product. By the time those three days are over, I want my subscribers to really feel like I know my stuff. Whatever is in those emails is related to the product still.

For example, if I’m going to pitch my mobile presets, those first three emails might be about lighting tips for mobile photos or how I organize them. This helps so that when we get to the pitch, they’re excited to buy from me. I know that in the last day or two of emails, my subscribers will get a deadline for the flash sale price of the product. There’s even a timer and a special link so that anytime someone opens that email, they can easily grab the reduced pricing. The best part is that if they click on the link after that timer is over, it will route them back to the full price – so there’s no stress about those timers!

Our emails in the sales funnels have really high open rates, which I’m proud of. Were strategic about how we write these emails because we really do want to bring people in and help them feel like they’re learning from me! Our funnels generally convert pretty well, too.

How to Setup a Sales Funnel

Okay, now that we know some of the components of the sales funnel, let’s walk through how I set one up. I start with a Google doc and I’ll brainstorm/brain dump around the product I’m going to be featuring. I take the time to lay out what questions we get, topics that are related and look for ways to connect them all through the sequence. Then I begin to write those emails. After they’re ready, it’s time to format them in Flodesk.

In Flodesk, start by making a segment that will trigger this email list. Then you create a workflow. Flodesk walks you through how to add each email and step, which is super helpful. You can add in time delays between emails and also have conditions, but I try to keep mine pretty straightforward. I also use Deadline Funnel for the timers that go into our Flodesk emails. That will help you create the timers I mentioned and redirect to your full price when the time is up.

Getting an Audience

After your email workflow is all setup, you need to automate people signing up for your freebie. This can be one of the hardest parts. It’s basically marketing. So think about how you can market your freebie to your audience! Start by looking at what you’re already doing. Can you include your freebie in there somewhere? Maybe on your website, in your Instagram bio. If you look at our website, you’ll see our freebies are embedded a few different places. Consider adding a pop up to your website and don’t forget to add your freebies into your blogs or other content you publish, like YouTube!

Remember, passive income isn’t passive.

The last thing to remember about sales funnels and passive income in general is that it isn’t totally passive, like people think. There’s a lot of setup that goes into things like sales funnels, and then we still need to spend time growing out audience. Beyond that, you need to track what you’re doing so that you know if your emails are converting and getting you customers.

There’s some basics on sales funnels! I hope that this helps you realize they’re super helpful for businesses and that you’re excited to start setting up your own!

If you’re listening and you have ideas about what to talk about next, please send in your requests! I really do want to know what you want to hear about in future episodes. Email me at [email protected] with your questions!! I can’t wait to hear from you! Don’t forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, too. We appreciate all of the support and love!