All too often the phrase “sales funnel” is used interchangeably with “email marketing.”

I know I've done it … and it's wrong.

Email marketing is part of a sales funnel – it's not the sales funnel.

While email marketing tends to be the glue that holds the funnel together, there are many other pieces involved.

There's the audience you need to attract through advertising.

There are the products and services you offer.

There are landing pages, optin forms, lead magnets, relationship building materials (blog posts, videos, etc.), sales pages, and thank you pages.

Then there's all of the tracking, optimization, metrics, and split tests.

And yes, of course, all the emails, series, and sequences that “connect” everything together.

It's a lot.

It takes a combination of technical skills and marketing abilities to craft a top performing sales funnel.

I don't say all of this to overwhelm you.

I say all of this so you're aware of what you need to learn and master.

This post is to serve as a framework or guide through the pieces that make up a sales funnel.

The Sales Funnel Framework

I've spent the better part of 2 years focusing solely on sales funnel development and after lots of trial and error, I've realized that all successful sales funnels need to incorporate these 9 specific areas:

Any great sales funnel/system has to start with its Customers. Who are they? Where do they hangout? What do they look like? What are their goals, dreams, desires, fears, pains, and problems?

Your Business consists of the products and services you deliver to your customers that help them achieve their goals, dreams, and desires while avoiding fears, pains, and problems. The products and services should be positioned to offer an array of different price points, up-sells, down-sells, and cross-sells (a value ladder).

Your Delivery System is how you get your products and services into the hands of your customers. This can be accomplished through a website, ecommerce store, membership portal, or even via brick & mortar.

The “Meat” is the best phrase I could come up with to describe all the content within a sales funnel. All of the sales pages, squeeze pages, opt-in forms, emails, etc. are included here … and of course, require some copywriting skills.

A “Simple” Sales Funnel is the starting point. While it’s the simplest of all sales funnels, it can yield some incredible results and it’s the place you need to start before moving onto bigger, “better”, more advanced sales funnels.

There are two types of Lead Magnets: general and specific. Both are used to attract leads; however, one gauges interest and intent while the other is more for “everyone.” Knowing when and how to use each type is one of the keys to success.

An “Advanced” Sales Funnel can take a lead, figure out their specific interests, and distribute tailored content to those individuals … improving relationships and increasing sales with little effort.

You need Traffic in order to keep your sales funnel full. While there are many ways to drive traffic, the best way is to hangout where your ideal customers hangout.

Finally, in order to have continued growth, you’ll need to test, tweak and Optimize your entire system in order to achieve the best results possible.

Preface

• How Does A Sales Funnel Work?
• The Powerful Sales Funnel
• The True Cost Of Not Having A Sales Funnel

Customers

• Marketing Personas part I
• Marketing Personas part II

Business

• How To Create A Value Ladder For Your Sales Funnel
• How To Sell Products You Don't Even Have

Delivery

• 5 Ways To Increase Revenue In Less Than An Hour
• How To Build Your Own Landing Page Platform

The “Meat”

• How To Steal Other People's Copy
• 2 Sales Page Formulas From Michel Fortin
• What Is A Landing Page?
• Landing Page Myths & Experiments
• What Should I Send To My Email List?
• How To Write Action Driving Emails That Increase Conversions
• How To Insert Expiring Links Into Your Autoresponder
• 3 Email List Growing Tools That Are Free!
• The Tools We Use To Build Our Sales Funnels

“Simple” Sales Funnel

• The Straight Line Sales Funnel (micro)
• What Is An Autoresponder And How Does It Work?
• Email Autoresponder Sequence For Gauging Interest
• EMAIL MARKETING IS DEAD! … and it's going to be ok

Lead Magnets

• What Is A Lead Magnet? & 7 Examples
• What's The BEST Lead Magnet?
• 8 Opt-In Form Examples You Can Implement With Ease

“Advanced” Sales Funnels

• Interest Driven Sales Funnels (macro)
• The “Classic” Sales Funnel Model (micro)
• The Free Consultation / High End Sales Funnel (micro)
• The Amazon Seller's Sales Funnel [ClickFunnels] (micro)
• A Sales Funnel For Selling Digital Products [ClickFunnels] (micro)
• The Coaching/Consulting “Book” Sales Funnel [ClickFunnels] (micro)
• 5 Smart Ways To Increase Order Size
• How To Build A Sales Funnel In ClickFunnels
• How To Build A Sales Funnel With SamCart
• Next Level Sales Funnels

Traffic

• Why Your Website Gets No Traffic
• How To Drive Traffic To Your Sales Funnel
• How Does Retargeting Work?
• How Much Should I Spend Per Click?
• Facebook Ads: Optimize for Conversions or Clicks or Engagement?
• Case Study: 88% Decrease In Cost-Per-Lead (Facebook)

Optimization

• How To Approach Marketing Your Small Business
• Case Study: Why You Need To Segment Your Email List
• A $40,000 Marketing Education In 45 Minutes
• How To Optimize Your Sales Funnel
• Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics
• How To Use Chaos Theory To Optimize Your Sales Funnel
• How To Track Your Email Opt-in Rates With Google Analytics
• What's My Email List Worth? w/ Calculator
• Case Study: % or $? (the rule of 100)
• How To Track Desktop vs. Mobile vs. Tablet ClickBank Affiliate Links
• How To Split Test LeadPages Drag & Drop Page Builder

Misc.

• What Are High Leverage Activities?
• Just Freakin' Do It!
• The Ultimate Guide To Ecommerce Marketing Strategy
• The Ultimate Guide To Marketing Strategy For Coaches, Consultants, & Service-Based Businesses

Facebook's Ads Manager presents the option to optimize for conversions, clicks, or engagement … the question is, does it make a difference? Does Facebook really optimize for those things?

I set off to find out if it's worth setting up the optimization campaigns and *spoiler alert* I've found that yes, it's definitely worth optimizing for whatever you're trying to accomplish.

I conducted an experiment testing the three types of optimizations (conversions, clicks to website, and engagement).

For my experiment I used the same ad and audience. The ads were dark posts so I could measure exactly how each performed.

I changed the goal/optimization and split test mobile vs desktop.

• Related Course: How To Increase Leads & Sales On Facebook With The Triple Threat Strategy

Conversion Tests

For this experiment, a conversion counted every time someone joined my email list (opt-in).

Goal: Find the lowest cost per opt-in.

Data

Optimize for Conversions

The ad was setup to automatically optimize for conversions:

• Mobile: $0.52 per opt-in
• Desktop: $0.57 per opt-in

Optimize for Clicks to Website

The ad was setup to automatically optimize for clicks to website:

• Mobile: $0.80 per opt-in
• Desktop: $1.15 per opt-in

Optimize for Engagement

The ad was setup to automatically optimize for Engagement:

• Mobile: $1.08 per opt-in
• Desktop: $1.15 per opt-in

Engagement Tests

For this experiment, an engagement happened every time someone interacted with the ad (click, like, comment, share, etc).

Goals: Find the cheapest Likes, Comments, Shares.

Data

Optimize for Conversions

The ad was setup to automatically optimize for conversions:

• Mobile:
  • Like: $1.32 per Like
  • Comment: $6.24 per Comment
  • Share: $3.12 per Share
• Desktop:
  • Like: $1.67 per Like
  • Comment: $2.56 per Comment
  • Share: $2.90 per Share

Optimize for Clicks to Website

The ad was setup to automatically optimize for clicks to website:

• Mobile:
  • Like: $4.34 per Like
  • Comment: $21.72 per Comment
  • Share: $10.86 per Share
• Desktop:
  • Like: $2.30 per Like
  • Comment: $4.61 per Comment
  • Share: $3.85 per Share

Optimize for Engagement

The ad was setup to automatically optimize for Engagement:

• Mobile:
  • Like: $0.47 per Like
  • Comment: $2.00 per Comment
  • Share: $1.40 per Share
• Desktop:
  • Like: $1.06 per Like
  • Comment: $1.72 per Comment
  • Share: $2.30 per Share

Conclusion

What I want you to learn from this experiment: Use Facebook's optimization features!!!

Digital Marketer found the same results: click here to read their findings.

Optimizing for Conversions

By selecting the option to optimize for conversions I was able to save about 55% per conversion – from $1.15 to $0.52.

Mobile was cheaper than desktop by about 15% on average. (of course, different markets behave differently, so I would test this).

Optimizing for Clicks to Website

The only reason you should use clicks is if you're retargeting those who clicked.

You can get very cheap clicks, which help you create large custom audiences that you can later retarget with conversion ads.

Since the individual already clicked on one of your ads and read some of your content, they're probably interested in what you and your business offer and are more likely to convert when they see a conversion ad.

This is semi-advanced Facebook Ad strategy; however, it can work wonders!

Optimizing for Engagement

If you're looking to generate social proof then you'll want to optimize for post engagements.

The price differences between the most expensive and the cheapest were HUGE:

• Per Like: 89% cheaper
• Per Comment: 92% cheaper
• Per Share: 87% cheaper

I'd also like to point out that Likes and Shares appear cheaper when targeting mobile devices while Comments are cheapest on Desktop. I believe this is due to the difference between having a full keyboard and screen in front of you as opposed to just a mobile device.

Next Steps …

If you've ever struggled to find success using Facebook's ad platform, it's probably because you're not using all the built in tools they have at your fingertips.

You wouldn't try and play baseball without a bat … would you?

Then why are you trying to play the game of Facebook Ads without pixels, audiences, and a systematized method for optimization?!

Step up to the pros and start running Facebook Ads like the champ you are!

Tracking is critically important.

If you're not tracking, you can't optimize.

If you can't optimize, your sales funnel won't improve.

If you're not improving your sales funnel … then what's the point in having one?

Many businesses use some form of referral or affiliate marketing when they don't offer the product or service their customer needs, but they know someone who does.

The problem arises because once you hand a customer over to someone else, it can be hard to tell if all your pre-selling efforts result in a sale.

This post will help you better track what devices are delivering the best results, in particular with regards to ClickBank; however, this concept can apply to other affiliate networks that use a similar tracking ID or TID system.

Tracking In Action!

To find this report within ClickBank you'll go to Reporting -> Analytics -> View as “Affiliate” -> Hops “By Tracking Id”.

There's not much data in this example, but it's enough to show you how it works!

Do you see the last letter of the “word” in the Tracking ID column? There's m, d, and t (not shown).

• m = mobile
• d = desktop
• t = tablet

Cool! But, why do I care?

Now, in addition to telling which affiliate links are getting clicks and converting, I can also tell from which device the traffic is coming.

In the example above, none of my sales have come from desktop, they've all been mobile. If I were sending paid traffic – it may be beneficial to shut off advertising to desktop.

As another example, many products on ClickBank have very long (45 minutes+) video sales letters (VSL). I don't foresee anyone sitting there on their phone for 45 minutes watching a video and making a purchase; however, I could be wrong – and now you can actually test it!

The Code + Installation Instructions

Here's the code:

You'll also need Mobile Detect.

Click here to download both (“my package”).

If you downloaded my package, all you need to do is unzip it, edit it (explained below), and upload it to your server – ideally through FTP; however, you can use cPanel if you're not familiar with FTP.

How Does It Work?

It's actually very simple!

The Mobile Detect class does the “heavy lifting” and figures out what device people are on.

From there it takes your TID and appends either an m, d, or t depending on the device.

Then it takes whatever product you're recommending, formats your affiliate link with the modified TID and then forwards people through your link.

How Do I Use It?

Let's pretend that I uploaded “my package” to my root directory – https://www.crazyeyemarketing.com/.

I should now have a file here: https://www.crazyeyemarketing.com/link.php

This file looks for two URL parameters:

• t = TID
• p = product

So, let's say I want to send an affiliate link to product AAAA in email 3 of my autoresponder series … instead of sending a regular ClickBank affiliate link, I would send one that looks like this:

https://www.crazyeyemarketing.com/link.php?p=AAAA&t=email3

When people click on that link from email 3, the link.php file will figure out the device, pull in the product name (AAAA), and the TID (email3), create the appropriate link, and seamlessly forward them to the offer.

Example

Let's pretend like we want to promote “The Big Diabetes Lie”

“Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal” – Pablo Picasso or T.S. Eliot or Igor Stravinsky (it's actually not known where this quote originated

[source])

While I never, ever, recommend stealing someone else's work … I do recommend using legal and ethical ways (ie. modeling) to use other people's work in order to gain inspiration, perspective, and direction.

This particularly applies to copywriting, where having a “swipe file” is a must.

What's a swipe file?

“A collection of tested and proven advertising and sales letters.” [wikipedia]

In this post I'll show you where to find copy, how to build your own swipe file, and the most important part – how to use the swipes.

Big Picture Stuff

The ultimate goal is to have a collection of proven ads in your swipe file; however, it's not always easy to tell if something is proven or not unless the advertiser comes out and says it (even then, they could make up their results).

My recommendation is – if you see something that catches your attention – swipe it.

Also, just because one ad worked well in one market, doesn't mean it'll necessarily work well in another.

For example, being buddy-buddy and using slang in your copy may work well when advertising to “hip” people; however, using slang around lawyers, doctors, and other professionals may not perform as well.

Bottom line: know your market.

Where To Find Swipes

Ads and copy are everywhere, so this shouldn't be difficult.

Facebook ads can be found on Facebook, Twitter ads on Twitter, etc.

Sales pages can be found in marketplaces like ClickBank and JVZoo.

Direct response copy can be found on sites like The Gary Halbert Letter or by joining a program like Copy Hour.

Email copy can be found by subscribing to peoples' email lists.

Banner ads can be found dang near everywhere.

My Favorite Place To Find Swipes

I recently came across Swiped.co which is probably the most useful resource I've found in quite some time.

There are hundreds of swipes across various niches, in every format imaginable from ads, to emails, to landing pages, and more.

Click here to go to Swiped.co.

How To Build A Swipe File

This is more of a personal preference.

I'm not going to go into anything technical here because it's pretty straightforward; however, here are a few ideas:

• Evernote. Evernote seems like the “go-to” place to store swipe files; however, it's not for me.
• Pinterest. Some people make secret boards and pin their swipes there.
• Save the swipes in folders on your computer. This is what I do. Technically they're all in Google Drive and I just copy and paste the swipes into Google Docs. Simple and it works.

The point is, use what you're comfortable with.

How To Use Swipes

So what? You have a bunch of swipes … that's cool. But, how do you use them for inspiration, perspective, and direction?

I'm about to show you!

Formula Extraction

The idea is to take a swipe, examine its structure, and “extract” its formula.

By using the formula you'll be able to format the swipe to suit your needs!

Facebook Ads

From Swiped.co

• Formula (Text): Call-To-Action (CTA) + product/service for only $X
• Formula (Picture): Compare how realistically affordable your product/service is
• Formula (Description): Social proof, qualify lead

Longer Copy (Emails, Sales Pages, Direct Response)

With the longer swipes, your goal is to extract the story and format.

Do not go line by line, sentence by sentence trying to extract the formula of every sentence. That'll take entirely too much time and be counterproductive.

Example Email

From Swiped.co

• Title: “The man's” dirty little secret
• Who am I and why you should listen to me, add a picture
• I'm just like you, “the little guy”
• “The man” wants us to believe one thing
• However, after digging deeper and reading “legitimate” reports – we know “the man” is hiding something
• “The man” is saying one thing and doing another
• If you've believed/followed “the man” before and thought you were doing things right …
• CTA to discover what's really going on (“the man's” dirty little secret)

Example Sales Page

From Diabetes Destroyer

• Bad things are in red
• Title/Headline: Something bad is going to happen to you [soon (today)]
• Sub Headline: According to someone with authority
• Emotional story – setting the stage
• Emotional story – authority telling me if I don't do X now, I'll have the worst possible outcome within a [timeframe (year)]
• Emotional story – lifelong goals vanishing in front of me
• All because of one thing that affects so many
• Description of thing that affects so many
• Why am I sharing this story (I don't want you to suffer the same fate)

Conclusion

• Swipe files can make your life easier by providing inspiration, perspective, and direction.
• Any time you see an ad that catches your eye – swipe it!
• If you need to get a jump start on your swipe file, go to Swiped.co.
• Focus on extracting the formula, story, and format of the swipes.
• Write great copy!

Sales pages are an important part of your sales funnel … they handle most of the selling.

Of course, how you treat your leads up to that point plays a huge part as well, but the sales page is the final step. It needs to do a good job of handling final objections and creating a desire to buy or your sales funnel will suffer.

It's the exact point where a lead becomes a customer.

The thing about sales pages is that there are a lot of ways to approach them. There are short sales pages, looooong sales pages, video sales pages/letters (VSL), and everything in-between.

Depending on the product you're selling and the market you're selling to – the format of your sales page may change; however, the overall content wont.

People are still people and they all need to read/hear/see certain things in order to feel comfortable whipping out their credit card and purchasing your product.

By following proven sales page formulas, you'll be able to hit all the points that make people buy.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

I came across these 2 sales page formulas while listening to episode 36 of John McIntyre's podcast, “The McMethod Email Marketing Podcast”.

Are you throwing money away again?!

If you're like most small businesses and entrepreneurs I work with … and are doing some form of paid advertising … you probably are.

Most folks do the “throw crap at the wall and see if anything sticks” approach to advertising.

Obviously, this isn't wise.

If you've ever “failed” at paid advertising, or thought to yourself that Facebook Ads or Adwords “doesn't work” … this post is for you.

• Related Course: How To Optimize Your Sales Funnel

How To Attain The Marketer's Mindset

In order to attain the marketer's mindset, you need to approach all marketing and advertising as an experiment.

You're essentially a scientist … a mad scientist, if you'd prefer.

It's your job to test hypotheses by conducting experiments, analyzing the data, and making decisions.

The best way to do this is by following the tried and true – Scientific Method.

Having said that, I cannot discredit marketers. Marketers spend time learning, understanding, and practicing things like psychology, human behavior, copywriting, design, user experience, etc. and are able to develop better hypotheses and experiments more effectively and efficiently than individuals that don't.

So, there's certainly a massive benefit to having someone that's an actual marketer do your marketing; however, if you understand the marketer's mindset and how they approach their marketing campaigns … you're going to be in a much better position to succeed than those who don't.

The Scientific Method

Image from Science Buddies.

Ask A Question

In business, the question is usually, “How do I generate more business?”

Do Background Research

Fortunately, you should already know a lot of the background information.

You'll obviously know the ins and outs of the products and services your business offers.

You should also know your customers. If you don't know them as well as you should, click here and here to learn how to develop marketing personas.

Construct A Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an educated guess about how things will work.

“If [I do this], then [this] will happen.”

• If I publish this ad for this audience, my conversion rate will increase.
• If I change the subject line of this email, my open rate and click through rate will increase.
• If I change the title of this sales page, my sales will increase.

Tip: Measure At Least 2 Levels Deep

At the end of the day, your advertising campaigns must generate sales or there's no point.

To help ensure what you're hypothesizing about actually matters, I recommend generating hypotheses that are at least 2 levels deep.

What does that mean?

For example, let's take a Facebook ad. We could hypothesize that “If I change the ad image to X, it will have a higher Click Through Rate (CTR).”

The ad's CTR is the 1st level.

Increasing the CTR is great, but – does it affect the bottom line? Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to tell unless you measure how it affects the bottom line.

The 2nd level would be a measure of the next action the person takes after the 1st level.

For example, level 2 could be to signup for your mailing list. (signup conversion rate)

So, a better hypothesis would be, “If I change the ad image to X, it will increase my signup conversion rate.”

Signup conversion rate is a better metric to measure than ad CTR because it's closer to the end goal of producing a sale.

Here's a table to better illustrate the concept of levels:

Common Things To Test

Here's a short list of possible things to test:

• The offer
• Ad image and ad copy
• Ad targeting
• Subject lines
• Titles
• Formatting
• Call-To-Action (CTA)

Test With An Experiment

Click the “Live” button, ie. launch your campaign, change your subject line, change your title, change your CTA, etc.

Now, don't touch anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the point where most people mess up.

They'll launch their ad (experiment) and watch as money leaves without delivering the results they were hoping for.

I agree – it's hard to watch money leave your account without it generating results. It's really easy to freak out and either stop or change the experiment on the fly … but you can't do this.

Remember, it's just an experiment. You're simply testing a hypothesis and collecting data.

The more data you have, the more accurate it will be and the better decisions you'll be able to make.

You need this data in order to analyze it and make educated decisions, so your next experiment will hopefully deliver the results you're looking for.

Tip #1: Start Small

You don't have to spend thousands of dollars. Many times, $5 to $10 a day for a week is enough to test a hypothesis.

Tip #2: Set A Budget And Leave It

To help curb the urge to mess with an experiment, set a budget on your campaign and don't look at it until it's ended.

For example, set a campaign limit at $50 with a daily budget of $7 – after a week, login and view your results.

Procedure Working

Make sure everything is functioning correctly.

Make sure your ad is sending people to the correct landing page.

Ensure your signup form is synced to the correct email list.

Simple stuff; however, I've personally made both of those mistakes before … stuff happens, make sure you double check your setup especially if results seem way off.

Analyze Data and Draw Conclusions

Before analyzing data and drawing conclusions you need to make sure you have enough data.

Not having enough data is the second largest point of failure for an experiment!!!!!!!!!!!

How do you ensure you have enough data? Statistical significance. (click here to learn more)

When you don't have enough data, you're not able to confidently say whether the experiment proved your hypothesis right or wrong. Without high levels of confidence, you're likely to make some bad decisions.

Results Align With Hypothesis

Excellent! Your experiment becomes your control and you can run more experiments against it and/or you can scale up your advertising and develop hypotheses for other portions of your sales funnel (ie. different levels).

Results Align Partially Or Not At All With Hypothesis

Like Thomas Edison with the light bulb, you haven't failed, you've just found a way that doesn't work.

Take what you learned, go back to the drawing board, form another hypothesis and run another experiment.

You will fail, a lot.

Most of your campaigns will start out yielding negative results and you have to remember that this is OK.

Remind yourself that you're conducting experiments and gathering data in order to make better decisions and build a highly profitable marketing campaign.

Final Words Of Advice

Someone smarter than me once said, “Successful marketing campaigns are built, they're not discovered.”

… Or, something to that effect, unfortunately I can't find the source of that quote right now; however, the point is that it takes work, patience, and a method (ie. Scientific Method) to build a successful marketing campaign.

It's not something that magically “happens” … you can't keep throwing crap at the wall and hope something sticks.

• Related Course: How To Optimize Your Sales Funnel

Most of the time, when discussing sales funnels, we only cover email marketing and automation.

Why? It's the cheapest, easiest, and fastest to setup and implement.

But, the thing is, you can do a lot more, automatically, than just send emails.

For example, you can …

• Send a text or make a phone call
• Send a postcard or a letter
• Update and post to social media
• Sync with over 500 services

Why Do This?

Why would you want to send someone a text or a postcard?

Obviously, you wouldn't do this for every single subscriber that enters your sales funnel because it costs extra to perform these functions. Plus, you would need to request even more contact information (phone number and/or address) to make it possible.

Here are a few examples of when you might want to go the extra mile.

Birthdays

Many small businesses have a “birthday club” where they send out special discounts as a birthday present.

Instead of sending a regular old email, you can make your business really stand out by sending a postcard with the special birthday discount!

Every year I receive a postcard from the local ice cream shop and it makes my day!

Urgent Reminders

You can use the text messaging and/or phone calling features to notify individuals if their payment is about to lapse.

Or, if a special sale, offer, or event is about to end, you can send out a message reminding people that they have until 7pm to do X, Y, and Z.

The Overall Concept

Allow me to explain the overall concept, or “strategy”, before getting into the nitty-gritty tactical details.

The concept involves connecting your autoresponder or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to Zapier via webhooks where Zapier acts as a middleman, translating what your autoresponder/CRM spits out and converting it into a language another service can use.

* For simplicity – a webhook is a URL that's notified when something happens.

For example, when someone subscribes to my email list I could have my autoresponder tool notify Zapier via a webhook that I have a new subscriber. Zapier could then tell Twilio (text messaging service) to send the new subscriber a text, welcoming them to my list.

How To: ActiveCampaign

For this particular tutorial I'll be demonstrating my favorite email autoresponder tool, ActiveCampaign. However, most autoresponder tools offer some form of webhook capabilities. A Google search may show you how to do something similar with your particular tool.

Step 1: Create A New Zap & Trigger

• The first thing you need to do is login to Zapier and create a new Zap
• You'll need to choose your Trigger App, which is ActiveCampaign for this example
• You'll want to select “New Automation Webhook” as your trigger
• Zapier will give you a URL (webhook) to use within ActiveCampaign
• Copy the URL
• You should have something that looks like this:

Step 2: Add Webhook URL To ActiveCampaign

• Login to your ActiveCampaign account and locate where you want the webhook to trigger and select “Add new action”
• Select “Webhook”

• Paste in the URL that Zapier gave you

Step 3: Test

• Go back to Zapier and select “OK, I did this”.
• You'll see “Looking for the automation…” – more than likely, it won't be found and you'll have to go back to ActiveCampaign and trigger it first
  • Go to ActiveCampaign
  • Do what you need to do in order to trigger the automation that has the webhook – ie. in the example above I had to subscribe to list “0 – test”

• Once your test is successful, select “Continue”

Step 4: Connect To Action App

• Search through over 500 services for the one(s) you'd like to have do something. A couple popular ones are:
  • Twilio – Text messaging and calls
  • Lob – Mailings
• Follow the instructions Zapier gives you (don't worry, it's intuitive ;))

The Future Looks Exciting!

The concept of combining email marketing with offline marketing tactics like text messaging, phone calls, and mailings isn't new.

Businesses have been taking the multi-pronged approach for years; however, it's been a very manual process.

Only recently has technology advanced enough that we're able to start putting automated systems in place to handle all aspects of our sales funnels.

I imagine most email autoresponder tools and CRM tools will eventually integrate seamlessly with text messaging, phone calls, mailings, and beyond without the requirement of a 3rd party tool like Zapier.

I'm excited to see what's next for the world of marketing and sales funnels!

A list is worth a thousand words … wait … no! That's a picture.

A list is worth money (at least it should be).

Trying to figure out how much it's worth, which emails are delivering results and which ones aren't, can be difficult and timely.

There are so many metrics to look at that it can be overwhelming and hard to determine what is/is not important.

This post aims to make calculating your email lists' value easier and faster!

Overall Concept

The main concept to understand is that there are multiple actions someone needs to take in order to go from an email to a purchase.

They need to open your email, click the link, go to your sales page and click the “buy now” button, and then enter their purchase info.

That's a pretty “normal” flow. (4 steps)

You could possibly cut out the sales page step by selling in your email and linking straight to the order form; however, people don't usually like long, sales page style emails and they don't normally perform well. In certain instances, they can perform very well (it's something to test).

These are all called “actionable metrics” (open, click, enter) and they're truly important with regard to figuring out how well your system is working.

Fortunately, we can break these 4 steps into two metrics to calculate the value of our email list. (Click Through Rate and Sales Page Conversion Rate)

Click Through Rate (CTR)

Click Through Rate or CTR is a measure of how many people received your email vs how many received it, opened it, and clicked the link inside.

For example, if you send an email to 100 people, 20 may open it (20% open rate), and 4 may click the link – meaning your CTR is 4%.

As you can see, CTR is affected by open rate. If zero people open your email, you will receive zero clicks; whereas, if 50% open your email your CTR will likely improve (look at “False Positives” below for more info).

Sales Page Conversion Rate

Sales Page Conversion Rate is simply a measure of how many people land on your sales page vs. how many people land on your sales page and buy what you're trying to sell.

For example, if you send 100 people to your sales page and 1 person buys – your sales page conversion rate is 1%.

The Calculator

If we're able to figure out our CTR and Sales Page Conversion Rate, we can calculate what our email list is worth!

Here's the calculator:

Click here to go to the calculator!

The calculator is a Google Sheet so you'll either need to “Make A Copy” within your own Google account or you can download it as an Excel Spreadsheet by going to “File” and “Download As”.

How It Works

The calculator helps you calculate what a subscriber is worth, after a month of being on your list.

You plugin the Tracking ID (TID)/Unique ID (UID), Page Views, Net Sales Count, Net Sales Amount, and Click Through Rate and the calculator tells you the rest (I'll define them in just a second).

The “most important” column is the last one, “Email's “Worth” Per Subscriber”. For every individual that receives that specific email, on average, you'll earn $X.XX.

For example, looking at the table above, for every person who receives Email #1, I can expect to earn $0.0136 … less than two cents. But, that's just one subscriber and one email.

By having thousands of subscribers and a higher “Email's “Worth” Per Subscriber”, you can see how it adds up!

For example, in the table above, it calculates the “Monthly Worth Of A Subscriber” is $1.74 (which is probably pretty high, but this is just an example), but multiply that value by a few thousand and you'll be sitting pretty!

The Columns

Email #

The number of the email in your series.

1 is the first email you send out. 2 is the second email you send out. Etc.

TID/UID

The Tracking ID or Unique ID.

These are normally self-assigned, so you can make them whatever you want. They're usually appended to the end of your URL for tracking purposes.

For example, in Email #1 above I assigned it the TID “a1”. Now, the link I share in my email will look something like this: http://SalesPage.com/?tid=a1

Affiliate Networks

Most affiliate networks offer TID/SID/CID/U1/AffTrack/etc to help you track conversions.

Here's some more info on tracking from a few popular affiliate networks:

• ClickBank (TID)
• ShareASale (AffTrack)
• CJ (SID)

Google Analytics

You can use Google Analytics to track sales on your own website from specific links you send in emails. Google Analytics doesn't use “TID” per se, instead you'll use other parameters to track your URLs.

For example, http://SalesPage.com/?utm_source=activecampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=/&utm_term=main-series&utm_content=a1

Woah!? Yeah, some day I'll write a post on what all that means and how to find it in Google Analytics, but I believe you can still grasp the concept – there's an email in my main series that has the UID of a1.

Now, within Google Analytics, I'll be able to track if my UID of “a1” results in sales.

Click here to checkout Google's URL Builder.

Clicks/Views

The total number of people that clicked your link and viewed your sales page.

Net Sales Count

The total number of sales from all of the people that clicked your link and viewed your sales page.

Net Sales Amount

The total amount of Net Sales.

Open Rate

The percentage of people that received your email and opened it.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

The percentage of people that received your email, opened it, and clicked the link inside.

Open vs CTR

A ratio that compares the open rate to the CTR. It allows you to find areas of improvement.

Sales Page Conversion Rate

The percentage of people that land on your sales page and make a purchase.

Automatically calculated for you – Net Sales Count/Page Views.

Average Sale Amount

The average purchase amount.

Automatically calculated for you – Net Sales Amount/Net Sales Count.

Earnings Per Click (EPC)

The value of each click.

Automatically calculated for you – Click Through Rate * Sales Page Conversion Rate * Average Sale Amount.

How To Use It To Optimize Your Email List

There's more than one way to use this data to optimize your email list. One way can be found [thrive_2step id='5968′]here[/thrive_2step] and can be used in conjunction with what's outlined below.

The other way is to arrange the order of your emails based upon “EPC” – where the higher valued emails are at the beginning of your series.

Why? Most of the time subscribers are most active when they first subscribe to your email list. Over time they tend to move onto other things, stop opening your emails, unsubscribe, and possibly mark your emails as spam.

For this reason, you want to present your highest value driving emails as soon as possible to capitalize on this “active period”.

However, when you start shifting your email series around there are certain things you want to take into consideration.

Things To Take Into Consideration

Unfortunately, rearranging your email series is not as clear cut as just placing the higher “Email's “Worth” Per Subscriber” at the beginning.

While it's certainly a helpful guide and a starting place, there will be instances where you send emails that aren't selling anything and the “Email's “Worth” Per Subscriber” will be $0.00.

However, you'll still send these emails “worth” $0.00 because they help build the relationship which leads to more sales later on.

False Positives

Keep this in mind – all that matters are sales.

It does not matter if your email open rate is 100% and your CTR is 100%, if no one is buying.

100% of nothing is nothing:

Coming up with the juiciest, clickbaitiest, subject lines means diddly squat, if sales don't improve as well.

So, keep that in mind!

Sequences/Series

As I alluded to earlier, you will send emails that don't sell anything; however, they're setting the stage for sales to come.

So, you need to be cautious when moving or removing an email as it may affect other emails down the line.

Also, the first handful of emails in your series will normally have the highest open rates – even if the subject line is lacking – and that's because people are in the “active period” I mentioned earlier.

So, if email #23 has a really good “Email's “Worth” Per Subscriber”, but it's not quite as high as email #3 – it may be worth trying email #23 in email #3's spot. If it's performing really well that far down the series, it may perform incredibly well at the beginning.

Statistical Significance

You need enough data before making changes.

If you throw a bunch of numbers into the calculator and it spits out that a certain email is worth $5 per subscriber – it can be incredibly exciting and you may want to switch up your entire email series to really promote that email.

BUT, what if only 3 people received that email and 1 person purchased? Do you think those 3 people are representative of hundreds to thousands of people? Highly unlikely.

To keep things simple, you'll want a few hundred people to receive an email before making any changes to it.

Any less and you won't have enough data to make an accurate decision.

This is called “statistical significance” [wikipedia], there's a lot of information on the subject already, and this post is already long enough. If you want to learn more, there's Google!

The point to remember is you need enough data before making changes.

Conclusion

There's a lot of information in this post. I'm sure I didn't clearly define and explain all the details – I'm expecting questions! Ask away!

The “Straight Line” Sales Funnel is where most people begin … actually, I take that back … it's where everyone begins.

It's Sales Funnels 101.

If you can't make emails trigger in a straight line, trying to trigger them based off of actions, events, interests, and intent will be impossible.

You have to start here and understand this concept or you can't move forward, it's that simple.

• Related Course: How To Build A Straight Line Sales Funnel

The “Straight Line” Sales Funnel

Lead Magnet

The Lead Magnet is the “free gift” you give someone in exchange for their email address – for example a coupon, free shipping, trial, webinar, etc.

If you've been on the Internet for longer than a day, you've seen opt-in or signup forms for Lead Magnets all over the place (you've probably seen a few on this site alone!)

You can learn more about Lead Magnets here.

Emails #1 Through Infinity

Pretty self explanatory. You send emails in an order that makes sense to transform a lead into a paying customer.

This is accomplished by sending emails that follow the 3Es:

1. Entertain: These emails are meant to entertain. Videos, pictures, stories, etc provide great entertainment.
2. Educate: Helpful emails that solve problems, answer questions, and provide guidance.
3. Earn: These emails drive sales by bringing customers back to your business.

Your email series could look something like this:

1. Thanks for joining, deliver lead magnet, here's what you can expect from us, here's a little about our business
2. Do you have any questions? (Try and start a conversation)
3. Introduce best selling product/service – describe features – link to sales page (educate/earn)
4. Best selling product/service – describe benefits – link to sales page (educate/earn)
5. Share an interesting user experience of your best selling product/service (entertain/educate/earn)
6. Best selling product/service – handle top 3 objections – link to sales page (educate/earn)
7. Send a cheat sheet for solving whatever problem your product/service solves so the customer can still solve their problem even if they don't chose your product (educate/earns trust)
8. Share a funny cat video, just because you thought it was funny (entertain)
9. Introduce 2nd best selling product/service – describe features – link to sales page (educate/earn)
10. On, and on, and on

A “Straight Line” Sales Funnel That's Working Right Now

I'm currently running a paid advertising campaign to a “Straight Line” Sales Funnel that's performing well and below you'll find the overall strategy for it.

For the sake of this example, let's pretend I'm selling cooking utensils.

1. Thanks for joining, deliver lead magnet, here's what you can expect from us, here's a little about our business
2. Entertaining story about how finding this soup spoon has greatly improved my life
3. Link to video on my site of a professional chef using the exact same soup spoon I'm selling. Of course, beneath the video I have a link to buy the soup spoon from me
4. Features and Benefits of the soup spoon, link to sales page
5. PDF containing 3 soup recipes that remind me of home. In the PDF I link to the soup spoon in my store
6. Entertaining story about how I've found this razor sharp knife has improved my life
7. On, and on, and on

It Has Its Strengths And Weaknesses

Strengths

• Easy to understand
• Easy to setup
• ALL email autoresponder services can do this, there aren't any special features required to make it work
• WAAYYY better than nothing
• It's a foundation for “bigger” things [see Interest Driven Sales Funnels]

Weaknesses

• May promote products and services to a person that has already purchased and therefore wastes time, effort, energy, resources, etc.
• The content may not pertain to the individual. For example, if you sell vehicles and your top selling product is a car, and your first 4 emails are about the car and the lead is only interested in trucks … the individual won't care about your emails.

In Closing…

If you do not have an email series or sales funnel in place currently or the one you have is lacking – focus on setting up a “Straight Line” Sales Funnel.

Once you grasp this core concept and the technical aspects involved, you'll be able to move on to bigger, better sales funnels.

• Related Course: How To Build A Straight Line Sales Funnel