This Email Funnel Strategy Will ALWAYS Convert

automated email funnels are the backbone of any good online business especially if you want a passive income stream but for whatever reason people out there seem to make email funnels way more complicated than they need to be today I want to just like simplify the crud out of your email funnel so that you understand what you need to put in it for it to be profitable and to make money so there's just three elements that any good email funnel needs you don't need a bunch of segmentation you don't need a bunch of uh automation you just need one simple funnel has these three elements just a handful of emails and you can serve a ton of people and you can sell your products automatically 24/7 let's [Music] [Applause] discuss welcome to episode 127 of the Graham Cochran show where I'm here to help you build your online business work less and live and give more I'm your host Graham Cochran pumped to hang out with you today honored to have some time thanks for listening on Apple podcast or Spotify or wherever you get this show or if you're watching here on YouTube I appreciate it as always thanks for the comments good engagement good conversations happening in the comments below these videos so it's fun I love seeing what you guys are doing I love seeing light bulbs go off I love the motivation too some so many of you are action takers you're literally telling me I'm going to go do this I love that accountability I see you and I'm grateful for you and I'm excited for you because action takers get rewarded and I know you will as well we're going to dive into a real practical episode today email funnels are so foundational um and so I'm going to explain really quickly what an email funnel is and why it's critical but then I'm going to give you the three elements you need for it to be profitable uh and to make it even easier for you I want to give you a basically an email funnel template I want to give you my day product pitch email sequence this is an example of one of my 5day email funnels that I used for years to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for one specific course but you can follow it as a guide as sort of how you could structure your own email funnel it's just a way to do it not the only way not even the only way I do it but a really good proven way to do it it's over five days and it takes your audience and gives them a ton of value and transitions really beautifully into a pitch so it's want to give it to you at least check it out and see if it's something you can use and build your email funnel off of just go to the link below if you're watching on YouTube or grc. com five days that's the number five days grc. com days and grab my 5day product pitch email funnel okay so an email funnel funnel is a is a term that is uh become very popular there's a couple gurus out there that have the word funnel in a bunch of their trainings and their live conferences um and so it's it sounds very complex but it's no different than any kind of business every business has a traditional sales funnel and a funnel is a shape right it's it's wide at the top narrow at the bottom and that visual makes sense everyone that interacts with your brand imagine them interacting with the top of the funnel um they watch a video of yours that's very broad that's top of funnel they see an ad of yours it's broad that's top of funnel they hear about you on a podcast okay this is the widest net the the the largest reach is going to be at the top of the funnel and then as people choose to go deeper with you as choose to find out more about you um generally speaking if you're smart you're going to try to get their email address and that's what's going to allow people to go through your predetermined process sales funnel these are emails and so there's going to be fewer people that dive into the funnel then see who you are and watch you're there going be a lot of lurkers that watch you and pay attention to you that you don't even see in any of the numbers but there's going to be a smaller group that actually opt into your funnel and then as you go deeper and deeper to the point of purchasing or I should say promoting an offer for them to purchase there's going to be fewer people in that funnel right it's getting narrower at the bottom hence that shape so a funnel is is more of a concept um every business kind of has some kind of sales process that they funnel people through from prospects to buyers but what we do online is an email version of The Funnel and so all all a funnel is like I've had someone ask me Graham can kajabi do funnels uh do I need you know clickfunnels which is a very popular product by Russell Brunson right clickfunnels do I need clickfunnels well no you don't because kajabi is is functionally the competitor of clickfunnels but you don't need any special tool to create a funnel all you do need is an email marketing platform so this could be MailChimp that's how I got started this could be convertkit this could be awe or this could be uh kajabi this could be clickfunnels but you just need a a tool that does your emails and then these tools and that's how you know you build a list you send out your broadcast emails every week or whenever you want but the power of email marketing to me is in the Automation and so all we're talking about when we say a funnel is a series of pre-written emails like the five that I share with you in my 5day product pitch email funnel that you can download that's an example they're just emails that have been pre-written they're they're they're uploaded into your email marketing platform your MailChimp your convertkit your kajabi what have you and they are scheduled automated to go out at a certain interval that you determine based off of when somebody joins your list so if I saw one of your videos and thought it was an amazing video and you offered me this amazing guide at the end of the video I'm like oh my gosh I have to have that and I type in my email address now I'm on your email list you would have a simple automation set up in your email marketing platform to say okay Graham is a new subscriber start to send him these three emails five emails 20 emails whatever it is over these certain number of days and all I see from the user perspective is I get follow-up emails from you and those emails are going to do these three things that I'm about to share with you and ultimately the goal of those emails for you as the business owner is to convert me into a customer and ultimately if the emails are done right the goal for me as the consumer is to enjoy them get value out of them and and find use out of them otherwise I'm going to click the unsubscribe link which is fine uh people do that every day for me so uh that is all an email funnel is it's just some emails you don't need a bunch of automation you don't need a bunch of segmentation you don't you don't need to to download funnel litics and have this this graph of well they go to this optin and then if they say yes or no it's like Choose Your Own Adventure then they go here then they go here you don't you don't need any of that stuff you just need to write a few emails that cover these three things you will make money okay that's what I've been doing for 12 years it works simple work so let's break down those three things um there's a lot of ways to do this what that's what I love about writing email funnels is there are a lot of ways to write emails angles to go with long or short lot of emails fewer emails so I'm not going to give you a prescriptive way to do it but you do need to include these three elements to ensure that your email funnel is profitable are you ready everybody said yes okay let's do this number one is you need a value ad or multiple value ads what does this mean it's very simple you need some emails that just simply add value to the person so they if they if you do what I teach you're not running a an advertisement on Facebook or whatever you're putting out free content that's organic and they' found it they've engaged with it because you're creating searchable stuff for the search engines YouTube Google Etc they find it they like it so they've already found your video or your podcast or your article valuable even a social media post that could count if they found it and then you offer them a free lead magnet an addition piece of valuable content that in order to get they just have to give you their email address so you can email it to them if they've downloaded that you know they've gotten two valuable things from you the first was the free piece of content how they found you and the second at the very least was the lead magnet even if they haven't read it watched it engaged with that lead magnet they've wanted it they've downloaded it now what we want to do is overd deliver and add even more value the secret to online business is to do something that I do which is to run with the value Circle I call it the value Circle and it's just a it's a framework for how my business works and the first part of the value circle is to give generously for free okay the second thing is to overd deliver on the free stuff which very few people do very few people give away free stuff and then people realize okay I got to give away free stuff and most of that is garbage it's just sort of like they know their opposed to they've heard about so they give away some free content but very few people after people engage with the free content and download the lead mag very few people overd deliver with more free amazing value and that's what we want to do first in this email so what does this mean this could be an additional PDF uh if they downloaded a guy this could be an additional video this this could just be an email or two or three that just teach something in depth for example in one of my funnels if you download a guide or a lead magnet um I'm going to immediately send you an email that gives you the simple a guide called the simple math to making $5,000 a month okay this is an additional guide that I could use as a lead magnet I don't I keep it behind curtains as an overd deliver for you so that you download something uh of mine that you want and then immediately not only do you get that but say hey I wanted to just love on you some more and say thank you for joining my list here is this another guide that helps you there's multiple ways to make $5,000 a month check it out and it breaks down all the math so you can see a variety of ways to get there uh it's a really awesome guide that's an overd deliver that is a value ad in one of my funnels I send an email that's got just a thumb thumbnail of a video and it's a video I Shot just for my email list it's not on YouTube here it's not anywhere else uh and it's called the three secrets to online business and this is sort of a candid look at you know you see all the online business gurus talking about this and that and sharing how awesome they are and their lifestyle is and if you just follow them you too can have this awesome lifestyle but there's some secrets to why they are successful if they are successful and I pull back the curtain on some of those well-kept Secrets people don't really talk about it and it's just a video it's just me talking to the camera sharing three powerful things insights and it's not posted publicly it's just for people on my email list these are examples of value ads if you download my 5-day product pitch email that I gave you here at the top of this episode just link or go to grc.

com days the number five that is a different example of a value ad there's no free bonus guide or video but the first couple of emails in that that email funnel are teaching specific tricks and hacks so it's like having hidden blog posts that now that you've downloaded My Le magnet you're on my list say hey over the next couple of days I want to share with you these three amazing tricks that I'm using to get whatever whatever result that you can use so today let's talk about this and then it's boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom tomorrow watch your inbox I'm going to teach you this trick so all you're doing is just adding immense value by giving real dactic relevant content to them so I hope that's obvious but your email funnel can't just be one giant sales pitch I don't know if that's what you've learned that doesn't work you need to continue to add value that is so so important that builds trust that builds likability it builds credibility and it makes people feel like wow I I'm glad I'm on this person's list I'm going to see what else he or she has to say because this has been valuable so far and people stick around if there's value if there's not they leave I mean that's that's the beauty of capitalism is if a business is delivering value people will continue to stay customers and if a business no longer provides value they your customers are going to go somewhere else because they have the freedom to do that they have choice and so that business will suffer it puts the onus on the business to continue deliver value and we want to do that for free in our email funnel so value ad is number one number two you need to establish Authority so a good email funnel establishes Authority what do I mean for people to want to buy from you they need to perceive you as authoritative in your space now there's a difference between having Authority having credibility and being a so-called expert and I'm using air quotes if you're listening to the podcast so many of us that get into the content game and create an online business are insecure myself included and we struggle to understand why somebody would pay attention to our content buy from us trust us if we are not an expert if we don't have a degree in this subject if we don't have fancy letters at the end of our names um if we don't have some kind of certif certification or if we aren't you know signed off on by some super big celebrity or major media Outlets it it seems hard for us to believe people will take us seriously and buy our products I address a lot of this in my book upcoming on how this is just a real real psychological barrier for people but the reality people don't buy from experts we don't they don't care if you're an expert um what they care about is can you get them results now we are though as humans looking to follow people that we think have authority and Authority can mean a lot of different things we don't want to follow people who seem like so insecure like well I don't know I mean you could try what I'm teaching you but I don't know if it's going to work for you I mean no one wants to follow that it's very sheepish now you might actually believe that in your heart but you cannot portray that you have to lead with confidence and confidence doesn't have to be faked but you have to find that place in yourself where you're like where have I actually helped people can I actually help people because you can you have even if it was your friend or your neighbor or your mom or your brother you've helped somebody in your area so you have to wherever you help somebody you have to keep that in your mind and lead with confidence there and say I can help people because I've helped people in the past and I'm sure I can help this person that starts it with confidence but you then need to have tangible ways to show your Authority in your email funnel this does not have to be a love me wall and this certainly does not have to be the whole email funnel please don't just you subtly sneak it in there so what do I mean if you have any press if you've been written up in any kind of media outlet that somebody would know cut mention that okay any other social proof online if you've been on anybody's podcast or been interviewed by anybody or anything like that for example for the recording Revolution for years uh I've LED in my funnel with a picture of me uh on the pensado's place show with Dave pensado and Herb his manager Dave pensado is a Grammy award-winning mix engineer um produced a lot of major records and he has this show uh that for years was super popular and he would interview the biggest names in the music business music producers audio people and through a series of connections I got to I I had connected with Dave multiple times interviewed him I had him on my my YouTube channel but I got to go out to LA and be interviewed be a guest on his show and my audience would know who he is and know the show and see that as is like wow Graham's on the show I see a picture of him smiling with Dave with herb at the studio on set they associate me with him there therefore they associate me with professionalism with Grammy award-winning producers and Engineers for me that was a way to establish Authority by just having a picture of me in the first email saying hey so glad to have you here I love teaching this stuff you know this is a fun picture of me on the pensado's place show is one of a highlight of mine love Dave what he teaches learned a lot from him blah blah blah I just sort of sneak it in to establish some Authority if I had Grammys to my name I would mention those if there was artists I'd produce that had you know had millions of streams I would mention that subtly which leads me to another way that you can establish Authority if you don't have any press if you don't have any other big social proof online do you have any student success stories do you have one student that has gone from some typical place where most of your students are at the beginning of their Journey to the dream that everybody wants if you're a fitness expert or a fitness coach do you have someone who was overweight and unhealthy do you have a before picture and then an amazing after picture where they look ripped and super attractive and super healthy and super happy just even one of those examples where you get to just brag on your student and and subtly thereby you're bragging on your yourself in terms of what you can bring to the table those go great like that student success stories are a great thing to implement into your uh email funnel because it not only gives you Authority like wow this guy got this person results but it creates some aspirational um content for your people where they're reading an email seeing sort of before and after hearing a before and after of one of your students and they're putting themselves in your students shoes and saying wow I want that result too I want to be her I want to I want to be there and so they see what's possible not just you telling them what you can do but hey here's what I've done with a student and so you're like that could be me and that's what I want and if you don't have any of those at the very least you have your own success story you wouldn't be able to teach anybody anything if you hadn't already had some success or progress in your journey for example when I started out the recording Revolution my first business I didn't have any contacts in the in music industry I didn't have any press I didn't even have any student success stories yet all I have was my own story and so I would use my own story a lot and I would say things like when I was in college going to audio school you know my recording sounded awful and here I am sitting in a nice Studio working with really good equipment and realizing that I'm not able to get good results even I'm in a multi-million dollar studio with all the equipment you could ever want it's my stuff still sounds like poop and that's when I realized I I I'm the problem I'm the bottleneck your equipment isn't going to make your recording sound good if you aren't good at recording and so I had to work on myself work on myself I learned a few skills and now I'm able to record music for bands and I'm able to do this for a living and hear some of my latest work and I've learned certain things and even though I wasn't the best in the world like and now I'm done with the story I was able to share people with people my journey my progress of like being like confused about all these audio related things and I would drop all the lingo that my people would associate with me yeah that's confusing and then I could talk about the things I've learned and what I've and all that is establishing authority of like wow Graham has been on a story of struggle right he's had a story of struggle and he's come to some solutions this is sales copy language uh that I teach in some of my courses and I teach sometimes here on the channel which is you you need to share that your story of struggle personally because it's something people will identify with it shows that you're human shows that you've come from where they've come from and then you need to have some solution you've come to some you figured something out maybe not everything but you figured something out that can establish Authority so weave that in that could be in your first email that can be in your second email but the point is a good email funnel is going you've already added value you're adding value still for free and you're establishing Authority so people go man I really should pay attention to her man she's sharp or man he's been through a lot wow I didn't realize that I just listen to an episode of his podcast but I had no idea that he was on food stamps and then it was able to build a seven figureure business I mean all of that is establishing Authority so use whatever you have to establish Authority and again you can do this in a way that's humble in a way that's just sharing like look I can help you and I'm not being arrogant here I just I've i' I've had some results with myself or my clients or I've been dropped in you know these media Outlets have interviewed me and so I'm I'm not just a nobody I'm here to help you and I can help you and then the third and most important if you have these other two is a relevant offer that's the third element you need in a profitable email funnel is a relevant offer two simple words both are important a you need an offer you need to pitch something you're not going to make money in your email funnel if you don't offer anything for them to buy right pretty obvious uh but a lot of times people don't get this they think they need to spend days and weeks building Rapport establishing Authority building a relationship ship and they never get around to selling anything and by that time my friend your your audience has moved on Our intention spans in the Modern Age It's 2021 as I'm talking about this are just getting shorter and shorter and so maybe 10 years ago long drawn out email funnels with a lot of stories and a lot of free content would is what was needed and people had the patience for that to feel like they trust you and then two weeks in I mean I remember being taught that that you wait two weeks to pit in your email funnel because you need two weeks to build up Authority and establish you know trust and no more it's wait two weeks is two weeks too long you got to pitch way sooner than that ideally in the first week and ideally in the first few days but the idea here is you can establish Authority which we talked about quicker than two weeks and you must get to an offer if you want to make money but that offer must be relevant relevant to them and relevant to what you've been covering in your email funnel okay and this is where sometimes people get it wrong they've got a product they want to sell uh and then they have a funnel of emails they're trying to write that they think will get opened but the two don't really relate too much so if you are a fitness instructor we'll use that example again and if your lead magnet and your email sequence so far your funnel is really talking about food like hacks for like what to eat and not to eat to lose weight and to build muscle then you should probably sell a food related product it's it's not impossible to to sell just a straightup workout routine product but if you've been talking about food it would make sense to sell some sort of food related course or at least make sure you have a course that's super related to food or has a huge element on food so you can transition to it it's relevant to what you've been talking about you also need to make sure that the offer is relevant to your audience you can have great content and a great lead magnet and great emails that is relevant to your audience but you have something totally different to sell so for example if you have um High ticket coaching that's very Niche but your content that's frontf facing your lead magnet and your email funnel is very broad facing and not quite as niche as your high ticket coaching it's going to be hard to transition into pitching your high ticket coaching if it's not super relevant to the people that are like opting into your email list you need to think through who are these people and this is why I like to put products in my funnel or at least first in my funnel that are the most relevant to the most amount of people the widest possible appeal and it's generally going to be your best seller if you have multiple courses so for example in the recording Revolution space that's I have content and products relating to recording which is the microphones and actually capturing the the recording then I have products related to mixing that's sort of the post production like editing doctoring it up making it sound better uh I have products related to turning your recording studio into an online business like turning into a a freelance based business I have products related to building your um your fan base I have products related to goal setting and and releasing your first EP to the world and getting it up on Spotify I have all these different products but I have learned that what is most relevant to most of my people is one thing and that is mixing which is a specific subset of skills inside of audio production mixing not even recording not even growing your fan base these would all be things that were are good and you would think would be popular but mixing is what my people want the most so the product I lead out with the relevant offer in my funnel is my Flagship mixing course I hope that makes sense so think through if you have multiple products if you only have one this is pretty easy just make sure that it's a product that your people really want and then make sure you write emails that just segue perfectly in into that product you need a relevant offer so whether it's your course your membership coaching it needs to directly line up with the content of the funnel and be relevant to your people that that should be obvious having a relevant offer but it's not always and that's one reason why some people might have funnels that good open rates good clickthrough rates people are enjoying the content and then they don't buy it could be that it's just not the right offer for your people so we need to come up with a different offer another way to think about offers if you have multiple products is you don't always just have to sell one product you can bundle especially if you're in a platform like kajabi you can easily create a new offer that bundles multiple products together at a discount price point and make it a sort of limited time offer or make it like a cool like hey if this has been valuable to you I want you to buy my whatever whatever bundle or my all access bundle where you're going to get all these different courses at a steep discount just for you because you joined my list that's a great way to create something relevant uh to your Audience by turning multiple products into one Mega product and offering them some incentive to buy it because it's maybe it's discounted if you buy it all together that's it if your email funnel again these are just pre-written emails add value and overd deliver additional guides videos just straight up teaching the emails if you establish Authority and then have a relevant author offer it will convert that's all a good email funnel needs to do people need to feel like they're not going to get crap and spam from joining your list so that's the value ad peace and so you train people to want to continue to open your emails people need to know that you are worth listening to and that you can actually help them that's the authority piece especially if they just found you for the first time with one piece of content online so you want to continue to establish Authority and share why they should listen to you and this might be uncomfortable at first if you don't want to brag about yourself or if you're just insecure and struggling with imp Foster syndrome I get it but you need to be confident and you need to think through and make sure that you present yourself in a way that they actually want to follow you would you want to follow you if not we need to go to back to the drawing board there's some there's something about you that's follow worthy you just need to articulate it well and that might take some brainstorming maybe get a friend to help you flesh it out but you need to establish that Authority and you can do it in a humble way and then you need to present a relevant offer something that's like ah dude I do want that whether they can buy it or not it's not that's not the point most people won't buy it but it needs to be something that everybody at least wants and like dude that's awesome if you want a good example of how to do all three of these things then check out my 5-day product pitch email it's a simple email funnel that's five emails you send them out right after people opt in it's a good template it's a starting point for you if you've never written an email funnel it'll help you out a ton it has made a lot of money for me and it's built on the concept of generosity giving a lot of value it's not too salesy transitions beautifully into the pitch I think it'll give you a good taste of what's possible just go to Graham cochran. com days that's the number five grc.