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5 Sales Funnel Examples to inspire you

Dec 1, 2022

Do you struggle to get email addresses from potential customers so that you can send them additional marketing material? Do you see potential customers abandon their cart and don't understand how to contact them? Are you finding your mailer too hard to manage, and you never get back to your customers?

You're not alone It's common challenges for artists, many of whom do not have any experience in sales. But these challenges can lead to huge potential losses in sales. How do you turn things around? Proper sales funnels.

The sales funnel represents every step your potential customers undergo on their journey, from when they first discover your business to when they purchase your product or perform other actions they wish to take. Effective sales funnels can help your convert more leads to customers.

Colin Longworth is the Founder of WooNinja.io and an expert on creating custom solutions as well as sales funnels. He's been creating since 2005 and an Expert since. In this blog post, he discusses five sales funnels that convert well and can use to drive more revenue for your business.

Are you looking to go over the line?

What exactly are sales funnels?

A funnel is a pathway which you would like your customers to follow to achieve the desired goal or result.

That outcome could be the sale, a download, a subscription, or simply that you're decreasing the friction. You want to get your customer from A to point B as quickly and as smoothly as is possible. Overall, funnels assist in increasing your profits and help grow your business faster.

Fighting the myths about sales funnels

The term "sales funnel" can trigger fear and anxiety in many creators, but it does not have to. These are the five most common myths that Colin believes needs to be addressed before diving into the specifics of funnels.

    Myth 1: Funnels are expensive to create to operate, maintain, and manage.  

That's simply not true. Funnels can be set up without cost, or at a price of less than $50. Once they're in place the maintenance process will take little time because they run automatically!

    Myth 2: Funnels need complicated subscription software in order to function properly.  

The cost of expensive or complicated software isn't necessary. You can build great funnels using a simple software program that is available to you for free or for the cost of a modest subscription.

    Myth #3. Without landing pages, or gaming my funnels aren't going to work.  

It's not necessary to create highly sophisticated landing pages for your funnels to work. Some of Colin's best converting emails only have a small paragraph. Some of his best landing pages are just one button, and a few lines of paragraphs. So long as your content and the timing of your message is appropriate, your landing page will work!

    Myth 4. I must find someone to set up my funnels.  

If you are able to use Facebook, or any other software, you can definitely create your own funnels. Colin will explain precisely how to do this in this blog post.

    Myth 5. Funnels need numerous steps as well as complex flows for users to succeed.  

Not true. The complexity of a flow causes complex problems that are often very difficult to fix. A shorter flow works just fine for most business needs.

After we've got all the myths out of our way, we can get started with building funnels.

Colin will share five sales funnels that can be used and necessary for every company, yet they are still automated. Colin will demonstrate ways you can incorporate them into your website.

The tools that Colin utilizes in the example include MailChimp, Typeform, and Zapier. These platforms are accessible through the App Store.

5 examples of sales funnels

First step when sending information to prospects is to gather their personal information. Once they have navigated to your website, they've displayed some interest in your products and you should take action in order to convert them into customers!

You've probably visited the internet and saw the section that says "Welcome! Subscribe and get 15 percent off your purchase." It's an excellent example of a Footer Opt-in. This funnel allows prospective customers to join your newsletter very easily and you can get their email addresses to be able to communicate with them in the future.

The process is simple and only takes 15 to 30 minutes. It is estimated that about 1 to 2 per cent of website visitors are willing to opt in. When you've got their contact you have a good chance you can nurture them to where they'll purchase your products.

 See this video for Colin implement this funnel step by step:  

 2. Contact us follow-up

Each website should have an Contact Us page to make it simple for clients to reach the business. If you have a website, your customers may contact them with concerns about your courses or pricing. If it's hard to get in touch with them and their queries remain unanswered, the chances are they will leave and search for other alternatives. Do not lose sales!

A Contact Us follow-up funnel will enable you to contact students that make contact. Building this will only take 15-30 minutes and in Colin's own experiences, about 25% of people who visit these funnels take additional action like buying his product!

How this funnel works is that when a visitor comes to your website, and fills out your Contact Us form, then Zapier will detect this activity and include the person in MailChimp. Within MailChimp it is possible to create an automated system that will send a follow-up email regarding their concerns.

A further benefit of this funnel is the reduction of support times and manually laborious task of having to keep in touch with every student. One of the most effective aspects of the funnel is FAQ follow-up. Colin advises you to start an FAQ section from the beginning of developing your website. If you were a brand novice user. What would you like to learn? Which questions do you think you would have?

 Watch Colin use this funnel in this video:

 3. Lead Onboarding/Abandonment

It's quite common for potential customers to register but never complete their purchase. The reason they abandon their cart could be the result of a distracting event, an urgent job that has them off your site, or simply worries about the obligation. How can you make sure that they return and buy the course?

The solution is to build out an abandonment/lead onboarding funnel. Users who signed up but did not purchase a course, are urged to return and finish the checkout process.

As with the previous funnel one, an email is automatically sent to those who never completed the purchase. Colin recommends sending an easy note about items that were they have left out of their shopping carts or providing a discount that will instantly increase the sales. The funnel described above is perhaps the most effective funnel out of five discussed in this post.

Implementation can take anywhere from one to two hours, and the time Colin utilized it for his personal business, he saw around 50 engagement rates as well as 13% of the people who engaged go on to complete the purchase.

Watch what Colin utilizes the funnel in this video:

 4. Students on the way to school

The sales funnel isn't over once your customers have purchased your product, but you have to keep nurturing and maintain a positive connection with them to ensure future purchases. One way to do this is to create an effortless onboarding experience.

Some students might be brand unfamiliar with the platform, or to your courses and need some guidance throughout the process. If the process of onboarding is seamless, they are more likely to come back and purchase other courses and share with friends about them. If they have an unpleasant start, students might abandon the class and be reluctant to buy more.

The Student Onboarding funnel aims to create an onboarding procedure that is frictionless and helps your clients get their feet wet faster. Some common methods to help your students would be to create a welcome email for your course or a series of emails that includes critical details like how to log in to your site, navigate the dashboard, and ask a discussion question.

The process of implementation is similar to the previous funnels and will take around 1-2 hours to build. Colin experienced an increase of up to 30% on retention rates for students in the company he runs.

Colin is known for his ability to teach students in groups and drip plans. The easiest way to ensure your students have what they need for success is to send them a weekly email. Notify them about what to be expecting in the coming week and what they need to do to be prepared. The entire process, of course, can be automated and this is exactly the purpose of this funnel.

A further benefit of the funnel is that it can reduce the amount of refunds. A majority of refunds result from people who have logged into their account but aren't sure what to do and are overwhelmed. You can easily help onboard the customers you are helping and cut down on refunds.

 This video, Colin will teach you how to create the Student Onboarding Funnel:

 5. Automated review request

Businesses online live and die by the ratings they get. The more positive and well-rated the course is, the better prospects will perceive it to be credible. Therefore you want to invite learners to write a review and potentially offer them rewards for it.

What happens is when someone completes the course and then receives and an email with the review form is automatically sent. When the review is complete, follow up with small rewards for their decision, for example, a credit towards their next purchase. In addition, depending upon the scores provided by customers, you could be able to tag them as an advocate for your business.

The goal of this tag is to add them to a list within your email platform. This particular group of customers is highly engaged and is the ideal group to advertise to, get feedback from, and pilot programs with.

The process takes between 15 and 30 minutes, and 10percent of customers typically write a review according to Colin's own experience. This funnel is also an untapped opportunity to promote. After someone's taken a finance class, they could be interested in your accounting class. Another example is when they've taken your introduction course. They could be interested in the intermediate course next. Make sure you include a similar course to the one your student wrote an evaluation on.

 Step-by-step steps on how to build this funnel by watching this video:

Utilize TCommerce to streamline selling and managing payments

The five sales funnels Colin suggests can help lead to higher conversion. For you to make sure you're up for success and can effectively manage the growth, TCommerce can support your requirements for payment.

Here are a few essential characteristics of TCommerce:

  • Access powerful, connected selling tools designed specifically for course creators like you.
  • Accept and manage payment transactions in one convenient location with our payment processor integrated, Payments.
  • Make bookkeeping easier by providing simple access to your payouts or Orders as well as Transactions report.

Do you need help the setup? Learn more about the Help Centre article.