3 Tips for Email Funnels + Branding with Allison Hardy
Branding with Friends | Episode 42
Curious about email funnels, but not sure if you need one? Learn what you need to get started from email marketing expert, Allison Hardy, in this episode of "Branding with Friends."
Meet Allison Hardy, Email Marketing and Funnels Expert
Annie Franceschi: Hi there, welcome to a new episode of branding with friends the show where branding meets key business topics. Here you're going to learn tips straight from the experts on everything from social proof to online summits to SEO, we focus on what you can do right now to use these topics plus the power of branding to attract your ideal clients. I'm your host branding expert Annie Franceschi of greatest story creative, I help service business owners tell their story and show their value through clear messaging, and consistent visual branding. I'm also a former Disney storyteller, professional speaker and the author of three best selling books about chasing your dreams. Establish yourself Small Biz for kids and permission to try. And today I'm going to introduce you to one of my friends from the business world. If you've been curious about getting your sales up, and the mysteries of email marketing, you're gonna love today's guest. My guest today is the amazing Allison Hardy Allison is the creator of the six figure secrets podcast, a Huffington Post contributor, she has been featured in EY Fs magazine and was named one of Washington DC, us most influential professionals under 40 by Washington Life magazine. Allison, thank you so much for being here.
Allison Hardy: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Annie Franceschi: It's my pleasure, I think, you know, we hear the F word in the online world is funnel. So we're here to talk about funnels because I know people kind of heard about what a funnel is. But I want to hear from you like can you before we get in, we have our three tips. Today's if you're new to Branding with Friends, we give three tips. And we'll have the third tip at the end. All things you can do to get started with funnels. But I think the first place to start before we get there is well, what is a funnel? So tell it tell us kind of like if we're new to this, what is it?
Allison Hardy: Yeah, absolutely. So a funnel is essentially a launch that is done on autopilot. That's how I think about it. So a funnel is a series of emails that is dripped out in a frequency that you determine that developer know like and trust factor, validate the need for your program, express you as the expert in the room to help your email subscriber the person inside of that funnel. And then when appropriate, when you've done all those things, and you've checked all those boxes, you then open up the doors and invite your email subscriber to join your course your membership, like whatever the thing is that you're promoting.
Annie Franceschi: Got it. So it's really like an intentional series of emails designed to drive some sort of offer that you have.
Allison Hardy: Absolutely, they're strategically written, they have a point to them. They make sense in order, like there's a bunch of other things that have to go into it. But exactly what you said they're strategically placed series of emails, right?
Annie Franceschi: So if you have an email list, that's one step. If you have an email list, but you haven't been emailing them, that's another step. You know, what, what is it they get when they first sign up? I know you've got lots to say about that. But thank you for sure, orienting us because I think Funnels is one of those words that can be kind of intimidating if you've never done it. Many I know many of you who listen, or watch branding with friends don't even have an email list. Yeah, so this is all very new. But this is really how so many businesses scale, right like that. That's why funnels are a big element to that, because you talk a little bit about that as well.
Allison Hardy: Yeah, absolutely. So with a launch, like the traditional launch, let's say you choose a webinar, right, you have to get everybody live at a certain time in a certain day. And odds are getting all the people signed up for your webinar live with you at a certain time, they certainly are few and far between. With a webinar, a good show up rate is considered to be 20%. So that means 80% of the people that sign up for a webinar aren't gonna have to show up and watch it. So while like they can be super powerful, and they're great ways to develop into like a trust factor really quickly. What a lot of people do is they ride this launch roller coaster, because they think it's the only way that they can sell their course or their membership. So they're doing the webinars and they start to get super, super, super burned out. Because they have to show up and be like on and you better hope that everybody like that the emails work and that the tech works and that all the things work, right? In order to do the things so that you can sell your course your membership, so that you can bring in revenue into the business. Yeah, it's a really, really high pressure thing. Not saying it's bad for a lot of people that would doesn't work. They don't like it. So what a funnel does is it allows that event like the webinar, let's say, to be done at a time that works for your email subscriber. So they can, you know, opt into it and then watch it in 10 minutes, or in two days, like they can watch it on their time. And so it makes the ability to reach more people more likely to happen, because they don't have to show up at that certain place in that certain time to consume the thing that you're going to be presenting.
Annie Franceschi: Right, exactly. And I love it. I love it for that. And I think I wish this would have been explained to me so many years ago and that it doesn't have to be this. It can be a really complex monster, but it doesn't have to be especially if you're just getting started. So I think that's kind of a perfectly Even I know you've got some three tips with us. So what is that first thing that we need to know to get started if we are interested in having a funnel?
#1 Action TIP
Don’t wait to pitch.
Allison Hardy: Yeah. So a lot of times people think that you have to wait to sell inside of the funnel. And while there is like a certain component to that your pitch sequence, the part where you invite someone to join, really to join your program should not be the first time that your email list subscriber hears about your program, they should know like the name of it, they should know the basics of it by the time they are invited, because really, the function of the pitch sequence is to debunk the objections that they have around enrolling in your your thing that you're selling. So before you actually do that, you've got to do some groundwork, right. So they've got, like I said, You've got to know the name of the program, what the program does, who it's for. And they should basically know like, Yeah, I'm gonna enroll in this thing, or like, I'm still considering it, or no, totally not for me. And that's great and awesome. So that needs to happen before the pitch sequence.
Annie Franceschi: Yeah, so what I'm hearing you say is like, there needs to be this like warming up, stage and period so that when someone jumps on your list like that, you just don't immediately start selling to them, that you really like kind of put the seeds and like plant the seeds with them of like what this is and introduce you know, you're getting my brain going because I'm you know, as much as I've had a listen to 2015. And I have a funnel that I work with an email marketing strategist, there's always opportunities to improve. I'm like, Yeah, my like, I've added a new program this year, and it's not represented in my email list. And so this is a great wake up call. It also makes me think a lot. The program I'm thinking of is a workshop I teach called package or process. And a lot of I know you and I both work with a lot of coaches and consultants. And one of the big mistakes I always see is that coaches are out here selling just coaching and there's no program, there is no offer, there's no bundled service that like solves a real problem. I help solve that problem. From the branding side, we package your process. So in five weeks, we go from, I sell coaching to I sell X solution, and I can charge you know, 10x for it, because it is a real solution. And this is how it works. And I can explain that and present it. That's something that would go into this sort of warm up moment, this warm up sequence, or would we call that a nurture sequence? Or would we call it something else?
Allison Hardy: I call it our nurture sequence, because you are, like you said, like warming folks up to you. And you can also like inside of this nurture sequence, you can have smaller offers. So like, let's say your big offers, like $1,000 course, I'm just using an example. And say that nurture sequence, you can have like $27 digital products, if you maybe like what on day number one of that that sequence, maybe there's like a video that you present, when you talk about like a system, you can say like, Hey, by the way, right below this video, there's a $27 offer for you, it's gonna help you do X, Y, and Z. So like having those like touch points. To get people used to the idea of buying from you, or at least being pitched to, it's really helpful to create that culture of selling inside your email funnel. But it also can be like parts of that bigger program. So like any for you, you could take part of that bigger program and take a bit turn them into digital products. So that as your lead goes through that that nurture sequence, they're like, Okay, I'm gonna buy that, or no, I'm not gonna buy that, or that one I'm definitely gonna buy. And they're getting these like tastes of you. So that when you do pitch them again, you're already super familiar, or they're already super familiar with you and your process and your program.
Annie Franceschi: Yeah, I mean, it's, it really is amazing to me, this is you know, I'm in 2023. I've been celebrating 10 years in business literally next week. We're sorry, it was good to err in 2024. So we're in the past, I hope the future is cool. But one of the things I realized in this year of 2023 is I did more active selling than ever before I would the max I would send with three it was three emails. And then I said no, I'm not going to write and sell your face. And I would do fine with that. But I you know, I do my offers are basically pretty evergreen, and like people come to me through referral, and the shift toward really selling in like a campaign style. After having nurtured people on my list. Like it was amazing, I have a program called Action club. And then I sold package a process and now like 70 or 80% of action club members have done package or process, there have only been two cohorts. So there is something to whether you email you know, that is nurture via a program, but it's like when you actively show up and sell and you send more than one or two emails, you can really see a difference and it's taking me a lot of time to to find my way into that because I'm very like, I hate the hard sales pitch and stuff but I think I one of the reasons I want to have you on is I know you do too. And I know you're out and about they are the worst and we tune out to them and but there's this balance right because now you know there's that but there's also the you're not for everybody and your your your email marketing and your branding can't be lowest common denominator. Right because then you don't connect with anyone. Absolutely. That's a lesson I'm continuing to learn. So that's our first place is like, you know Make don't just go straight for the pitch, right? Nurture your audience first. What is that second thing we need to keep in mind?
#2 ACTION TIP
Don’t make your nurture sequence all about you.
Allison Hardy: Yeah, one of the biggest, kind of like fatal flaws I see. A nurture sequence is you writing it about how awesome you are. While we need to exert our authority, we need to tell people, the types of results we get from our clients or with our clients. Your lead is in the funnel, because they have some sort of pain point, right? They're dealing with something. So you need to talk about that something and actually help your lead. And then I know like, listeners are probably like, Duh, Allison. But I see this a lot. I see like, these nurture sequences that are centered around you, instead of centered around your lead. And if you're gonna, I had had a mastermind, person that I was in a mastermind with one time, say this to me, and it like really changed the way I thought about things. And I don't know why but it like just like, oh, yeah, she said to me, like, we were talking about my email funnel, and like, it wasn't working. And she was like, Allison, if you say, you're gonna help someone help someone. And I was like, What do you mean, she's like, your nurture sequence is not like actually helping anybody. And she was like, kind of harsh about it. But after like, reply, of course, I was like, super triggered. After the fact, after I'm triggered myself, I was able to be like, yeah, she's totally right. And so that's really like, informed a lot. For me when it comes to marketing. Like, if you're going to show up and help someone and say, You're gonna do it, then like, actually do it. So in your natural sequence, like, actually help them you don't have to give away your program. But help them achieve some sort of transformation. It can be mindset shift, it can be like little to do's, they get them, you know, moving in the right direction, it doesn't have to be this big thing. But actually help them and don't make it about you.
Annie Franceschi: Yeah, yeah, I think that that is also like, there's so many lessons in business that like, you know, that you're the world of email, marketing, and funnels, I'm the world of branding. And that's the same lesson, which is don't make it all about you. And that's often a relief to the people I work with. Because a lot of clients I work with, in particular, women, hate self promotion, hate social media, if you're listening to like, it's like, if you hate if you feel really uncomfortable making it about yourself, and you haven't market yourself, because you thought it had to be about you guess what it does not, you know the most. But the thing is sometimes that when you feel that way, you tend to go the opposite direction, which is you sort of bury your own expertise and story. So that is the world that I tend to coach and guide are, you know, if you're listening to something like yeah, I don't want to prove myself at all. That's a problem too, because you have to set yourself up as the guide, it's the classic thing is to make your customer the hero. And that's a lot of what we're talking about. So like, even in that nurture sequence, when Yes, you are introducing yourself, you are also you're really introducing yourself as Master Yoda to Luke Skywalker, you're you're treating your client as that person who's in the driver's seat, and you're gonna say, you know, hey, I've come alongside you. And here's what I can help you do, or here, let's go over here and take this left out that one. Yeah, I'm mixing all my metaphors. But I see that.
Allison Hardy: No, it makes perfect sense. And that's also like a mindset shift, right? So they need to do and I also experienced this too, I read a lot of women, as a generalization. Women don't like to do self promotion. It's just how we are how we're wired. But at the same time, like we have an amazing product that we sell, and we can actually really help people. So like working on that mindset and getting to the place where you can sell from a place that feels good. That feels Invitational like that might be a word that like resonates better with folks. That could really help to help more people, because that's really what we're here to do, right? More people we help the more money we make, the more people we can turn around and help some more. So like, when we get in that mindset of like I am offering to help you and we can work on that mindset. I think it really helps to create, you know, marketing and all forms in a better, more streamlined, more profitable way.
Annie Franceschi: Well, I literally wrote a book about this exact thing. It's called Establish Yourself. And the book, it really opens with a story about how like I was under selling myself and how like, it's funny because I've done a complete one ad I used to hate selling, I was under selling, not selling at all and my business was like, about to like have to go under because of it and 2016 I worked with a coach, figured out how to own more of my story, and show up in a different way show up more confidently. This is like a very short version of it. And now selling is like one of my favorite things to do. Like if I could just take sales calls all day long, I would be thrilled because the difference truly is that I feel like I have permission to own my value and to treat sales not as like I'm not pushing anything on anybody. I'm offering it as warm invitation. And I don't I actually will tell people I say a lot more no than people realize in sales conversations. I don't know if you do is well I know you and I've had chats offline but it's a lot for me is always about it's not about getting the sale it's about matching the right the person Send to the right project the right time. And I'll tell people that like, I'd love to work with you. But it sounds like you really need this person or I don't think I could hit out of the park for you, you should, you know, go this direction or whatever. But that is when everything is working really well for you. And you can show up and be the expert, right? Because it's like, it's like when you go to a doctor, like the doctor is not always going to be the person you see, like you see them first time, they might say, you need to see a specialist, you need to do this, you need to do that. We trust them more when they take better care of us. And that's, that's what I think it's all about. And so all that to say like, if this is something you're interested in, I'll have I'll make sure it's in the show notes. There's actually you can read a for free first chapter where I tell tell the story about how being afraid to sell myself almost killed my business. And then I turned it completely around. Even though I hated selling. So there's a free, you can actually read the first 50 Pages for free if you'd like have established yourself. But all right, you've taken us around them. And you've taught us what a funnel is, you've taught us it's really, really important that we don't wait for this, you know, pitch moment at first talk about our program, we have to introduce it earlier, and do a nurture sequence. And we should not make that nurture sequence all about ourselves. We are having we do have a great third tip to bring it all together. But before we get there, I want everyone who's listening to know how to get a hold of you and you have a special free gift for everyone. So what is what's in the kitchen sink? I'm very curious.
Allison Hardy: Oh yeah, so I have a kitchen sink offer. That's what I'm calling it. Basically what it is, it's a 14 day $0 subscription to my membership called funnel of the Month Club. So inside funnel of the month club every 30 days, there's a new portion of a funnel dropped. And it's your job to go into consume. Take the templates, plug and play. It's like Mad Libs for email marketing, and plug your information in. And then every month you're gonna hook them up to one another. So like for example, Month Number one, you get a pitch sequence. And then Month Number two, you get a nurture sequence. So the nurture sequence goes in front of the pitch sequence. And so you're going to build out over time, an entire email funnel marketing system that is designed to sell your course or your membership on autopilot, which is I know what a lot of folks want to opt out.
Annie Franceschi: So you're not overwhelmed at any one time. Yes, yes.
Allison Hardy: We don't want to overwhelm the life out of you. Because I know funnels can be chunky, there are a little difficult sometimes, but it's really my job to streamline that and simplify it and make it actually profitable for you. So as a thank you for taking me up on the 14 day free trial, you will get six revenue producing trainings delivered into your portal also, those are yours to keep forever. Regardless if you stay in funnel in the month club or not. It's just a thank you for checking it out and test driving it for 14 days and hopefully longer.
Annie Franceschi: Well, I love that that might be one of my favorite things that a guest has offered. And I am absolutely going to take you up on that. So thank you for offering it because I think that Funnels is one of those evolving worlds and having an expert that can come alongside you. That's something else that spoiler that I talked about and establish yourself is bringing experts into the conversation, I always look for where my what I call a behavior bottleneck is so where I you know, I have a bottleneck that is somehow affecting behavior in how I grow my business, or how I sell my business or show up. So I call that a behavior bottleneck and email marketing, I think can be definitely one of those for me. And so when you when I sort of noticed, hey, ya know, I could be scaling or growing or this could be more effective, I need to like hire an expert, I do that or I buy the product or whatever. And the art of I think growing a business is knowing where those bottlenecks are and investing in in the right people. That is really how to think through it. Because I say, you know, there has been the anomaly of a few people I've hired that just haven't worked out. But even with those people, every single person I've hired, my revenue has grown, when I have hired an expert, even if it didn't work out exactly how I thought it would, it's still, you know, I can literally plot on a graph. So I'm so glad you exist and that we connected about this. We've got our first tip. So with that piece of like nerd do the nurture sequence and don't make it about you. What's that third thing we want to keep in mind about funnels?
#3 Action Tip
Know your data.
Allison Hardy: Yeah, a lot of folks go into funnels not understanding and how they should perform. So they don't know the data that they should be getting back. They don't know their numbers. And so you know, they're looking at the funnel, and they're like, it's not working well, what's not working, there's so many different metrics inside of a funnel that you can understand and dig into to help you to make it so that it works. I had a client one time come to me and she's like, my funnel is not working. That's like the common thing I hear my funnel is not working. I'm like, Okay, what, like, what, it's not working? What about it is not working? And she's like, well, it's not getting sales. Okay, well, let's look at your data. So we dug into her data and her open rates were like 10%, like really, really loud. Like that's a really low open rate. That means 90% of the people that were in weren't even reading emails, right? So they're not opening up emails. How are they supposed to learn about your offer? They're never Why to you, and they're never gonna get sales page to buy because they're simply not opening the emails. So what we did is we just tweaked her subject lines, all we did. They were very like fluffy subject lines. So we made them really, really specific. And as soon as we did that her open rates went from 10%, all the way up to 60%.
Annie Franceschi: Yeah, right, significantly in what's a 50% increase.
Allison Hardy: And so because of that, more people learn about our offer, and more people bought. So it wasn't that our funnel was broken, it was just the open rates were terrible, because they're subject lines weren't so great. So after we did that, we change anything in our final started performing for her and finally started to sell her course, on autopilot, which is what the goal of the funnel was. So that's an example just to illustrate, like, you got to know your numbers, you have to be able to dissect the numbers and use them to make decisions inside of your funnel.
Annie Franceschi: Yeah, I think that that's huge. And I'm not a big numbers person. And so I'm learning this slowly but surely, but even just even just looking at like, you know, forms and how they're converting. And like, some of the tweaks I made, like, I saw that people were I have a landing page for a freebie I have called your best referral bio. And that conversion rate is like 25 or 30%. Like it's really high. But the one on my website on the footer was like very low. And so one of the one of the switches that I did was I switched up the language, I basically copied the language that's on the landing page to the homepage, and I'm seeing a better result, as because of I was like, well, that language seems to be working on another page. Maybe I'll just mirror it and make it the same thing. Because whatever I have on the homepage is the same freaking thing. Like how can I better leverage that. So you know, data is really helpful. And if you don't know how to interpret it, you have to go to somebody like Allison. And I think that that's a really great idea. And you have a free trial opportunity to do that. So why wouldn't you? So today we learned about what a funnel is, we learned that we should have a nurture sequence. And that should be the first time they hear about the offer, not in a sales presentation. We should not make our nurture sequences about ourselves. And we should not jump to conclusions but know our data. So that sounds about right. Perfect. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm so glad that you were here with us today. And if this has gotten you thinking that you need help with email marketing, please reach out to Allison and take her up on that great kitchen sink offer. If this got you thinking well, I don't even know what my program is. And I need to package my process. Set up free time to talk with me. You can always grab time with me. There's a big red button on my website at greateststorycreative.com And I offer free 20 minute consultations. Allison, thank you so much for joining us for branding with friends today.
Allison Hardy: Thank you for having me. This was wonderful.
Annie Franceschi: My pleasure. Well, we hope that you enjoyed yet another episode of branding with friends. So many thanks to my special guest Allison Hardy. Tune in next time when we're going to tackle yet another topic where branding and business meet. Till then I'm Annie Franceschi of greatest story creative, find all of our episodes, branding resources and so much more on our website at greateststorycreative.com. Stay awesome
“Branding with Friends” Episode 42
Show Notes + Resources
Here are 3 key tips for leveraging social proof:
Wait to pitch.
Don’t make the nurture sequence all about you.
Know your data.
Resources:
Learn more about Allison’s Kitchen Sink deal here: https://www.allisonhardy.com/kitchensink
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