This month’s theme is Easy Sales Funnels (click on the links below this week’s video if you need to catch up).

Ready to start building out your sales funnels? There are just a few things you need before you can get started and you also have a lot of options when it comes to building out your sales funnels, but what are the must-have items?

At the most basic level, you must have:

• A way to create web pages and capture email addresses – we will go over popular page builders.
• A way to follow up with subscribers – this can be accomplished with list managers, autoresponders, and CRM systems.
• Finally, a way to take money – we will go over tools that will help you process payments.

In today’s Systems Sunday training video, I’m going to give you examples of top tools to build your sales funnels.

​

Ready to start building out your sales funnels? There are just a few things you need before you can get started. In today’s video, I’m going to give you examples of top tools to build your sales funnels.

You can see that you have a lot of options when it comes to building out your sales funnels, but what are the must-have items? At the most basic level, you must have:

A way to create web pages and capture email addresses. We will go over popular page builders. 

A way to follow up with subscribers. This can be accomplished with list managers, autoresponders, and CRM systems.

Finally, a way to take money. We will go over tools that will help you process payments.

To recap, the three pages you need for your funnel are the sales page or optin page, the confirmation page, and the thank you page so you need a tool that will help you build those pages

Instabuilder— Instabuilder is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to create your own funnels. You only have to do a one-time payment to license a number of sites, but even though it’s a one-time payment, you do have to pay for updates and support on an annual basis. When I used this, I paid $37/year. It includes several funnel templates and a drag-and-drop page builder that makes it easy to get just the look you want.

As for cons, I wasn’t too impressed with their templates and I also had major tech issues. I woke up one day to find all my templates not working. They would load but if I had any videos, the code just wouldn’t play it. That’s just me and my situation. If you want something inexpensive that contains templates and integrates with your autoresponder, this is an ok choice.

Lead Pages—when it comes to building opt-in pages, LeadPages is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. I use it for my landing pages and opt-in forms. They’ve tracked and tested a variety of page styles to determine which ones convert best, and they make it easy for you to build similar pages for your funnel. You can use their hosting or as a WordPress plugin so that the pages are uniform to your domain.
The only complaint I hear is the cost – at $25 a month, you’ll want to be sure you can recoup your investment.

When it comes to email marketing, the autoresponder sequence is a commonly used but often under-appreciated part of the process. Once a lead signs up to your list and enters your sales funnel, the list manager does the heavy lifting by automating the actions such as sending emails on a timed basis or at intervals, tracking what the subscriber clicks on and when, adding the subscriber to other lists or removing them, powerful.

When you are just starting out, no sense in getting something too robust for your needs or your pocketbook. Aweber, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, these are all great to start with.

Then, as you grow and you find you need more automation, segmentation, or eCommerce integration, then you can move up to the group that does cost more and more of a learning curve. But you will have more control over your list management since you can do things like automatically removing unsubscribes, moving subscribers from one list to another based on the link they click, and other useful automation.

Third must-have is a way to take money, which is what shopping carts and payment processors are for.

Many of us start off accepting Paypal, the simplest of all payment processors, PayPal allows you to take payments online for a very reasonable fee, it only takes a percentage of the transaction with no monthly fees. It will also act as a simple shopping cart.

E-junkie is what I used for the longest time, it hooked up to my Paypal but you can add other payment processors if you like. It also integrated with my Aweber, though a bit clunky, but it also had digital file delivery and an affiliate program. Not bad for under $10 a month.

Wpestore is a great program, but since it’s a WordPress plugin, you can only use it if you have a WordPress site.

Once you grow to the point that you need something that delivers a great customer experience, you want to offer payment plans, you want your list manager to integrate with your shopping cart, metrics become more important, then it may be time to upgrade to something like Ontraport or Infusionsoft.

Programs like Ontraport and Infusionsoft are marketing systems that contain autoresponder functionality but offers shopping cart functionality as well, so you can create powerful funnels that are fully integrated with your sales process. The benefit here is that you don’t have to try to sync your cart with your email system, since it’s completely self-contained.

Programs like this are priced at the high end and either you will have a steep learning curve or will need to hire a VA to manage the programs for you, but once you use all their powerful functions, it is well worth the investment.

I recommend you start small. Build the funnel framework as simply as you can, using tools that don’t cost a fortune. I started with Constant Contact and Paypal, moved to Aweber and eJunkie, now use Infusionsoft. Once when I had a few funnels up and running was I able to see where they could use improvement and started investing in higher-end software. At each stage, the funnels converted better and worked more efficiently.

Check out the resources below for links to these programs and be sure to leave questions in the comment section below, I’d be happy to answer any questions

Catch up on other Easy Sales Funnels episodes:

• [Video] 3 Pages Every Funnel Must Have
• [Video] Why Sales Funnels Leak and How to Fix
• [Video] Put Your Sales on Autopilot With a Follow-Up Sequence

Page builders to build opt-in pages, landing pages, confirmation and thank you pages for your funnel:

• Instabuilder
• Leadpages
• More recommended design tools and resources

List managers, autoresponders, and other marketing tools to keep in contact with your subscribers:

• Aweber
• Constant Contact
• Mailchimp
• Convert Kit
• Active Campaign
• Drip
• More recommended CRMs and list managers

Shopping carts and ways to take money:

• PayPal
• Ejunkie
• WPeStore
• Ontraport
• Keap (fka Infusionsoft) (I am a Keap Certified Partner, so reach out to me if you have any questions or for a good deal!)
• More recommended shopping carts and all-in-one tools

Did you enjoy this episode and want to put it into action? Grab this planner!