In Part 1, we looked at the steps of The Funnel Audit Process, and how it can be used to identify the specific gaps in your funnel.
To dig a little deeper, let’s go through a more specific example – and an all-too-common misconception.
This is an issue we see all the time…
People often get stuck on this idea that they need a HUGE email list to make a lot of money.
Perhaps you’ve heard this before: “The money is in the list.”
Right?
So, what do most people measure?
# Size of list -> $ Sales
Going through The Funnel Audit Process and identifying the Macro Dials, you might see:
As you can see, there’s more to making money than just having a big list. These folks need to open your email… Then they have to click on the link in your email… And finally go to your landing page and (hopefully) buy.
When you perform The Funnel Audit Process, you might see your open rates hovering somewhere around 18% (that’s the average across all industries – personally, I think that’s quite high).
Here’s what that means:
If you fall within the average open rate, 82% of your list (the list you worked so hard to build) is NOT seeing your email message.
Think about that for a second…
With an 18% open rate, 82% of your list isn’t seeing your email message. That’s a problem.
But it gets worse… According to a study by Campaign Monitor, the average click-through-rate for emails is only 2.69%.
I want you to really think about this for a second.
For every 1,000 people on your list (with an average click-through-rate of 2.69%), only 27 people are clicking on your email and seeing your sales message.
27!
Understand that if you weren’t paying attention to this Macro Dial, how would you know about so few people seeing your message… Or know how to fix it?
Many times, entrepreneurs come to me thinking their offer or sales page isn’t converting – and think it’s the reason for lackluster sales…
But we recently did one of these Funnel Audits with a client, and discovered that 3% of all people visiting the sales page converted… Consistently and predictably.
That’s not bad!
Imagine if we got more people to the sales page… How do we do that?
We have options:
Option #1: We can increase the size of the list
Option #2: We get more opens
Option #3: We increase the CTR
I like to start with the easiest, low-hanging fruit opportunities.
You can increase the opens by testing subject lines, cleaning up your database by removing unengaged and deal emails (this improves the relationship with your ISP), making sure you’re not on any blacklists (http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx), etc.
In an article titled “This is NOT the most important part of your email,” Agora suggested that the FROM line is one of the most important factors in getting your emails opened.
If people don’t recognize you or your brand, they toss you into the digital trash or unsubscribe altogether.
You can improve click rates by adding images to your email, changing the calls to action by making them more enticing, etc.
Let me show you the implications of this stuff…
I had a client whose open rate was a pathetic 7.38%. He had over 80,000 names in his database.
That means that only 5,904 people ever saw his email message. Fewer clicked on his emails…
He had several problems. The most immediate were:
- He was inadvertently on a blacklist (this can also happen if your email was hacked)
- He needed to clean his database to have a better relationship with his ISPs
- He needed to build a better relationship with his list (instead of sending too many promotional emails)
It’s fair to say that with a few simple steps, he could bump up that open rate to a minimum of 10% (within a short time).
That means he’d instantly have almost 3,000 MORE people seeing his email message.
Get that up to the industry average of 18%, and he’d have over 5,000 MORE people opening up his emails… That’s nearly a 100% increase from where he started.
…Which means that, because he currently ONLY communicates with his list via email (it’s a mistake to limit your communication methods), by doubling his open rate – he instantly doubles his revenue.
…And that’s just one of many opportunities available to you when you perform The Funnel Audit Process.
When you take action, doing this for every profit center and marketing funnel in your business, you’ll be surprised at how many different opportunities you see.
You’ll also have the opportunity to quickly diagnose your funnel and turn a disappointing process into a tsunami of profits.
Remember, it’s seldom the entire marketing funnel that’s broken – it’s only one small piece.
