In episode #14 Wilco talks about the risk he took on his previous product launch (ConnectExplore) and shares the sales funnel that he created for the product launch.
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Hey, it's Wilco de Kreij here back with you again. As you probably know we just recently had a big launch for Connect Explorer, one of the products in our Connectio Suite. In order to set up this launch I had to make some tough decisions that were actually quite risky to do. I had no idea whether it was actually going to work out but it did work out. What I want to do now is I want to share this with my audience, with you, so you can also learn from it. Also, I'll share the funnel that we created for it as well.
While I was working on this new product called, once again, ConnectExplore. While I was working on it I wasn't sure how I was going to put it into the market. There's obviously a lot of ways you can do it. As a company one of the goals that we have is to increase our recurring revenue. That means that, basically subscription style income where people either pay as a monthly or a yearly fee instead of just a one-time purchase where they get to it. The reason for that is pretty obvious, because running a software company there's obviously a lot of continuous updates and continuous improvements so we actually have quite a large team. I believe right now we're 15 or 16 people who are continuously building, improving all these tools.
If we would be selling all these tools for a one-time fee, there's no way we would actually be able to maintain them all on a long-term basis. We actually need to have subscription style customers in order to be able to maintain it and to keep making it the best products in the market. That's what our goal is. At the same time, when I do a product launch like this, like we recently did for ConnectExplore, we don't just put out the product and say, "Hey, here is our product," or maybe we sent out an email to our email list.
What we actually do is we try to get as many people, as many affiliates to promote to their audience. We basically say, "Hey, you know what? If you promote this to your audience, you will get a percentage of every sale that you refer. To make it even more interesting we usually even add a contest to it. We say, "Hey, the person or the affiliate who refers most sales in a single week during this special offer that we have, you'll even get a bonus on top of your commissions." We do that in order to get as many people as we can to promote it to their audience.
Obviously, the thing is ... The tricky thing is to convince people that they should actually promote it. It all starts ... That's the first key criteria. It all starts with having a great product. If you want to know more about how to actually get affiliates to promote your product I would highly recommend you to listen to one of the first episodes of this podcast. In that episode, I actually dive into more detail about how you can get affiliates to promote your stuff and your products, and your business and your services.
One thing that we've noticed in the past is obviously that ... A real critical element for affiliates is how well it actually converts. If they would send out to their customers how many of their customers are actually going to purchase it. One of the things why I decided that is because let's say they have three options that they could promote for it but they could only choose one. Let's say for one they would make $100. The other one they would make $200, and the other one they would make $1,000 for the exact same amount of effort, the exact same amount of time, and the exact same amount of emails. Obviously, that third one is going to be the most interesting one so they're going to promote that one and not the other two.
What we always try to do is we want to make sure that our products convert the best from all the things they could promote. Fortunately, enough, so far, it's always been that. Affiliates have always been telling me, "Oh, your products always convert really, really well," but there's always, there has been an exception actually. As I told you, one of our goals is to have a recurring offer where we get as many recurring products into our business as possible so we can actually maintain and improve our products. The thing is that if you sell some product that automatically, like something is, for example, $100 just as an example. It's $100 and people get a one-time fee. They pay it and that's it, no contracts, no anything. $100, they pay you. After that they don't have to do anything again, they don't have to pay anything.
Versus that same offer which is $100 per month for example or $100 per year. Then automatically, automatically your conversions are going to be lower than usual. It's more of a thing that they have to overcome. Paying just $100 one-time fee is a way easier thing than, for example, committing yourself to paying $100 a year, for example. What we noticed is that if we do a product launch and we have a recurring product on the end so it's actually something like, for example, $300 a year for example, it's not converting as well as a one-time product does. For us that's a bit of a problem because on one end we want to actually well more recurring products. However, we know that if we do a product launch and we invite affiliates to promote this, which is one part of our traffic strategy, we know in order to succeed with that we should actually have a one-time offer where their audience can actually get in without having to pay X amount of dollars a year or per month, et cetera.
That was a bit of a problem and that's what I've been breaking my mind on, "How do I go about that?" At some point, I ran into, I had an idea. I had no idea whether it was actually going to work but if nobody actually tries and dares new things then who does? I figured, "You know what? I'm just going to stick my neck out. I'm going to do something that has not been done before in our industry and I'm just going to go for it. Someone asked me, "Hey, did you actually test this out before launch?" I said, "Nope, I'm just going to go for it." What I did is I actually created a funnel that is basically a blend of a lifetime offer and a recurring. Let me explain that.
As I told you in the beginning of this podcast, we launched ConnectExplore which is a tool to find more interest on Facebook ads, find more interest and add it to your Facebook ads. Also, to see and know exactly which interests are actually performing for you. You can actually break down all your Facebook ad statistics on an interest-per-interest level. Things like views and click rates, for example. Not the conversions but views and clicks whereas you can see for every different interest without having to set up a single split test.
We wanted to launch this and what we did is this. During the special offer, we had a lifetime access to ConnecExplore. Just a one-time payment and you would get ConnectExplore for life, just like a person wants to see the best. That's the best deal they're going to get, just a one-time fee, no hassle or anything like that, they keep ConnectExplore for life. Here's the catch, we also ... And we make this very, very clear on the sales pitch, this is not something dirty or anything like that. We make this 100% clear on the sales page.
On top of that we gave them a free 30-day-trial of ConnectSuite. ConnectSuite is our overall package or membership of various Facebook ads tools. After those 30 days, it would actually continue into a $97 a month plan. That's actually already a discount compared to buying all these tools separately. What we did was on the front ad we said, "Hey, here's ConnectExplore. For a one-time fee, on top of that you're going to get as a bonus a 30-day free trial of our membership which is the recurring part. You know what? You can just cancel at any time, just let us know, one single email. Just inform us, hey I want to cancel it. That's it. You don't have to do anything else and you will only pay the $97 per month for ConnectExplore."
Obviously, some people do want to keep on using the trial and the membership which is obviously awesome. One thing you would expect before it already is that part of the people who are going to purchase this, they already know, "Right after I'm going to cancel." The reason is because they just want to get a lifetime access to Connect Explorer for $97. They see the trial of Connect Suite and they know, "You know what? I'm just going to cancel it, that's fine." That is fine. You can cancel it right after and you just keep your lifetime offer.
My idea was that if people do that, people are going through the payment process and they know, at this point they know that the ConnectSuite trial, they just signed up for it for $97 a month if they do not cancel. They know it's actually $97 a month which is already at a discount. Then as you upsell ... "Upsell" because it's not really an upsell per se, but we basically say, "Hey, by the way, you now have the 30 day trial but you know what? If you skip the trial and you upgrade to a yearly account, you will get it for a good discount."
That means that on the front-end I just paid $97 for ConnectExplore and they know they have a 30-day trial which would continue into $97 a month. On the upsell they could immediately upgrade to a yearly plan of Connect Suite, they skip the trial, they don't have to pay $97 a month anymore. That funnel right there which I think is the mix of a lifetime offer, really recurring offer, a blend of them. It just blew up. Once again, I'm not going to share the numbers with you but it converted way, way, way above my expectations. I just, I loved it.
Affiliates were happy because all these people were actually ... The conversions were really good on the front end. At the same time, a lot of people also took us up on the yearly offer on the back end. Even if they didn't, part of the people are obviously going to stick into the membership because they like all the tools that we have. We have some, I'm not going to lie, I'm just excited about all the tools that we have. Right now, we have ConnectLeads, ConnectAudience, and ConnectRetarget. We have some really, really fancy tools coming out that are all going to be included inside of the ConnectSuite as well.
That's the funnel that we had. The reason why I wanted to record this podcast is to share that funnel. Maybe as a part of inspiration maybe you will have this same sort of struggle where you want to increase your recurring revenue line. Also, you know that if you just sell a recurring product then it's going to be tricky thing to sell. For example, a while ago I was talking to a friend of mine and he was ... I'm not going to share his niche but he was in a certain e-Commerce niche. He did the exact same thing. He sold a really cheap product of a frequent shipping offer. He sold it for, it's free but you just pay $8 shipping for a certain product that you got in the mail. That was a no brainer deal.
He included in that purchase he said, "By the way, you also get as a trial a 30-day free membership for us." After those 30 days, it would continue in $10 a month. That might not seem like much but obviously, it adds up. Every single person, they just want to get that single product. After awhile, after those 30 days if they don't cancel you have them in your recurring. It's actually, I think it's genius. I actually got this idea from Frank Kern who recently started his Inner Circle product.
What he did was actually he said that, "Hey, you know what? I have this box. You can buy this box for $47. With that you're going to get, you will get the first month of, I think that's just Inner Circle for I believe it was $397, let's say $400 a month. You pay $50 now and after 30 days you're going to pay $400 a month. That was his main offer and everyone just bought it because they want to have that awesome box with all this stuff for just $50. Everybody was totally planning on canceling.
As the upsell he said, "Hey, thanks you rock. We're going to send you this box to your doorstep. You know what? If you click right here then you're not going to pay $400 a month you're going to pay $300 every single month, and you're going to pay it right now. You're just going to skip the trial but you're going to pay $300 a month. For every single month, you save $100. That's just, I love it. It's so clever because people know that it's actually ... It's not like, "Oh, it's worth $400." No, people signed up for it thinking they are going to pay, if they wouldn't cancel, $400 a month. If they would then end up paying $300 a month that's an awesome deal, it's like a no brainer deal. It's not even like, "Hey, click to pay $300." It's, "Click here and we will cut $100 every single month off your bill." It's actually cheaper if you take that upgrade.
That's really what inspired me to create my mixed funnel, my blend. I call it the lifetime recurring blend funnel but that's just my way of saying it. I'm not sure if this helps you or not, I just wanted to share this out with all of you to maybe, as a bit of inspiration. Also to, taking risks is fine. As far as I know, nobody in this three who is in my affiliate circle has ever done a funnel like this but someone has to stick their neck out and just try different things. You don't always have to go after whatever everyone else is doing. Just dare to do your own thing. If you believe something that could work go for it, even if you're the first one to do it. If it doesn't work out then you figured it out, that's not going to work but at least now you know. You're not just not doing it because nobody else is doing it, but you're not doing it anymore because you know it does not work. Maybe based on that you have some new ideas that you want to try after that.
That's basically it for today. I'm sure that it's a bit longer than usual but, yeah. Basically, what I wanted to do is just dare to take risks, don't be afraid, just go for it. If you are selling some kind of a recurring product or you're planning to, definitely try to implement this idea into your business. It worked really well for me and I hope it will work out for you as well. That's it everyone. Bye-bye, and I will talk to you all soon.
" If nobody actually tries and dares new things then who does?"
"You don't always have to go after whatever everyone else is doing.""Just dare to do your own thing."
"If you believe something that could work go for it, even if you're the first one to do it."
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