An example of a creative business’s sales funnel

Numbers time!

Let’s talk about funnels, human, and how you can use them to drive sales and build your business. This example is based around my Ichabod Jones Monster Hunter #5 campaign, which ran from September 3rd to October 3rd, 2019.

So, from this first image, you can see that I have 23,666 on my email list at the time of this writing.

I’ve cut it as low as 10,000 but because of the mailing list builders I do, I end up going up very fast all the time. I’ve been as high as 75,000, and as low as 10,000 depending on the week.

There are 10,000 good emails on this list, which means ones I’ve had for a while, and at least open my emails, even if they don’t click. The rest of this data is pulled from people who have opened and clicked on emails related to the Kickstarter campaign, which are the only emails I have sent since the campaign began.

Out of that 23,000 total number, the second image shows that 10,705 people have opened at least one of the emails during this campaign. I have taken out people who unsubscribed, so these are just ACTIVE people.

Which honestly, after hitting them with almost two dozen emails during this campaign, it’s amazing they haven’t all unsubbed.

About 7,500 of those are old regulars who’ve been on my list for a while, and 3,000 of them are new people who I just acquired since July 1st. Most of the people who haven’t opened yet (9,700) are from those new emails.

1883 people DID unsubscribe so far, since the start of this campaign.

Since September 3rd, when this campaign started, I have sent 22 emails to this list in 27 days. I sent two emails on three days, all on a Saturday when a big promotion was about to end.

That means, on average, 86 people unsubscribed for every email I sent.

Of those 10,705 people, 1,150 people clicked on a link to the campaign.

That is 52 clicks for every email.

So every email I am getting 52 people who say HECK YEAH I wanna check that out. and 86 people who are like…screw…off.

Of those 1,150, only 427 have backed the campaign, to the tune of $13,407.

I say only because that’s only 427 out of 23,666, but 427 is a TON of backers, and I’m appreciative for EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

I can’t know just how many of those people who backed are from my list until AFTER the campaign is successful, but for the sake of argument, I’m going to say it’s MOST of them are on my list.

Let’s say 300. Based on the numbers from previous campaigns and simply eyeballs the names I recognize, I think this is a safe number, but I’ll bet it’s higher.

If 300 of them are on my list, then that means 26% of people who clicked converted.

Meanwhile, 10% of people who opened then clicked on a link.

45% of people who received the emails opened them. If 300 people ended up backing from the emails, or were on my email list at least, then that gives me a conversion rate of 1.26%.

These are pretty good numbers, especially because I literally added 6,600 people to this list in the last two weeks, and then another 6,600 people in July, and none of those 13,200 people were on my list before then, or knew much about me, if anything, before joining.

This is how a funnel works.

You need a lot of people at the top, so some of them come out the bottom.

Over time, you whittle down the people who will keep backing.

I don’t like to look at any one email.

I like to look at things in three-month chucks and hope that I hit most people during that time.

However, my email list is meant for making sales and building connections, so people who won’t even open my emails can follow me on social media, but they have no business on my main list.

Most funnels will look somewhat like this, whether it’s Facebook friends or Twitter followers.

Which is why you need a lot of people in your funnel, and then a good strategy to whittle them down, Otherwise, you’re never going to scale.

I have only been able to scale because I keep putting people into the top of my funnel, and then keep the very best ones that come out the bottom, and have been doing so for years.

If you don’t have some sort of system LIKE this, it will be IMPOSSIBLE for you to scale and hit the numbers that you want in your own business.

If you can implement something like this, and keep pushing forward with more and more people, then it becomes almost impossible NOT to scale up.

Especially when you have a company like Kickstarter giving you the exact emails of everybody who backed, and how much they are backing for as well. If you’re reading this during the campaign, you can play along at bit.ly/ichabod5.

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