Messenger Funnels News

Cast your mind back with me to the year 2014, when webinars were considered one of the most popular sales strategies for digital products and online courses.

The standard formula was as follows:

Facebook Ad —> Landing Page (maybe with Lead Magnet as a hook) to gain subscribers for registration —> Email Automation to warm up subscribers and increase attendance —> Live Webinar with “Intro, Content, Pitch” formula —> Sales rolled in!

In 2014, Leadpages alone did over 200 live webinars using this formula and created an amazingly successful SAAS (Software as a Service) product. Specifically, this part of Leadpages’ webinar formula for success in 2014 is what will help most in your webinar conversions today:

Later in this article, I’ll show you how this conversion tactic is the key to Messenger’s success with higher conversions in 2018!

Online business and marketing gurus told us to use this formula with our knowledge and expertise, even if we had no email list, no audience and no product to sell, and many people made money doing exactly that. A few made more than a bit! Most of us are still trying to make this formula work four years later.

Then came automated webinars, and the game changed again.

Once your live webinar converted well, you could turn that video into an evergreen webinar, and all you needed to do was continually send prospects to it to create a money making machine.

As with any marketing tool or tactic, as the public becomes aware of the formula, its “easy sale” effectiveness wanes. 

This is now happening with webinars.

We don’t even use the word webinar in our copy or ads any more. “Training” or “Masterclass” are the norm now, because we all sigh in exasperation when we think of signing up for another webinar, especially since we all know the formula, and don’t want to be sold!

Add to that the average open rate of 20%, and click through rate of 4.5% of email marketing (according to Mailchimp and their image below), and something’s gotta give if you want to continue profiting from webinars.

Don’t get me wrong… Webinars are NOT dead!

In fact, the webinar structure, itself is still one of the most effective ways to impart value and educate your audience.  It’s the whole “One to Many” philosophy that is used in video selling on landing pages and product/service launches.

As webinars, and marketing tactics in general evolve, we need to also evolve our process if we’re going to keep our businesses thriving.

There is a new structure and communication formula that is bringing back the good ole days of pre-2014, and here’s how we’re helping our client Alison J. Prince of 0-100K.com duplicate her automated webinar success each month without Facebook Ads.

Engagement is the Key

The evolution of communication through social channels has changed the game for online marketing, and it’s no surprise that Facebook is taking the lead.

Like all growing companies, Facebook needs to make money to stay in business, and it does that through ad revenue. However, Facebook is also fiercely protective of its user experience. Content that specifically encourages interaction and engagement between friends and followers is prioritized and promoted organically. The key to playing the Facebook game and winning is remembering Facebook’s mission statement which, in one word, is “connecting”.

Facebook started helping us change the webinar game when they opened the doors to Messenger as an automated communication tool in September, 2016.

So, let me show you how Messenger changes our 2014 webinar revenue success model, while also giving it rocket fuel!

Webinar Chatbot Case Study

Alison J. Prince had reached the 2 Comma Club in ClickFunnels in September, 2017 by producing over $1,000,000 in sales with her automated webinar using Facebook ads to get traffic to her sales funnel.

She heard about Messenger automation, and it’s high open and click through rates, and started diving into Manychat, to see if it could help her increase conversions.

Her email open rates were less than 20%, and her click through rates were less than 2%, so if she could increase the percentage of people engaging with her message, and clicking through to her webinar, she could increase revenue without having to spend more on ads. 

Alison and her team spent four months trying to set up a Messenger bot, but realized they were missing some critical pieces to get it to convert, so she came to us for help in creating a true Messenger Marketing and Sales Funnel – a Messenger Funnel.

Reminder Formula

We started by creating a “Reminder Sequence” for her automated webinar.

This is how it worked:

Facebook Ad —> Registration Landing Page —> “Get Reminders in Messenger” button on Thank You Page —> Simple Reminder Sequence in Manychat.

Attendance Increased by 30% immediately when we launched.

We put this reminder formula on hold over the holidays, and picked back up with an entirely different engagement formula in January, 2018.

Engagement First Formula

Facebook Live is one of the best marketing engagement tools available to businesses, and Alison embraced this one since her audience responds very well to her on camera personality (which also happens to be her off camera personality).

January 9, 2018, Alison started doing a weekly Facebook Live on her page with 12,000 followers. Each week she talks about one particular aspect of her eCommerce experience and success, and delivers that knowledge in a pdf lead magnet in the Messenger Funnel. That lead magnet delivers high level value on topics she covers in her online course – in other words, she doesn’t get into the weeds.

We created a warm up sequence in Manychat that was designed for engagement and free value, and which ultimately led to her evergreen webinar.  We connected that flow to a Facebook Comment Growth Tool, and sat back to watch what magic might happen.

As you can see, Alison offers not one, but TWO freebies before we invite subscribers to watch the webinar.  We also deliver the content based on the condition of an email in the custom field which triggers a zap through Zapier to ClickFunnels.  A tag on the button records who clicked to watch the webinar, so we can segment those people out later for a replay if they didn’t buy the course.

The difference between the previous webinar formula and the Engagement First Webinar Chatbot is that subscribers are engaged with free, high value content three times before we ever ask them to watch the webinar:

Since Alison’s course costs $997, you can do the math for weekly revenue.

Beyond the fact that this model performed so well after only 8 weeks, we need to talk specifically about how Engagement First has helped Alison’s reach on Facebook, and how this model continues to compound her success with her audience and prospects more than six months later.

Facebook Comment to Subscriber Tool

Using Manychat’s Facebook Comment Growth Tool in compliance with Facebook TOS (Terms of service) is what makes this model successful.

During her first few FB Live’s, Alison would ask viewers to comment with a specific word, but that is no longer Facebook best practices for marketing and engagement. Facebook might see that as “click bait” so please don’t do that!

Now, Alison asks her audience to share their views, opinions and experience relating to the topic of the week. We make sure that any comment on the selected post results in an opt in, not just one keyword. When these comments are posted, Messenger pops up and starts a conversation, which allows the prospect to become a subscriber.

This type of engagement is exactly what Facebook wants, so they smile on Alison, and give her an organic boost…. A 75% organic boost at that!

When we first started this Webinar Chatbot journey with Alison, she would boost the Facebook Live’s to increase the comments, and therefore, the opt ins. This is no longer necessary.

So, Alison’s Ad spend on her Messenger campaigns brought more organic traffic than paid, because she was doing what Facebook LOVES….. connecting. And, these boosts enjoy a $0.10 to $0.20 cost per subscriber

So, how do you think the Webinar Chatbot is performing for Alison 6 months in?

Do you see the true power of this model, yet?

Look at the data we are collecting here – look at the conversions based on the specific lead magnet offered. Does anything stand out?

We know what is working and what isn’t.  We know what lead magnets truly lead people to buy at a higher rate, and which perform just so-so.

We have also added some amazing conditional logic to our sequences that deliver specific information based on the value the prospect has already consumed – Facebook Live, lead magnets, and webinar. This has led us to gathering this amazing statistic:  It takes 2.8 lead magnets consumed to get a sale on Alison’s webinar.

All our Webinar Reminder Formula clients are switching to the Engagement First Webinar Chatbot, and are seeing very similar results for their live and automated webinars. 

So, I have one question for you…

When are you doing your next Facebook Live?

MKJ