Dan Faggella is a martial artist who knows how to kick butt with online marketing. In this episode he teaches us how to maximize our profit per prospect via the unseen funnel that you are not currently optimizing.

TOPIC DAN FAGGELLA COVERS

→ How to maximize the profit per prospect via the unseen funnel

→ His a national martial arts champion and amazon’s number one bestselling author

→ What is the Science of Skill

→ What did he sell

→ What is the growth of the Science of Skill

→ His strategic partnerships, and how important have they been to him?

→ His best advice for any startup that’s trying to grow

→ And a whole lot more

LINKS & RESOURCES

→ Clyboost

→ Science of Skill

WATCH THE INTERVIEW

READ THE TRANSCRIPTION

Bronson: Welcome to another episode of Growth Hacker TV. I’m Bronson Taylor and today I have Dan Fiedler with us. Dan, thanks for coming on the program.

Dan: Hey, glad to be here. Bronson, really happy to be here. I’ve been following this show for quite some time. So cool. Cool to be in touch.

Bronson: That’s awesome. I think we have a good interview here because one, you know what you’re doing in two, you’re full of energy. I know that just from talking to you for the last few minutes. So I think it’s going to come through and people are going to see your passion. But let me tell people about you a little bit. You’re the founder of Science of Skilled ICOM. You’re the founder of SEAL v Boots.com. You’re a national martial arts champion and Amazon number one bestselling author. So it seems like you’ve figured this Internet thing out a little bit, right?

Dan: A little bit. A little bit. You know, I don’t know if the martial arts helps at all, but.

Bronson: Well, people are afraid to compete with you.

Dan: Yeah, sure. Yeah. They knew. They knew I’d just destroy them. And so they just let me tap them right out, and.

Bronson: Then that’s it.

Dan: But, yeah, no, no, yeah. I’ve been online for a little bit, man. So. So, yeah, for sure. There’s certainly the there is. I know best.

Bronson: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we’ll start talking about your science of skill company and then we’ll move into CLV. Booth in a second because it’ll kind of follow the natural trajectory of you as a business person, and so people can kind of see how things have unfolded for you. So let’s start with science of skill. What is science? A skill? What do you sell? What is it?

Dan: Yeah. So Science of Skill LLC is a company where we sell martial arts training products. So I’m again national Brazilian jitsu champion. Pan AMS is a tournament that I compete in. I’m a grappler, a Brazilian jiu jitsu guy. And I ended up going to the University of Pennsylvania for my graduate degree in positive psych and focusing on skill development. I thought to myself, you know, I’m really obsessed with human potential and performance. I love the martial arts is what I was doing all day, teaching seminars and classes and things like that at the time. So I figured, you know, if I could put a camera on this, it wouldn’t really take that much more time to create content. We could sell it on the internet. So that’s what I ended up doing. And now we have a number of different continuity and membership levels. We have skill development, coaching and consulting with martial high level martial arts athletes and gym owners, literally from Argentina to Canada. And we also sell a lot of digital products, mostly digital products online.

Bronson: Nice. So you’re kind of in ecommerce, you’re in SAS, you’re in consulting. I mean, you kind of do it all right there, right?

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, really, what I really want to you know, I aim to nail the aspects I was nailing. So we really went continuity first almost similar to growth hacker adaptive in some respects but but we just I wanted some of those other price points to be able to pop in and there’s people that want you at different levels, right? So there’s, there’s always going to be X number out of a thousand who are buyers who will buy whatever you give them. And we’re just interested in different modes of learning. So we put up applications for consulting and coaching and we made sure the the price points were adequate to the point where it’d be it’d be more than worth our time. And if we could kind of plug that in and just the people that were interested would write it, and then otherwise everybody else would follow the same track. We did kind of plug in those other those other facets. Yeah, we ended up doing a lot of it.

Bronson: Yeah, it’s awesome. Great tips. So tell us about the growth of science, a skill. I don’t know what you can disclose, but you know how much you’ve sold, how much product you push to revenue. Just what I can tell us.

Dan: Oh, I’m happy to lay it out. When I was I’ve been on other interviews and actually sent over balance sheets and things like that. So anybody that wants to is really transparent. I’m uber transparent. I’m just I kind of live by that. But yeah, for us so we, we went from 0 to 17000 a month in about five months. Wow. And then and then over the course of maybe 14 months, we started at the we’re at maybe 35, 40 or so. And then there was some consulting that we started doing with again, academy owners and and things like that. That’s, that’s currently its own LLC, but it’s their skill business. I mean, it’s that email list that’s responsible for it. So ultimately it’s that so, so about 40, 40 a month cruising at this point. Now we’re building other businesses and really sort of aiming to what I call Tim Ferriss, the science of scaled business. Just simply because I only say it because everybody. I understand.

Bronson: Right. I know what you mean.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So so yeah. That’s that’s what we’ve done. And so now we’re at we’re pretty much at that level. We have a product launch coming up. I’m hoping to have my first few $50,000 amounts in the coming months and just just really up the level on those continuity programs. So that’s where we are now. And again, mostly that’s monthly on $57 programs, $27 programs. We have a lot of folks that will take, you know, 77, $97 upsells. And then, of course, we’ll have those few folks that’ll spend the five or six or 700 on our highest premier products. And that really adds to the bottom line as well.

Bronson: No, that’s awesome. Now, let’s talk about the details of kind of how you’ve gotten there, right. Because seems like there’s a few big things in the mix. I’m sure there’s a, you know, a million micro decisions that made it happen. There seems to be a few really big things. Talk to me first about strategic partnerships. How important has that been for you?

Dan: Guys are super duper important. So since very early on, I knew. That there’s a number of ways to get yourself out there in front of people, of course. And for me, I wasn’t the biggest, most famous martial artist of all time. You know, I have my own I have my wall with the shiny things on it. But I’m still not the most famous martial arts guy. I’m not Bruce Lee or something like that. So. So we really had an understanding that that distribution through other folks who had who had followings, whether they were famous people or they just had a lot of people on particular lists or fan pages would be a very important aspect of what we’re doing. And the benefit was our email marketing. So our actual automated follow up to conversion to upsell, to future upsell to consulting was a lot sharper than most folks because when I was running a physical martial arts presence in an 8000 person town, I became hyper obsessive around maximizing what I call profit per prospect. So making sure everybody is sub tech subsegmented sub targeted and communicated and marketed to with proper offers and proper timing. And that all of that is tested. So I had developed that obsession. So when I could get affiliate strategic partnerships, as you had said, to send to my offers and my squeeze pages, the conversions and the recurring were often even better than they’d make on their own products. I mean, that’s half of what what they’re making with me.

Bronson: So so that kind of deal is you reached out to them and said you’re going to get a kickback on anything I sell from you. That was kind of the arrangement.

Dan: Yeah. And there’s a there’s a number of different ways I’ve done it, and this is a really important factor. So we like to go into sort of how we how I kind of got those strategic partnerships in the first place. A lot of the time it’s finding it’s finding a solid synergy and finding something that you have that they don’t, even if you’re not a big player. So I began in this game with nothing but scrap, probably like yourself, scrapping better style.

Bronson: That’s right. That’s right.

Dan: So I got to give that. So you had scrap and stuff. I really just had, you know, scrap and scrap and whatnot. But but yeah. So I was out there writing for blogs. I mean, I was writing for the jujitsu magazines for all these other new URLs in the digital space. And the one benefit that I had is I had all these trusted relationships on these concentrated websites. So these guys might have had Facebook pages of 70,000 people. I’m going to add 2000 sharks, you know, nothing. But I could say, hey, you have products. I know. I know for a fact you’ve never been feature on any of these places. I could get in an interview with you. We could do six videos. I could put those videos in different blog posts and write fantastic blogs that these websites would be happy to post up. And then you’d be able to say, Featured on, featured on, featured on. We could drive affiliate traffic. Nobody else can give you that benefit and in exchange will work something out with email. And then that that arrangement, that original idea of just burrowing into an area where most people are not active. Okay, I dominate blogs that cracked open just a ton of fan page in email, traffic, floods. So, so figuring out again in this niche in space, most people have blank. Most people don’t have blank. It really didn’t take me longer than a couple of months to be able to write for all six of those sites, but nobody else wants to do that work. So now I have an interesting positioning, and once you do the first job with somebody, you make a small arrangement, you do a trade, they do a trade, you overdeliver the heck out of it. You’re a fantastic affiliate. Now that’s somebody you can do business with in the future. And ultimately, that’s really what’s carried us forward. Great automation and really over delivering on initial engagements.

Bronson: You know, it makes me think about customer development. You know, we talk so much about knowing what the customer wants, but you have to have that same mindset with strategic partners that they really need and want and then they really look to take inventory. What do I have? What do they have? What is an equitable, you know, kind of swap between your skills and services? And then, just like you said, overdeliver. And you can get so much value out of big people even when you’re a flea, right?

Dan: Tons. Tons, if you have the right positioning and value. And again, you know, I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I’ve done it so many times now in a in the martial arts niche. Now we’re obviously moving to other spaces is is figuring out how you can help them without even talking to them first. So there were some folks that sell it because there’s a particular person who is selling a equipment, a grappling dummy, actually. Right. They were selling this dummy and I signed up as affiliate without them knowing me. I posted some blogs without them knowing who I was. I sent a little bit of email traffic without them knowing anything, got a ton of momentum with it with initially, very small effort. Then went back to them and said, Hey, I went in dabbling with this thing I put forth. You know, I took a couple of steps forward and this is what we got. I actually have a game plan to really blow this up. If you guys are happy to catch up in the next week or so. I mean, you know, I got I have some pretty cool plans. I’d be happy to to chat it up. And then that’s a conversation that’s harder for them to, to deny. Then the the 15th person who says, hey, can we do something where we market online in the internet? So I just went out and just made sales form and then followed up afterwards. So no one.

Bronson: Nor sells no one. No one not to sell.

Dan: Right? I mean, you can’t even if you wanted to.

Bronson: You can just it’s the drug dealer model. You know, the first one’s free and you’ll see how good it is and then we’ll talk an arrangement after that.

Dan: I like it. The drug dealer model or the free puppy model, right.

Bronson: That’s the more tame version of it.

Dan: Yeah. You give it, you give it to the kid, and then you can’t take the puppy away from the kid.

Bronson: Show your value before you ask for anything.

Dan: Exactly. Henry Ford has a great quote about that. But but yeah, no, that’s exactly what it was. And now we’re working on doing the same things with I mean, this this is this was me in the martial arts space. And we’re now working on doing this in so many other niches and industries. And obviously with customers and clients, we’re in all sorts of different spaces. But strategy, strategy and making those connections especially you have a better funnel than everybody else and facilitates a really, really solid lead flow, much better than the trickle along. I’m going to build an SEO presence and eventually I’ll get big two years from now. For me, I wanted those pumps coming in early and fast. Yeah, it was just about finding where I could plug myself in and be a value.

Bronson: Yeah. Well, let’s jump in and talk about that email funnel a little bit because I know it’s on your website and this is just one little piece of it, I’m sure is that you have like an opt in, you get a free guide, give me an email address. That’s kind of the traditional stuff to what’s going on behind the scenes. There was that kind of the beginning of your going down this path and what does it become?

Dan: Yeah, yeah. So that that was that was the beginning. And, and in many ways it still is. So there’s there’s a number of different ways that you can pass folks out. So for me, I don’t have, let’s say, a single channel where people will learn about me and then eventually buy. And I have a number of different splintered and contextual opt ins that let me know based on just the for the fact that you’re opting in on this page, I already know things about you. So it’s like you opt in and then I have to find things out based on the value prop, based on the blog. This was linked to based on the email offer that was sent out for this, based on the place and time that you had come across this page. You fit this mold to some extent, and I know it’s certainly.

Bronson: Behind them and put them in buckets, not based on data they give you, but based on data you know about them. So that way there’s not a barrier for them to hand over personal information. But yeah, still know so much about their desires, what’s going to incentivize them, all that kind of stuff.

Dan: Totally. And then and then just by lead source alone, I can determine how I want to follow up with them. And then of course, there’s also places where I will give people dropdowns and I’ll give them dropdowns and the ability to enter their particular category. And I recommend this for any major business, any, any business out there that has a main website with just a blatant opt in, you know, really, really horrendous and borderline offensively bad call to action is join our newsletter. Yeah but you know I’m going to hope it’s not that bad but but let’s say let’s say you have some kind of basic call to action as opposed to just a name and email, oftentimes even just a smidge of customization, maybe between one of three categories, one of four categories. That alone, the targeting that you can do based on tiny my newt amounts of information will make each subject line in the content of each email so much more relevant that your open rates and your click through rates will be so much deeper and farther. And for me, I mean, I’m in the business whether I’m working with my business or I’m working on other people’s businesses. I’m in the business of engagement, I’m in the business of e-commerce, I’m in the business of setting appointments. And that’s all eyeballs on offers, really. So that’s that’s the world I’m in. So if it’s a little bit of customization up front, again, you have a catch all website, a main homepage, little bit of a dropdown. Now every single email that hits that person’s website, it’s not, Oh, this is from that company. It’s This is for me, this is for me, this is for me. If you can if you can even add 50%, never mind 100%, which is not unusual, by the way, to your open rates. Give me a break. It’s ridiculous. Return on investment. It’s all about plugging and playing those strategies.

Bronson: Yeah. Now, let me ask you a question that you and I know the answer to, but I want to make sure it’s clear for everybody else, you know, why is it a bad call to action? Join our newsletter. What is wrong with that and what’s the right call to action there?

Dan: Yeah, well, the right call to action would depend on the business. I think it’s a.

Bronson: Generic.

Dan: Example. Yeah. Yeah. So, so of course it’s a very generic example. But I would say, you know, if you’re a business that’s interesting enough to have some semblance of a white paper, some variety of different white papers, if like your self. Brunson, you have killer interviews and, you know, you opt in to see the rest of this interview and maybe get access to a couple other ones that are fantastic that, you know, people are interested because they just watch 32 seconds. Yeah. So they’re at least 32 seconds interested. But yeah, probably better than most YouTube videos yet. So so having some something of value. So an explicit I like to make it so that it’s not you will periodically hear about us about vague things it’s just not it doesn’t call to me it doesn’t do. So I like to have a lot of different landing pages. But if we’re going vague, at least have something tangible and something present now, what are they going to get when they go? What’s going to immediately get access to? Because that will trigger their brain? Not to say, oh, you know, I feel compelled emotionally to take, you know, a second out of my Internet scooping through to to enter my email to hear from you guys once a month. Not. Really. But if you have something that can call to them, even if it’s casual, even if it’s basic, like a white paper about and then a core value proposition much, much, much better generally in terms of conversion rates. Yeah.

Bronson: So you want something specific, you’re going to get not a newsletter that’s not specific, that’s vague. Something specific is right now I’m going to send you this guy to teach you how to do these things.

Dan: Exactly.

Bronson: They know in a few minutes their email is going to have that in the inbox. And there’s that dopamine of like, yes, this is what’s coming. You know.

Dan: Isolators, like.

Bronson: Doesn’t do that for anybody. You know.

Dan: You get it two weeks later and you’re like, do I even care to open this? You know, do I even remember what this website was? Yeah, the dopamine, as you had mentioned. That’s why you have all the classic Internet marketing examples of, you know, the top three blank and you’ll even see I mean, I’m in the you know, we’re running around the biotech world out here in Cambridge. I get to see a lot of cool websites. You know, there’s there’s even webinars in biotech marketing to huge companies, you know, trying to get pharma folks onto webinars. And it’s the top five blank that you don’t want to just because it’s a myth, you know, it’s it’s a tangible number. It’s the fundamentals of marketing. The fundamentals of marketing. Small, small or large. So exactly like you said, you know, in that hit a dopamine, that benefit is important.

Bronson: And we can laugh at those tactics until we’re browsing around the Internet and realizing we’re falling prey to them. Also, like when I see that, it makes me perk up when it’s something I want and I’m like, All right, I’ll give my email. Let me get that guy real quick. You see what you got and use a lot more on the on the producer side. But on the consumer side, it’s working. When we’re the consumer, it’s just it’s the way our brains are wired. It’s not anything more than that.

Dan: Yeah, it’s it’s only it’s what it is. And there’s no and there’s absolutely no need. I mean, you know, there’s there’s really blatant and almost kind of boringly kind of, you know, cheesy examples of it. But but those same fundamentals of marketing, the ones that we’re talking about and maybe laughing it up about those same principles and tenets apply across the board, across industries. Like you said, it’s it’s very human. Yeah. Just how we.

Bronson: Respond. So you’re getting the emails. You’re getting the emails through different landing pages, different opt in forms, different URL addresses. You’re using that data either from the source or maybe a little bit of a drop down for them to like fill out a little bit who they are. But basically now you have a bunch of emails and some data now to walk me through what’s next? Yeah, how are you using that data? How are you using those emails to really, like you said, have a funnel that’s way more efficient than what other people are used to? What does it look like after that?

Dan: Totally. And it gets it gets gets pretty complicated in a good way. Not complicated for me. It’s complicated a good way. Right. So the back of my I leverage Infusionsoft is one of the softwares that I use. Other people are into Pardot or HubSpot or get responses more, more or less features. But in terms of basic functions, one thing I will say is that when somebody initially option, there’s a number of things that are happening right off the bat. So they’re already receiving a quote unquote yellow brick road based on what I believe, based on where they came from, the limited information, I know they’re going to ride the yellow brick road of the next most logical purchase for them, at which point they’re going to be on another yellow brick road for the next most logical purchase for them.

Bronson: So those drip campaigns is the yellow brick road, a drip.

Dan: A yellow brick road of drip campaign, of sequential email marketing. And being able to test those sales pages or even being able to test those sequences is so tremendously important because for example, brands, I mean, I get plenty of my own examples here, but if I hop in the back of a company that that’s that’s most people. So you’ll be all sales to the most start ups, more start ups. Anybody you’ve talked to for sure they’ll tell you 20 ways that they’re driving traffic got and they’ll know in any anyone is worth their weight and celery salt is going to tell you that they are that that there’s a good measurement. By the way.

Bronson: I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of that.

Dan: You got your.

Bronson: Results?

Dan: Yes. So it’s delicious, right? But it’s also far less so they’ll tell you that they’re testing those methods. Well, we’re driving traffic in these ways. We’re testing it. But you say, okay, after they opt in, what happens then? Well, we have this drip campaign. Well, what are you testing in the Drip campaign? Well, nothing. Oh, geez, that’s a damn shame. So most people are testing a bit. So usually for me, just peering into the back of those systems, being like, is any of that tested? No. Okay. Well, it’s basically impossible not to have improvement criteria in there. So for us, we have those drip campaigns where we split testing the landing pages, split testing offers, split testing the upsells and determining which ones are taking which ones aren’t, and sending people through a continuously refining funnel, which is why we can extract a lot of profits from a relatively arbitrary and nominal niche. Being Brazilian jujitsu on the internet.

Bronson: I’m basically doing for the funnel what most people do for the website itself. Yeah, putting away more emphasis on the email side of it instead of just playing with the text on the website nonstop.

Dan: That’s exactly what all the structure in order of was offers and how those are being laid out. If none of that is ever tinkered with, it’s just like your front end website, your frontier website’s never tinkered with. You’re losing some additional opportunity in additional growth. The back. It just is easy to test just the most. People don’t do it. So it’s a very easy place for me to step in and see media opportunity, and that’s where we started in our own business. The other thing that I do, Brunson, I think will be helpful for folks out there. Is we always have some level of surveying or additional information to be gleaned, and there’s a number of ways you can pull this off. So the best time to get information from people is when you just got information from people simply or similarly. The best time to get money from people is when you just got money from people. So yeah, so so upsells and whatnot. So for us, for information, as soon as someone tops in, even if it’s just a single drop down or just a name email or just an email, that’s a great time to pop em right into a quick survey for another perk and not their bonus, not just, Hey, can you please just fill all this out? Hey, your things are already in your inbox, but give me this other page of info. Say, hey, great. Thank you so much. You know, we also created an entire video tutorial around that same guide. I’m happy to pop you right over to that page. Simply fill out the survey. It means a lot to us to get an understanding and I’ll send the video along right with your PDF. Now, I mean, you’re going to get 80% of folks to fill out eight fields and eight fields is data, and data is tremendously valuable. I don’t care if you’re selling on the phone and you already know what it is that they’re desirous of. I don’t care if you’re selling via email and now you know all their interest, you know their age, you know their industry, you know the number of employees, whatever it is that’s going to allow massively targeted information. And I even have multiple surveys that will kick off. So if people don’t fill out that initial survey over the course of their automated marketing, they’ll also, let’s say, maybe 11 or 12 days in on a Sunday, get a message for that survey. If they didn’t take it initially, then another 11 or ten or what have you kind of days, they’ll get a little reminder. It’s not abrasive, it’s not pushy, but it’s a it’s a free little bonus for filling out the survey. I know it’s something they’re interested in. So it because they filled it out. If they don’t, it’s not big deal. But I will follow them along, making sure that I get as many people as possible to really just dish out all the information we’d need to really make the most of of that, that email list and especially offers we present. And that’s what takes us into database marketing, which I’d be happy to talk about as well, because it’s so powerful.

Bronson: Yeah, let’s go there next. But let me ask you this. You know, when it comes to website optimization, kind of front end, what’s happening on the page, we know what elements there are to play with. We know there’s a headline, we know there’s a subhead, we know there’s some kind of imagery, like it’s a known quantity, more so with email funnels, it’s not as known what elements, what levers there are to actually pull. So tell me, like, what are the 5 to 10 pieces of the puzzle that you’re actually trying to optimize? A few that you’ve mentioned, right. You mentioned offers, you mentioned discounts, you mentioned surveys. What else like what is it that you’re rearranging? You’re putting in different orders, you’re trying different numbers with? What are those base elements you’re working with?

Dan: Yep, great, great call. Brunson So a number of different things to think about. Number one, there, there certainly is no less factors to tinker with on the back end, just nobody really talks about it. There’s plenty of people that probably even been on this show that are great at driving a ton of traffic. I’m okay with that. With strategic partnerships, I wouldn’t call myself the best pay per click. I what I get paid for is profit per prospect. Implement systems that do that. It just so happens that that’s less talked about. So I believe there’s at least as many, if not more, because that’s a process that’s long. On my landing page is my landing page, my my process for follow up. I mean, infinite debt. So easy, easy factors to tinker around with that are super quick to implement. For any ups who tuned in now would be thinking about the positioning of your email. So think about what you know and what you based on customer feedback and all those things. What is the core value prop for this person and why are they here? And and if you have a couple of competing ideas, maybe slight variations of a similar idea determining which one is going to resonate more, right? Your same front end six or front end 12 based on flavor number one and flavor number two. So point that core value prop frame it in a couple of different ways depending on what you think is going to be most valuable. And then test it with your subject line, with your call to action text, with your first paragraph, with the factors that matter most, an email and then see what at the end of those 12 who’s making the most bucks. Similarly, you can test out timing very easy. The idea here is do we go with just weekdays and then not do weekends and then just go back to weekdays? Do we do once a day for as long as they’re in with us? Do we do spaced out every two or three days? Let’s send a couple cohorts through and let’s see what happens. Another factor that’s very important to consider, which a lot of people neglect tremendously, is thank you pages. So what is the thank you page? Are we able to present an offer right then and there? Are we are we able to go into a survey? Which one’s going to ultimately be more profitable when they go through the survey? Are they then more likely to take the offer or are they more likely take offer right then and there, depending on how we present it? Similarly, again, what is the first offer that they get hit with? Is it a 1295 point? Is it a $95 price point? And how are we again at whole flavor thing? I know why people are buying this, but there’s this hue to it and certain people like this, and then there’s this hue to it. And if they’re all coming to the same channel, let’s see which one of those hues and flavors hits the hardest. So tinkering with that front end offer, I mean, for me, the. Offer would probably be the biggest, but those are a number of the factors right off the bat. Those are useful for the folks out there right now. Any of those I mean, pick one and implement it and you’re going to learn something about your back in business. It’s so like I said, I mean, I’m here in the CIC, so I’m talking to startups all day. 20 Ways to test the front end, zero ways to test the back. And it’s a day change machine.

Bronson: No, I mean, that is the inside of this interview is that the front end is being tested. The back end funnels are not neglect. So much money to be made there. I mean, you think about Dave McClure’s funnel, you know, the famous, you know, our metric pilot funnel, and it’s very much a front end funnel, you know, and even the way I think when I approach things, I think front end funnel and you have a way to see things of what’s behind the scenes and how valuable the rest of the iceberg is below the surface.

Dan: It is an iceberg, totally.

Bronson: Yeah. And so it’s just a great insight and I hope people really hear that. And so is this kind of what gave rise to your new business, CLV Boost is you did the stuff. You knew you were on to something. Now, let me get some clients doing this.

Dan: Yeah, well, you know, it wasn’t even necessarily just, you know, let me let me get some clients. I mean, I have a number of different aspirations outside of the pure consultancy domain. But but I thought about it like this. Brunson I mean, I began with my very neurotic email marketing and the profit per prospect metrics in a small town. So I had to get very good at these things. Then we took it to other, other niches and domains. But I look at it now and their staffs that don’t just have the potential for a little bit of ROI and in a way that be interesting and a little niche, but who might have millions of users and what does it mean to up even two or 3%? I mean, most any untested back end if I can’t do two or 3%? I mean, you know, I’ll pay I’ll pay out money. Like I’ll pay you for money if I can.

Bronson: Even be worth your weight in sellers. Solved that case.

Dan: Yeah, I know. And you did it, man. You did it so long as. So long as you give me give me a little bit of a mention on one of those in a future interview that I’ll probably I’ll.

Bronson: See what I can do. I’ll try to work at it.

Dan: That’ll be fantastic. So yeah. So the factor is, you know, there starts out there with the potential for millions of users and there’s also folks with five or six figure price points, you know, people who are selling massive software or who are working in real estate or different areas like this. And there’s there’s staffs that can take these things and scale, not take them into small niches. So applying these strategies now in those domains is what’s more interesting to me. And a lot of the time it’s just, you know, it’s finding what’s not being tested. It’s plugging little holes, seeing big returns and finding where the rest of the the opportunity is. Yeah, that was exactly it. You know, it was working so well here. There’s businesses with massive scale. What can those little tweaks mean? And let’s go in there and let’s make them happen. You know, that’s what this is all about. CLV also stands by, I should always say, customer lifetime value.

Bronson: Yeah, that’s why I wasn’t harvesting. Sure.

Dan: CLV boost. So boosting the customer lifetime value. If you’re not testing the back end, boosting the customer lifetime value is more than possible. Yeah. So, so that’s, that’s essentially our job and proposition. We work with all kinds of different start ups in that world now.

Bronson: Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, kind of the four and five and six figure price points for things. It does this kind of thinking work better when there is a higher price point. Is that one there’s more to get out of the back end funnel system optimization when you’re charging ten K a pop for something.

Dan: Yeah, well it differs. I don’t know if it’s any more important to be honest. I think if you have if you’re doing, for example, my, my online martial arts business, for the most part, it’s very hands off. I only talk to a certain number of folks who we do consulting for in this marketing automation. We have a number of those people. We have some people that will do skill development consulting with, but but mostly it’s hands off lower price points. But it’s really important that I have all those architectures in place because I can’t handle them. But then again, we’re selling on the phone or something. We get those bigger price points you had mentioning it does warrants. I’ll tell you what it does, for instance, is if if your price points are higher, sometimes early on, it will warrant a richer database and a richer software. So it’s not necessarily more important or less important, but it will allow you to use more tools and often warrant you using a couple more tools because now when you and you are so refining, you can get someone to an e-commerce purchase is great. But if you’re selling five or six figures, most people aren’t pushing a button, right? Dropping a hundred grand. There’s some kind of phone there or a media connection, that kind of human connection. So imagine bumping your your conversion to appointment in a in a business where you have six figure sales by, let’s say, 7% over the course of two months. I mean, if it’s untested, yeah. If it’s untested, it should be more than that. But if it even if it’s relatively tested and refined 7% over the course of a year, six figure sales, you do X number of months. That’s, that’s dollars. Yeah. So say it’s more important. But I would say you can add a lot more bells and whistles early and see some cool things happen.

Bronson: Yeah. And one of the bells and whistles you mentioned this word twice now database. So break that down for me. What is that when you say database, database, email marketing, what does that mean to you and how are you using that?

Dan: Big time. And and this is tremendously important as well. And I’d like to, again, have a lot of actionable ness here. So for me, this is really a passion to me because this is how our initial martial arts business worked and where I’m taking so many other folks who really neglected opt ins. So some people are so sophisticated that they have a yellow brick road, usually maybe six, 12 emails on there. They’re super sophisticated, but but usually after that, it’s a generic broadcast message. Every month, you know, they’ll send you something. Every week, I’ll send you something. When you have someone who’s dropped four grand. Someone who’s dropped zero, but who opens every email, someone is open. Not someone who is their only. They are their only employee, someone who has 200 employees. Everybody is getting the same communication. For me, it very much shouldn’t be that way. So passing out that back end list and instead of rotating a generic offer. So here’s an example. So in my opinion that’s, you know, as a marketer marketer that’s. Sloppy to the point of borderline offensively bad market. So if you take a company like L.L. Bean, okay, L.L. Bean does not do marketing for boys. They do marketing for men. Now, why is that? Because L.L. Bean has to sell out to mail out catalogs. Now, you can’t screw up with catalogs. I mean, you’ve got to. You got to you. I mean, imagine the rain forest. I mean, they have to just destroy it. Destroy. And then they have to turn that into paper. They got to put ink on that. They have to mail that out. That’s money. So those people, if you follow what L.L. Bean does, they don’t once a month mail a catalog to everybody. To know they’re not sloppy marketers. What they do is they’ll have different catalogs for different buyers at different price points, with different demographics, with different sliding offers. Some people will just get a postcard. Some people will get e-mail that will follow up with that. And all of that is being tested. That’s data based marketing, not playing around with your email list. It’s understand the receptivity and the proper offers and proper engagement of different levels of your database in marketing and retaining your circulation through all of them. If L.L. Bean just sent out a catalog to everybody, A, the rainforest would just be destroyed. I mean, we’d have, you know, we wouldn’t have air to breathe and things like that. B They’d lose a lot of money right away. So a lot of people can get away with being sloppy. I like to think I like to tell, you know, star ups or any other business, pretend your database, you know these things about them. Pretend that you are L.L. Bean and that your generic message is a catalog. And if that thing loses money, you’re losing a ton. A lot of people can get sloppy with email. But when you think that way, I gotcha. You may not lose a lot of money, but you can make so much more by just refining it.

Bronson: And that’s what happened with email, because e-mail is cheap, therefore doesn’t warrant our attention when in fact the upside is so big. You are losing money. We just don’t know it because of the way we’re framing the problem.

Dan: Exactly. Exactly. So the pain isn’t isn’t loud enough. But from my experience, even if you just subsegment your broadcast into three groups and you see what that does to open rates. Tiny, tiny adjustment. Same message. Different subject line. Different first sentence. Three different groups. That by itself, in terms of how many eyeballs land on your offers, is usually enough of a smile on the face to make it pretty clear, Hey, there’s an upside here. So that’s another very important facet for folks to consider.

Bronson: Absolutely. Now, let me ask you this. There’s people watching this and they’re salivating, wanting to do this to their business. So let me ask you a question. How much of this is Infusionsoft and you knowing how to use Infusionsoft, how much is it is specialized skill that they’re not going to have, Infusionsoft is not going to give them and they’re going to have to spend five years in the trenches messing up.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I certainly I mean, I’ve probably spent close to 80 grand in the last two years on Internet and marketing automation, kind of coaching, consulting, flying all over the place and learning this kind of thing. With that being said, you don’t necessarily need that training, but it certainly helps. There’s there’s there’s not as much out there about this as there is about, you know, converting websites, you know, by button collars. You know, there’s a lot more blog posts on like, you know, Neopets Allen Guys like that. But he doesn’t really talk so much about this and a lot of the other folks don’t either. So I would say a little bit, if you’re really going to refine it, having some sort of specialized knowledge is helpful and really understanding the software you’re functioning in is helpful in making sure it’s the right software. You know, I’m just talking to a company today that’s using constant contact and they their business just requires so much more functionality than constant contact is even capable of. So sometimes it’s knowing when you kind of have a breakout. So I would say there are places online events are probably the best source of this kind of information if you’re going to take your email seriously. Learning from that is useful. On SEAL. On SEAL v boost right now we did a we did a white paper on a whole bunch of basic and easy to implement ideas. So I try as as best I can to make this as, you know, do this, test it. And one of those variations will make more money than what you do. And that’s sounds. You’ll be boots.com. We have a white paper. Other than that, I mean, events are a great place and yeah, if you want to take it seriously, like, you know. Brunson I mean, there’s plenty of websites to learn if you want to take it really serious. Obviously you go to the folks that really know it.

Bronson: Yeah. So let me ask you this. You know, you’ve seen so many back in funnel, so many email funnels, more than most, more than me. You’ve probably seen trends and start spotting trends and obviously you have to ab test. Everything is different for every company. But caveat, is there something where it almost always works like this thing when you do it, it works most of the time for most people.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, one thing that I would say right off the bat in terms of in terms of basic to do so we’re thinking about actionable is for a startup who’s out there, they’re like, I want to leverage some part of this.

Bronson: Give them something to start with. You just might.

Dan: Work. Something that’s something you start with right off the bat is finding a way for your thank you page to somehow potentially lead to an offer doesn’t meet. It needs to be an ugly sales page. But if someone comes into your email list hot, which sometimes they do, they shouldn’t have to wait a while or wait until they build up the courage to call you, to take a further step, to set an appointment, or to actually make a small front end purchase. So if your thank you page dies and there is no. Even if I was the hottest prospect in the world, I have no more further steps forward. That’s an error. It’s a blatant, blatant error. So being able to fix that and say what is the next step forward? Is it a small front end purchase? Is it potentially a free trial of some sort? And is there a way that not in an offensive way. Thanks for opting in. Get your free. I mean, there’s more classy ways of going about that. Give me some case studies and interesting calls to action for the free trial in a way that is informative, that’s educational, or again, those same kind of case studies. I often like some sort of friendly short case studies after an opt in and then an opportunity to set an appointment that thank you page has to have the ability to take a hot prospect in moving forward. Otherwise you’re losing momentum on people that are good. The other thing that’s very important to to take action on is thinking about how you can pass on the front end if you only have one yellow brick road. Again, it’s an error. I mean, I don’t know, a business that’s an exception. Unless your unless you pride yourself in superstar genius and people trust you based on that. And I don’t know really any of those businesses. Probably a few of them. But but unless that’s the case, different people are looking for different things. Different people are in different positions. So can you take even just the first, even just the subject line and the first paragraph and tweak it and craft it based on whatever the major criterion are for you? If your software as a service, maybe it’s size of company or industry, if you’re selling to consumers, maybe even gender alone, just tweaking that subject line, you should jack and those open rates and click through rates. So passing early on contextually or with an early dropdown is again, if you have to if you have two funnels that are hyper succinct, those variations of your core prospect or one you’re going to see the to win more often than not. In fact, I’ve never seen them lose when it’s been tested and really, really fine. So that’s another plug and play strategy that people need to take advantage of.

Bronson: Yeah, just to make sure people are clear when you say Yellow Brick Road, what you’re referring to and tell me if I’m wrong. Yes, a path to profitability, which is going to be different for different segments in your list. Oh, each have a different route that maximizes the profit, the profit per prospect, you know, for that person. But it’s a different route. Yeah. You know, one thing I’ve seen that I think is really clever is when you first go to a site, it says, you know, you click a button, ima fill in the blank or I’ll fill in the blank. So it’s almost like right away on the home page above the fold, you’re picking one of two routes because they know you might be on this side of the equation or he might be on that side of the equation. And it’s a high level way to kind of get you into one or two camps at least, right?

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then that yellow brick road is more tailored. And interestingly enough, you don’t want to see this done in places where you really think it should be. You know, I opted in recently to I tested this with a bunch of marketing automation software companies just to see if they’re eating their own dog food. And and and I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for HubSpot, by the way. I think their blog is phenomenal. I think they’re on the cutting edge of a whole bunch of different things. But I filled out their front end survey. Maybe I’m the oddball with totally different size companies, totally different industry. I got the same messages with the same smiling guy’s face in the same text, the same subject line. And you were like, How about a case study for a big company or a case study for a little company? How about a case study for this industry or case study for this industry? How much weren’t social proof and resonance? And more likely am I to to respond to that email, to make that phone call? So any of those refinements on the front end, I mean, that’s an example where all they have to do is change their email because they’re already asking for a lot of data. But like you said, can we say I’m a, I’m a and then have them make that pick and have different trajectories or path of profit?

Bronson: Very I thought about that for growth TV because right now we don’t have that. We’re not as sophisticated as what you’re, you know, saying we should be. And I’ve thought it when they first come to the side, it should be I’m a founder, I’m a marketer or, you know, at least those two are different camps that I know. We’re both coming here with different needs and there’s other you know, I’m a CEO of not a startup, you know?

Dan: Yep. I mean, man. Brunson Well, you know, no peer pressure or anything, but but with a little bit of peer pressure, I would say you totally you totally should. I mean, because because here’s the thing. I mean, if you have, you know, all these founders who are paying you every month for a reason, they have those reasons. And other founders going be like, damn, and if your marketers are paying for a reason and you lay out those reasons, you know, I say that’s well, well, well, more than worth testing and obviously your content so good and I’m hoping I’ll fit into that category. That’s what I won’t tell.

Bronson: You will tell you that.

Dan: But but but one of the reasons your content so good that people are sharing and there’s there’s been buzz I mean I heard about you the grapevine and maybe two or three different occasions before, you know, I was slapped in and getting your stuff on a monthly or a weekly or however often you’re pumping it out. So, so yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s completely it. I mean, I would, I would say you’re in the exact same boat there.

Bronson: Yeah. No. And it’s going to be on the list. And that’s one of things, too, is, you know, when you’re a growth hacker, you have more levers to pull than other people because you know more about how the Internet works. Yeah. So you’re. Drowning in opportunity. And that’s kind of where it’s like there’s so many things I could do, of course, go up into the right that it’s just a matter of, you know, staff making a list and then working through that.

Dan: And the cool thing about about this, what we’re talking about, Brunson And I completely get where you’re coming from. Number one, A it’s still boost. A lot of people don’t want to write that email copy. And part of like the I’ll Pay You and you do it thing is, hey, we’re running around doing all these things that we really get, how we plug in those variations and then we’ll run away and it will just.

Bronson: Wipe out the business. I mean, that’s why you’re meeting and that’s why it’s right. You know, you can make numbers go up into the right, but, you know, they’re busy.

Dan: Yeah, but you know they’re busy, so. Heck. And the other the other thing is it’s a one time grind. So this is one of those things where if I want to implement a sales team now, I obviously have more people on the payroll, I actually have more people to manage a little bit more training expense. Maybe if I set up an automation architecture some people want me on for a long time advising them, and I’ve had people for as soon as I started doing this, my, my first marketing automation, internet marketing client is actually still with me. But some folks are just build it and and get out, you know, give us a tactical advice, train us on it, get out. And it’s it’s automation architecture that okay, now I can run away, I can go to Cuba. And I don’t know what they do in Cuba, smoke cigars and drink umbrella drinks or something. And that email funnel will work exactly the way I built it for. It’ll put in eight times more work with no more work from now on out. So it’s one of those levers that you can twist once and see that return. It just about it’s just about putting in that one time grind.

Bronson: Yeah. And I’m sure that, you know, you’ve had the experience of seeing the one time grind produced so much like that for you. It’s at the top of the list. On any list of what we’re going to do next.

Dan: We’ll have our bias, right? We all of our bias. So yeah, that’s great.

Bronson: That’s all we have different people on with different expertizes they can really get into our heads. This is important. Please focus on this big time, you know, and that’s all I need. Well, then, this has been just an incredible interview. We’ve covered so many different things. I have one last question that I asked to all of our guest. You can kind of take it any direction you want, but what’s the best advice you have for any startup that’s trying to grow?

Dan: Well, if I’m going to if I’m going to go with if I’m going to go with what I know best and something that would be practical, it would be to experiment with, whether it’s in marketing automation, by the way, it’s not just email. So this could be fall. This could be if you do any direct mail experiment with remember I talk about those hues and flavors of sort of, you know, what the core value prop is, but there’s different ways to frame it and different ways to put it. If you have main channels where a lot of people are running through, whether it’s a first appointment and you have a script that you’re speaking to, whether it’s a phone call, you have a script, whether it’s an email marketing funnel that you’re communicating with them. Take those take cohorts and take that hue and tweak that hue a bit. And if you can if you can eek that out, then that that understanding that that deeper sort of understanding of your customer can now be used across every channel. So if it works in email, that wording tends to work. Now how can you plug that into the sales script? How can you plug that into your direct mail? How can that end up on landing pages? Because that can give you so much richness that transfers across the board. So I would say make some make some short experiments there, tinker with it, and even a little bit better wording and better terminology and better sense of what that value is that this person is looking for will transfer to every aspect of your marketing. So I would highly advise that.

Bronson: That’s great advice to end on. Dan, thank you so much again for coming on Growth Hacker TV.

Dan: Cool. Thanks, Bronson. Pleasure to be here.