In the competitive world of online education, success hinges on more than just great content. Enter Thinkific Funnels, a game-changing tool designed to supercharge your course marketing strategy.
This powerful feature allows you to craft custom customer journeys that attract, engage, and convert your target audience with precision. Whether you’re aiming to generate leads, secure your first sale, or foster long-term customer relationships, Thinkific Funnels provides the framework to achieve your goals.
Read on to discover how you, as a course creator, can leverage this tool to build trust, boost sales, and increase enrollments through strategically designed funnels.
Want to learn more about Thinkific before exploring Thinkific Funnels? Check out our complete Thinkific review.
What are Thinkific Funnels?
Thinkific Funnels are a feature within the Thinkific platform designed to help course creators easily set up and manage sales funnels. These funnels guide potential customers through a step-by-step process, from discovering a course to making a purchase.
Thinkific provides pre-built funnel templates, making it simple for users to create funnels without needing advanced technical skills. You can now say goodbye to complex funnels.
Each funnel is integrated with the platform’s existing products and services, streamlining the process of marketing and selling courses. Additionally, the built-in functionality ensures that creators can manage everything – from lead generation to course delivery – without relying on multiple tools.
While Thinkific Funnels are user-friendly, the feature is still in Beta and the funnels currently lack customization options for the various steps and don’t offer analytics to track conversions or performance.
Despite these limitations, Thinkific Funnels remain a valuable tool for course creators looking for a quick and straightforward way to set up a sales/marketing process.
Benefits of Thinkific Sales Funnels for Creators
Whatever your goals, Thinkific has a funnel that you can use to grow your online course business. Here are some of the benefits creators get from using this feature.
- Attract Prospects: Funnels act as magnetic tools, drawing in interested learners and transforming them into promising contacts. Offering complimentary content captures the attention of your intended demographic, allowing you to collect vital information and cultivate potential customers for your enterprise.
- Connect with Learners: Forge robust relationships by delivering impactful introductory materials. This strategy enhances your credibility, fostering trust while captivating your audience’s interest. Providing top-notch resources nurtures connections, keeping participants actively involved with your educational brand.
- Boost Conversions and Registrations: Leveraging Thinkific’s funnel system expertly steers interested individuals towards purchasing your products. Previewing your expertise showcases the advantages of your courses, enhancing the probability of sales.
Types of Thinkific Funnels
Thinkific has a variety of sales and marketing funnel templates to choose from, and multiple funnels are supported on creator websites.
Each funnel comes with newly designed webpages that are optimized based on new technology to offer you more customizations with less effort.
Here are some examples of Thinkific’s funnels.
1. Free Lesson Funnel
Boost revenue by implementing the Free Lesson Funnel, which provides a sample lesson at no cost, guiding potential customers toward purchasing your full course.
This funnel includes a fully customizable lead capture page, a free lesson from your main course, and a purchase prompt that your leads will see as an eye-catching pop-up after completing the lesson.
You can also add a Recapture One-Time Offer purchase prompt, as well as a Drop-off Recapture Email to your funnel. These help to entice purchases from customers who initially skip over the first purchase prompt by offering them a discounted price for the course.
Once the lead buys your course, they are taken to the Thinkific checkout page where payment is processed through the platform’s built-in Performance Checkout.
The thank you page is designed to help you not only express your gratitude to your new learners but also allow you to cross-sell if you have complementary products to offer.
Pro Tip: You can use Thinkific’s Digital Downloads feature to offer free downloads on your site.
2. Sales Page Funnel
The Sales Page Funnel transforms your offer’s landing page using AI-powered promotional text and additional content blocks. These improvements emphasize your course’s key advantages, boosting its appeal.
By optimizing for search engines and streamlining the customer journey, this approach helps draw in more potential buyers and increase conversion rates.
There’s a lot you can do to make your sales page unique and optimize it for increased sales. In just a few clicks, you can
- Customize your brand style
- Change text
- Add images
- Add a video
- Optimize your funnel SEO
As with the Free Lesson Funnel, your sales funnel is connected to a standard Thinkific checkout page and your school’s default thank you page.
Here’s an example of a simple sales page created using one of Thinkific’s funnel templates:
More Thinkific Funnels
Although Thinkific Funnels currently doesn’t offer integration with third-party email tools, there is still a way to create additional funnels on the platform using the simple integrations available, such as Thinkific-Mailchimp integration.
Here are some of the different funnels you can set up on Thinkific:
1. Email / Footer Opt-In
You can create a footer opt-in form on your Thinkific site using Mailchimp. This will allow your website visitors to learn more about your offers by joining your email list.
2. Contact Us Follow-Up and Automation
You can also use TypeForm to create a “Contact Us” form and embed it on your Thinkific site. The form automatically triggers an email in Mailchimp with an FAQ. After a few days, another email follows up with the user to see if they received a reply.
3. Cart Abandonment and Lead Nurturing
Yet another setup you can have is a funnel that follows up with a learner who has created a Thinkific account but hasn’t bought a course. You can use this funnel to nurture them and entice them to make a purchase.
4. Learner Onboarding
The image below shows a funnel that you can use to help a learner who has just purchased your online course get situated and ready to start consuming your content.
5. Automated Review Request and Follow Up
This funnel is designed to help you encourage learners to leave a review for any of your courses they just completed. If they give you a high review score, they are automatically tagged as an advocate. You can later use this information to send them a reward or discount.
Although you can’t remove steps or change the order of events in your funnel, you can delete your funnel at any time if you no longer need it or want to replace it with a different one.
Pros and Cons of Thinkific Funnels
Pros: What we like about Thinkific Funnels
- User-Friendly for Beginners: Thinkific Funnels are designed with simplicity in mind. The platform walks you through the setup, and the funnel flow editor is intuitive and easy to manage.
- Ready-Made Templates: Crafting funnels is a breeze with three pre-designed templates that Thinkific offers, saving you both time and effort.
- Accessible to All Users: Regardless of which Thinkific plan you’re on, you can take advantage of funnel creation without any extra charges.
- Seamless Integration: Since funnels are natively part of Thinkific, they automatically sync with your products, eliminating the hassle of juggling multiple platforms.
- AI-Enhanced Assistance: Thinkific’s AI-powered prompts help streamline your process by generating engaging copy for your pages during setup.
Cons: What we don’t like about Thinkific Funnels
- Pre-Set Funnel Structure: You’re limited to using the pre-built templates, with no option to customize or rearrange the funnel steps.
- Lack of Analytics: There’s no built-in funnel analytics, making it hard to track performance and identify areas for improvement.
- No Double Opt-In or Email Validation: There’s no option to confirm the email addresses provided by leads before they access your free content. As soon as they submit their information on your lead capture page, they gain access, which could result in a high volume of invalid or inaccurate lead data.
Important Thinkific Update to Optimize Your Funnels:
Thinkific has recently enhanced its e-commerce capabilities with the introduction of an Abandoned Cart feature through its TCommerce platform. This is a significant addition for course creators looking to maximize their sales potential, especially considering that approximately 70% of online shoppers abandon their carts before completing a purchase.
The Abandoned Cart feature automatically sends follow-up emails to potential customers who don’t complete their checkout process. What stands out is the level of customization available – creators can personalize email subject lines and headings to match their brand voice, all while utilizing Thinkific’s built-in email marketing functionality. The system also provides valuable metrics including click-through rates (CTR) and click-to-open rates (CTOR) through its email marketing dashboard.
Key advantages of this feature include:
- Automated recovery of potentially lost sales
- Access to lead data for better customer tracking
- Built-in consent collection for marketing emails
- Performance measurement tools
- Integration with Thinkific’s TCommerce platform
While this feature is promising for course creators looking to improve their conversion rates, it’s worth noting that it’s only available through TCommerce, Thinkific’s payment and selling solution. However, TCommerce itself is free to use and offers additional benefits like increased average order value and simplified bookkeeping.
Pricing: How Much Do Thinkific Funnels Cost?
The Funnels feature is available on all Thinkific plans, and multiple funnels are supported on all Thinkific sites.
Note that Thinkific offers a free 14-day trial on their website, but sign up using our link and you can enjoy a 30-day free trial.
If you already have a Thinkific account, simply navigate to the Market and Sell tab on your dashboard. Click Funnels, and you’ll have full access to all the funnel-building tools.
Important Note: You can only create four funnels on the free plan. If you require more, you’ll have to upgrade to any of the paid plans which offer unlimited funnels.
Conclusion
At present, Thinkific’s journey-building capabilities are in their early stages and may not yet match the functionality of dedicated platforms such as ClickFunnels or Kartra. As this feature is currently in beta testing, it’s likely to undergo significant developments and enhancements.
However, it’s a great option for creators looking for an easy way to set up their sales and marketing funnels on Thinkific.
From lead generation to customer retention, Thinkific Funnels offers a comprehensive solution to grow your online course business, ensuring that your valuable content reaches and resonates with the right audience at every stage of their journey.
Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution
Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.
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