How to build a simple sales funnel with Flodesk Checkout (all in one tool!)
Set up a simple sales funnel that nurtures your audience to convert into paying customers using Flodesk Checkout.
Building a ‘sales funnel’ might sound fancy and complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! In fact, you don’t even need to have a website in order to sell your products and services at the ‘end’ of the funnel - you can do it all within Flodesk’s all-in-one tool with their Checkout feature!
Disclaimer: Flodesk have kindly sponsored this blog post, and any links to Flodesk are affiliate links where I earn a commission if you sign up, but all opinions are my own. I personally use, love and recommend Flodesk, and it’s always a joy to partner with them!
Table of Contents
Watch this as a tutorial on YouTube or keep scrolling to read!
What is a sales funnel?
A ‘sales funnel’ is simply a way for you to nurture your audience towards a sale (or hiring you, or booking a call - whatever your ideal outcome is for your business!), rather than expecting them to take action on their own after just being introduced to your business.
This type of audience is called a ‘cold audience’. They may be new or not familiar with your business or your offer, so they’re less likely to spend money with you.
When you nurture your audience through a funnel, you are ‘warming’ them up, so they become a ‘warm audience’. They are more familiar with your business and your offer, so they are more likely to spend money with you!
Why do you need a sales funnel in your business?
As you can see, using a sales funnel creates a stepping stone for your audience to feel ready to buy from you. This is because it:
Builds trust in your business & your brand by showing them your expertise
Builds a relationship with your brand by showing what it’s like to connect with you
Builds a desire by sharing more about your offer and letting them imagine what it’s like to buy from / work with you
How do you create a sales funnel?
There are lots of ways to create a sales funnel in your business, and they can be as simple or as complex as you like.
However one of my favourite ways is to utilise email marketing and automation, and delivering value to your audience in the form of an ‘opt-in’ freebie.
I’m going to show you how to do this using Flodesk & Flodesk’s Checkout feature!
What is Flodesk & Flodesk Checkout and why use it?
Flodesk is an email marketing platform, where you can build email lists, send email newsletters & campaigns to your subscribers, and set up email automations. It’s my favourite email marketing tool because it’s super intuitive to use, and they have a ‘fixed price’ model which means you pay the same monthly price no matter how many subscribers you have.
You can learn more about Flodesks’ email marketing features, comparisons with other platforms, and more details on my Ultimate Guide to Flodesk page.
As well as email marketing, Flodesk also has its new Flodesk Checkout feature. This allows you to build detailed landing pages for your opt-in freebies/lead magnets, and paid products and services, create sales funnels, and take payment all from within the platform. This really makes it become an all-in-one tool!
Try Flodesk! Get a 30 day free trial + 50% off your first year using my affiliate link!
Before you start: Set up Flodesk Checkout
If you’re already using Flodesk, you’ll need to head into your settings to upgrade to add Flodesk Checkout to your account.
Then, you can set up the ability to take payment through Flodesk Checkout by connecting Stripe. You can use an existing Stripe account, or create a new one here.
It will ask you a few questions about you and your business to verify, but it only takes 5 minutes to set up.
1. Set up your paid offer in Flodesk Checkout
Whether your paid offer is a product, one-to-one service, a live workshop, or digital product, you can use Flodesk Checkout to sell it!
First, you’ll want to create a segment for this product or service in the Audience > Segments area in Flodesk. Name it: ‘[Product/Service Name] Customer’ or something similar, to indicate that these are people who have paid for your offer.
In this example, my paid offer is a ‘Website Audit Service’, where people can pay me to do an audit of their website. I named my segment: ‘Website Audit Customer’.
Then, go to the Checkout area of Flodesk and start setting up your sales page! You can use one of Flodesk’s templates and customise everything about it - from colours, fonts and images, to entire blocks and sections. Just make sure to include a button, and this will automatically link people to the ‘checkout’ page.
As well as the sales page, you can also customise the ‘checkout’ page (the page people see once they click on the buttons on your sales page), and the ‘delivery’ page (the page people see once they’ve finished the checkout process).
I show how to do this, and the exact settings you need to make sure this connects correctly to your email marketing in this video tutorial!
Once you’re done, hit ‘publish’ and Flodesk will give you a link that you can share to take people straight to this webpage to buy your paid offer! No website needed.
2. Create an ‘opt-in’ freebie (aka ‘lead magnet’) that relates to your paid offer
One of the best ways to create that ‘nurture’ step of your sales funnel is to create something of high value that is relevant to your paid offer, and free for your audience to access.
It means your audience get something good quality that shows your expertise, and - when you set it up as an ‘opt-in’ freebie - it means you can get their email address in exchange so that you can nurture them via email as well.
What can you create as your freebie? Below are just some of the things you could offer:
A free masterclass
A free workbook or PDF
A free ebook
A free template or swipe file
A free video series
A free email course
There are loads of options! Just make sure it’s something related to your paid offer, and that it’s something where the next logical step for someone would be to get your paid offer.
In this example, the freebie I’ve created is a Website Audit Workbook PDF. It means my audience can download this, with some basic questions and prompts to help get them started. Then, if they’re confused or need extra help, they’ll be interested in my paid offer - my Website Audit service.
I created this free workbook in Canva which makes it really easy to design PDFs even if you’re not a designer!
3. Set up your freebie in Flodesk Checkout
Once you’ve created your freebie, head into the Audience > Segments area of Flodesk again and create a segment specifically for people who will sign up for this freebie. Eg. ‘Website Audit Freebie’.
Then head over to the Checkout area and create a new Checkout page - this time for your freebie, rather than a paid product!
You’ll need to select ‘make this free’ in the Checkout page settings to achieve this, and I show exactly how to set this up in this video tutorial.
4. Add your paid offer as an Upsell in your freebie Checkout process
This time, you’ll also want to add an ‘upsell’ to the checkout page! This is where we can promote your paid offer (eg. Website Audit service), with a discount (optional!), for people to add to the checkout page right while they’re on it.
If someone clicks on your upsell at the checkout, it will automatically add a payment details section to the contact details form, and allow you to take payment from the customer for that paid offer right there.
Then on the ‘delivery’ page, you can give details & link to your free download, AND display information about your paid offer upsell and what to do next for that as well. This will only display if someone purchases the upsell though, don’t worry.
Once you’re done, again hit ‘publish’ to get a link to this webpage that you can start sharing to get people to sign up for your freebie!
5. Create an email Workflow in Flodesk for your freebie delivery and sales funnel
As well as having your freebie available to download on the ‘delivery’ page, you can also send it automatically to anyone who signs up in an email as well. And I’d recommend this just in case people lose the page after they’ve signed up!
To create a delivery email, go into the Workflows area of Flodesk and create a new Workflow, as this is where you can set up automations in your email marketing. I’d recommend starting from scratch!
Set the ‘trigger’ as: When a subscriber is added to segment [your freebie segment].
Eg. When a subscriber is added to segment ‘Website Audit Freebie’.
Then as the first step in the Workflow, you want to send an email that has details about your freebie and a link/button to download.
We can then turn this Workflow into a sales funnel, by promoting your relevant paid offer after someone has received the freebie (just in case they didn’t purchase the upsell on the page).
To do this, first add a time delay - I’d recommend 1 or 2 days - so that the next email doesn’t just get sent immediately after the first freebie delivery email.
Then after the time delay, set it to send a new email, and in this email you can share details about your paid offer and why your audience might want/need this after having received your freebie! You can include a link or button that takes people to the Checkout page you set up for your paid offer at the beginning.
You could stop here and this would be a great, simple sales funnel.
However, what if someone DID buy your upsell on the checkout page? They probably don’t need to receive this email promoting your paid offer again!
Get a little more advanced with this sales funnel by adding in a ‘condition’ step, after the time delay step but before your promotional email.
You want to create a condition that only send the promotional email IF the subscriber is NOT already in your customer segment that we set up earlier (eg. ‘Website Audit Customer’).
I go into all this in-depth in this video tutorial if you’d like to follow along.
So there you have it, a paid off sales page, a freebie landing page, AND a simple sales funnel set up in an automated email workflow, all created without the need for a website or anything else, using Flodesk’s all-in-one email and Checkout platform!
