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It takes a lot of work to put together a SLO book funnel for your business. This article will explain the email marketing automation component, which actually constitutes a good portion of how your funnel runs.

First off, you may be wondering, “What the heck is a SLO funnel?”

This is a great question and up until a year ago, I knew of the concept of a SLO funnel, but not the actual name of one.

A SLO funnel is a low-ticket funnel that uses a book to generate leads for your business all while eliminating freebie seekers that drain the life from your business. SLO stands for “Self Liquidating Offer,” and if done correctly, eliminates advertising costs since your book sales cover the cost of ads while you make a profit on the backend of the funnel.

If you want to know what should go into your book funnel check out these blog posts Turning Your Book Into a High–Ticket Offer and Components Needed for a Successful Book Funnel

SLO Funnel Email Must-Haves

• Email service provider (ESP)
• Email tags
• Email automation sequence
• Purchase email
• Abandoned cart email sequence
• Upsell email sequence

Email Service Provider (ESP)

Signing up with an email service provider is the first step to take when creating the emails needed for your SLO funnel. In my opinion, you should have this well in advance of creating a book funnel so you can market to your warm audience.

Common email service providers include ConvertKit (my personal choice), MailChimp, and Active Campaign, but you can use whichever provider you’re comfortable with. Ideally, you should have a list of subscribers before you launch your book funnel, but don’t worry if you don’t. The way SLO funnels are set up allows you to build your list with the sales you make.

Email Tags

You’ll need to set up specific tags for your funnel in your email service provider depending on what you actually have in your funnel. The email tags are important because they are the basis for triggering your email marketing automations. You’ll want to have a tag for each product purchased and a non-purchase (or abandoned cart).

I suggest writing down your email tags in a Google Docs document and being very specific on how you label your products. You’ll want to pay particular attention to whether or not you’re using uppercase or lowercase when writing out your tags. The reason I suggest typing them out instead of writing them is 1) you have to make sure they are legible and 2) you’ll refer back to this document often when setting up your automations between your tech stack (e.g. sales cart, member’s area, email service provider).

Email Automation Sequence

For this section, you’re going to need a piece of paper to draw out the flow of your funnel. All the pieces can get confusing and you want to make sure you get your automation sequence right. If not, your customer journey will be affected and not in a good way.

Even after everything is set up and tested, there may still be some hiccups after you launch. Just take it in stride and fix the glitches as soon as you find them. For example, my email automation sequence was flawless for my launch of Write a Book, Build a Brand until I realized that people who bought my book weren’t logging into the member’s area to download their book. I finally figured out (from a customer I’m very grateful for) that while the email with the membership URL was sending, the username and password weren’t auto-populating in the email, meaning that no one knew how to log in! I quickly fixed that issue and sent out a mass correction email broadcast to people who had previously purchased.

What’s great about this experience is that it was caught early on in my launch when I didn’t have tons of sales per day. Could you imagine selling 100 books per day and no one knew how to log in to the member’s area to get what they paid for?

Here’s a snapshot of my email marketing sequence in ConvertKit. Your particular sequence will look different, so don’t be overwhelmed. As you can see email marketing automations can be very complex and long (I couldn’t even get the last part in the screenshot). This is why it’s so important to make sure your tags match up.

Purchase Email

The first email buyers need to receive (after their invoice) from you will be the email acknowledging their purchase and your book’s login or download details. (On a side note, I recommend housing your book and all ancillary products in a dedicated member’s area instead of providing a direct link for download).

In this email, you’ll also want to include the link to your Facebook group if you have one and maybe a shameless plug for the upsell in your funnel. Here’s a sample of a purchase email you can use for your funnel:

Subject: 

Welcome to the XYZ method! 

Body: 

Hey there! 

XYZ here and I’d like to welcome you to XYZ!

You’re in! 

A few steps…

1. Go download the XYZ book here: [ADD LINK FOR DOWNLOAD AFTER PURCHASE]. The account details for your member’s area are as follows: 

Username: [Username]

Password: [Password]

2. Next, join our private Facebook group. [Add FB LINK HERE]
3. Lastly, go here to get the [OTO 1] if you haven’t done so already.

By the way, [OTO #1] comes with a 100% money-back guarantee. If you’re not happy for any reason – just let me know and we’ll fully refund you right away. 

If you need any support help, feel free to reach us at: SUPPORT EMAIL HERE 

Regards, 
YOUR NAME HERE

As you can see, the email contains everything a new buyer needs to get started; a warm welcome from you, login details for the member’s area, the link for your private group, a gentle reminder about your upsell, and lastly, contact details in case they need more assistance.

Abandoned Cart Email Sequence

Having an abandoned cart email sequence in place is absolutely necessary to capture buyers interested, but just didn’t purchase for some reason. Using an abandoned cart email sequence with about 4-5 emails will keep your book fresh on their mind the following days after looking at your sales page.

Conversions from abandoned cart emails can surprise you. Just make sure you have this important sequence in your email marketing campaign.

Upsell Email Sequence

Another crucial email sequence needed in your automation is the upsell email sequence. This email sequence is for buyers of your book who didn’t opt-in for your upsell. Give buyers about a week to read your book then trigger this sequence. The reason you want to give buyers about a week is that it’s long enough to read your book and at this point, they will be primed and ready to take the next step that your book leads them to.

Ok, there you have it – 6 email must-haves for your SLO book funnel. I hope this article helped clear up any ambiguity about the email automation process.

If you have any questions or thoughts about email automation, let me know your thoughts!