Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:08

Hello, Bootstrappers. Welcome to Bootstrap Web episode 27. It's the show for business owners who believe that to get to where we're going, we have to learn by doing. I'm Brian Casel, and I do this podcast to share real world case studies and lessons learned from the trenches of a bootstrap startup. You can find the backlog episodes over on my site castjam.com and you'll find the show notes for this episode by going to castjam.com/20seven.

Brian Casel: 00:33

So this week, I've been working on our sales funnel for restaurant well, I guess I'm always working on our sales funnel for restaurant engine, but specifically, our email automation sequence. So what I'm talking about is, you know so once a person enters their email on one of our opt in forms on our website, what happens after that? I've been looking at kind of upgrading from Mailchimp to maybe Infusionsoft or one of these other tools out there, which would basically allow me to go beyond kind of a basic auto responder and get more into like true marketing automation. I've been really interested in this for a long time, but I haven't fully done it myself. I mean, I'm still kinda learning here, but, you know, learn by doing as always.

Brian Casel: 01:16

Right? So what we mean by marketing automation is like a tag based approach. Instead of having just a list and maybe a second list or another list, one big group of of subscribers and they're all kind of tagged based on certain interests or events that they've triggered that they've done on your site or opened certain emails and things like that. Basically, subscribers can then receive a much more targeted and personalized message at just the right time. So that's what I'm trying to learn how to do and and I'm trying to implement that in my business right now.

Brian Casel: 01:51

And it's funny because, you know, I I didn't plan it out this way, but my guest today happens to be an email automation expert. Dan Fagella joins me today to drop some knowledge on what he on on what this email automation stuff is really all about all about. So, in fact, he was actually nice enough to share his screen with me today and actually walk me through the back end of his Infusionsoft account. He's actually showing us how he set up his email automation sequences for his website. So I just love case studies like this where we actually get to kinda like look over someone's shoulder and see how they're doing it in their business.

Brian Casel: 02:29

So that's right. So today, I mean, this of course is an audio podcast but you can find the video version of this conversation over on my site. So, if you visit the post for this episode, you'll be able to see our conversation on video and I highly recommend that you do because the audio alone won't do it justice. Again, you're gonna actually see Dan's screen and he's gonna walk us through his whole setup there. So you can get that by going to castjam.com/20seven.

Brian Casel: 02:57

Let's get right into it. Here's my conversation today with Dan Pagella. Okay. So I'm here with Dan Fagella. Dan, thanks for thanks for joining me today on the show.

Daniel Faggella: 03:10

Of course, my man. Thanks very much for having me.

Brian Casel: 03:12

Alright. So, you know, I'm really excited about this because it you know, you actually caught me at just the right week. We I mean, we scheduled this, you know, a month or so ago. Shit. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 03:21

We did. Actually, to like, today and this very week, I've personally been working on my email marketing automation, totally kind of revamping the whole sequence, all the all the logic, you know, the emails that that new customers are getting or prospects are getting before they become customers and all that. So this is great. I mean, you're you're kind of like the expert when it comes to this stuff. I I I caught you on Mixergy.

Brian Casel: 03:43

You've been, you know, hitting up all all the podcasts and things. So Sure. That's definitely your space, and and we're here to kinda learn from you today. And so, you know, before we get into and by the way, for those listening, this show is a little bit special because today, we're actually gonna be doing in addition to the audio podcast, there is a video version of this. And here in a little bit, we're gonna actually flip on the screen sharing and and take a look at something that that Dan has been working on.

Brian Casel: 04:09

So but you know, before we get into that, let's just kinda hear a little bit about your story. So who are you and and what are your businesses and what do do?

Daniel Faggella: 04:17

Yeah. Yeah, man. So yeah. My name is Dan Fagella again. I I run I run a few businesses up here in Cambridge.

Daniel Faggella: 04:23

So I'm I'm in a I'm a big building called the Cambridge Innovation Center which has got 500 startups or so in it and working with software companies and things like that with our consultancy called CLV Boost where we focus on customer lifetime value with marketing automation and email marketing. But I also run a number of different niche sites in sort of the, you know, selling of video courses and training materials. I'm originally a martial artist. I don't know if you knew that, but I sort of came up in the martial arts game. I did the national championship thing for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, got my black belt, you know, hung enough gold shiny stuff on a wall to, you know, sell some expertise on on the web there.

Daniel Faggella: 04:56

And, you know, I started off in a really small town, so there weren't that many martial arts students. I had a pretty successful gym which I I successfully sold, which is my first kinda little little exit there when we got to close to a 100 students. But in order to really kind of step things up when I moved to Boston, wanted a really location independent online business and I applied my same marketing automation lessons with Infusionsoft and the other softwares to pulling in all martial artists, anybody interested in grappling. And that's really where things kinda blew up in terms of rev for us and where other people sort of wanted to tune in and learn from us and things like that. So the way I came up in the game is just, you know, organically grinded it out with the businesses I had and found my sweet spot and now that's that's what we do, man.

Daniel Faggella: 05:34

I'm a marketing automation man.

Brian Casel: 05:35

Very cool. So now you're origin like, looking back, you know, at the very beginning, you had the local martial arts gym. You know, like, local students coming in. You know, this is not Internet. This is like No.

Brian Casel: 05:46

Actually real people in in a room.

Daniel Faggella: 05:48

Cute. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 05:49

So so back then, I mean, did you actually get into like online marketing to get clients locally at that point? Or did you get it more into that as you got into like the info products?

Daniel Faggella: 05:59

You know, honestly, I really had to master. And and now, I mean, I'm work with every single kind of business, but that was a good example for me because in a town of 8,000 people, you really have to be very good at follow-up in order to consistently get a lot of students because you run out of actual human leads very quickly. And I talk about this all the time. My small town, it was, you know, it was really at a certain point, realized how low a population density we had and I realized that I'd like, if there's anything I need to master, it's acquiring leads initially and following up with them really succinctly because otherwise, I will fresh run out of people. If we get in touch with them and we don't get them in the door, if we, you know, get them in the door once but then we can't follow them up with them succinctly.

Daniel Faggella: 06:43

So mastering marketing automation was something that I scrapped and scrambled with when I only had probably, you know, 40 students. I was paying for UPenn grad school where I got my masters in in applied positive psych and I could have got a job or I could have kept running my tiny gym. And I was like, wow, I gotta get beyond 40 students. So it really kicked in the marketing automation expertise. My real my real neurotic pursuit of maximal profit per prospect came from my experience growing in a small service based business.

Daniel Faggella: 07:11

And then of course, we scaled those same lessons to really bigger heights. But that's where it all began right then and there.

Brian Casel: 07:16

Very cool. And so, you know, I just wanna kinda slow down for just a second Sure. And and kinda reiterate what we're actually talking about when we say marketing automation.

Daniel Faggella: 07:24

We're Yeah.

Brian Casel: 07:24

We're kinda going beyond the basic newsletter with Mailchimp and taking it a step further. And and, like, you know, marketing automation based on actions that prospects are taking, sending them a a specific personalized sequence of emails. A lot of kinda like if then logic, you know, if if they take a certain action, send them a certain sequence or send them a certain tailored message and that kind of thing. So so really kind of, hunkering down and tweaking every little aspect of the entire sequence.

Daniel Faggella: 07:54

Very much so. Yeah. So, you know, just the basics for the folks tuning in and thanks, Brock, because sometimes I'll get carried away. I use terms that I just assume everybody will understand. Marketing automation is actually a pretty easy one, yeah, we had a kids program in mixed martial arts and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and people would come in for different benefits.

Daniel Faggella: 08:11

So some of them wanted to be competitors, they wanted to they wanted to get in shape. So our initial front end free delivery courses, our initial follow-up sequences would be calibrated per their needs and desires, per the program they're interested in. And then of course, if they stop becoming a student, we have a past student retention sequence and that would differ per program, whatever program they were in. We want to call them back to the kids program, call them back to the jujitsu program, and in student, you know, while they were a student program to encourage retention. Those were all calibrated per program.

Daniel Faggella: 08:41

So yeah, so very tailored messaging that went on consistently to encourage either attainments or retention or kind of yeah. Or getting them back if they dropped out sequences of of dealing with with physical prospects.

Brian Casel: 08:54

Yep. Yeah. You know, and and it's really interesting. I was just talking to a friend about this today. As you start to look at your marketing system and and the sequences of emails and and the touch points and even even when you get onto the, like, phone calls and in person sales and stuff, it's interesting to hear you talk about how, you know, back back in your first business, you had just a town of, like, 8,000 people and you had to really make the most of every single lead.

Daniel Faggella: 09:17

Oh, yeah.

Brian Casel: 09:18

And in in my business with Restaurant Engine, I'm I'm working through something right now where we have a lot of kind of leads filling up the top of the funnel, but I feel like the things that we've been doing, like, would just call up a new lead, you know, just within days of them entering our email list. And I'm starting to realize that, you know, they're not getting the right message at the right time. We we haven't done a good enough job of moving them past all of the hurdles, you know, whether it's like educate you know, educating and kind of communicating benefits, connecting to their specific need. It's important like, that's where what why all this is important because, you know, email email automation marketing automation allows you to kinda move a prospect ahead in in the sales cycle and give them the right messages at the right time when they're ready. Right?

Brian Casel: 10:05

You know, it's Yeah.

Daniel Faggella: 10:06

Yeah. That's the idea.

Brian Casel: 10:07

Because if you if you kinda if you kinda hit them, you know, too early or you you know, or or you're kinda like saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, it can turn them off and then they won't even come back.

Daniel Faggella: 10:16

Certainly. And and I always use this example but you know, anybody that's worth their weight in celery salt is testing, right? Everybody say, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, know, everybody reads the Lean Startup and you know, we all feel pretty cool about that. So you know, you're testing your ad copy for your front end pay per click, you're testing your landing pages, you're testing your video on your landing pages because you're so sophisticated, maybe even button colors, but the same 12 emails get sent out to everybody no matter what. I mean, how's that for neglect of testing?

Daniel Faggella: 10:47

So in terms of that level of calibration, in my opinion, it's it's the largest oversight And the in in my personal opinion, I mean, if you gave me the choice of you can optimize your landing page as much as you want or you can optimize your back end as much as you want, there's a lot more richness and there's a lot more money in the back end so long as we're really adding depth to it. So, yeah, there's richness to be had there. There's variations to test. There's calibrations to tweak to make sure that whatever type of person, whatever lead source, whatever reason they came there for, you can convert that individual person in a tailored fashion and and increase your profits by just tweaking the back end. So certainly certainly an important lesson.

Brian Casel: 11:24

Absolutely. And so just kinda hearing more about what you're doing today. I mean, you you have your martial arts business which is, so originally, it was kind of a brick and mortar, you know, working directly with people in person. Yep. Your your more recent one is science of skill and that's kind of like info products video courses.

Brian Casel: 11:41

That right?

Daniel Faggella: 11:41

Yeah. Yeah. So again, I went to yeah. I did I did a number of different things in martial arts, so I wasn't just kind of a punchy kicky kind of guy. I did the Again, won the Nogi Pan Ams when I was a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, so kind of a submission grappler guy in that respect.

Daniel Faggella: 11:56

I a lot of absolute divisions where I fought a lot of people that were significantly bigger than me and that stuff caught on on YouTube and whatnot. Everybody likes kinda seeing the little guy choke out a big guy, right, or break his leg or whatever, right? So people like that kind of thing. But then I also went to UPenn for skill development as a concentration for my positive psychology master's degree and I sort of combined the science of skill, name of the site, mind you, with the real understanding of training methodology and technique in Jiu Jitsu to help other people learn faster. So I started that off just because, hey, I was I was teaching seminars, you know, up and down the East Coast and now, you know, we've taught stuff in Oklahoma and all over the place.

Daniel Faggella: 12:31

So, you know, you put a camera on that and we found that if we taught it properly, we added curriculums to it, people would wanna buy it. So yes, that's information products is that business now.

Brian Casel: 12:40

Very cool. And so then now you're you're kinda taking it a step further and taking this email automation stuff that you've had success with in your martial arts business to a broader clientele. So just all all sorts of businesses. Is that right?

Daniel Faggella: 12:53

Big time. Yeah. Yeah. So so now, you know, we we applied it to our own online business. Now I run multiple online businesses and where CLV Boost is our consultancy where we're primarily now working with companies that wanna scale.

Daniel Faggella: 13:05

So a lot of the time this is it might be an existing consultancy that can really kind of, you know, that's got some legs underneath them and they're really growing, expanding, growing offices, whatever the case may be. So service business do apply, lot of the time it's software folks, but yeah, these are lessons that very much extend beyond the small town I came from.

Brian Casel: 13:22

Gotcha. And so from what I understand, you're an Infusionsoft user, is that right?

Daniel Faggella: 13:28

Yep. Yeah. I mean, I can I can leverage any of the systems? I mean, marketing is marketing to me and and because I live inside these software, you know, a lot of the time software is software to be frank. But Infusionsoft is one of the many tools that I use to help folks make bucks.

Daniel Faggella: 13:40

Yeah.

Brian Casel: 13:40

Cool. So, I mean, when it comes to email marketing, I think everybody knows that the big the big ones, the Mailchimp, Constant Contacts, a even Aweber. The I I kinda consider those, tier one basic level email marketing. And then you get to, like, a a much more complex. You've got Infusionsoft.

Brian Casel: 13:57

I'm actually in the process of of testing out a few of these different things. I'm looking at Vero. There is

Daniel Faggella: 14:03

Yeah. I wouldn't. But yeah.

Brian Casel: 14:05

Yeah? Okay.

Daniel Faggella: 14:05

Well, I I don't think I thought it was like, I don't know, Three guys in the base. Don't know. I mean, you know, nothing but respect, but, you know

Brian Casel: 14:11

You know, that that's actually a good question because I've been kind of comparing a number of these things. I mean, there's Infusionsoft, Vero, there's, like, customer.io EntrePort, which Yeah.

Daniel Faggella: 14:23

Mean, I don't Me personally, I don't go with email software programs that are run by like four guys, you know, or eight guys or something just because I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't have a billing company that's run by four guys. What if like one of them gets in a car accident? You know, it's a startup company like depending on collecting money and you know, doing my core marketing. Me personally, I I just don't play games.

Daniel Faggella: 14:40

So I'm gonna Yeah, work know, that

Brian Casel: 14:41

that is a big concern that I've had. Looking

Daniel Faggella: 14:43

at Yeah, lot of games don't play games with that, period. You know, when they grow, great. Know, got nothing to respect for them but you know, I ain't using it. I ain't relying on it. I mean, you know, I like Infusion, they're gonna go public pretty soon.

Daniel Faggella: 14:52

They're you know, I've got they're probably pretty stable. Right? But, you know, that's just my personal feeling.

Brian Casel: 14:58

So, you know, as you're looking at at these different tools, I mean, is there really much of a difference aside from like the size of the company and and and the backing and and the and the reliability, I mean, obviously, that's a very important difference. But, like, feature wise, what what kind of separates in you know, for people who are somewhat new to this thing, what really separates Mailchimp from Infusionsoft? And then what separates, like, Infusionsoft from the other ones of of that tier, like the EmailMark automation stuff?

Daniel Faggella: 15:23

Totally. Pardot and other bigger software. So Mhmm. Basically, to break it down into really simple terms, I mean, and again, I you know, anyone that's we're calling a quote unquote tier one, I have nothing but respect, again, for all the little guys. I love the little guys.

Daniel Faggella: 15:36

The world needs them and Fusion Soft started as a couple of guys in the basement. Me personally, I wouldn't have bought from them then. I will buy from them now. Right? So I respect the grind.

Daniel Faggella: 15:43

I love entrepreneurship. But I just know that my whole business leans on my marketing and I wanna go with somebody that can support that. So, tier one, so, a company like Mailchimp who again, Mailchimp does a fantastic job doing what they do and Mailchimp also has nice very pretty looking templates and they do a good job. It's primarily with Mailchimp, you have the ability to put somebody on sort of an automated train of emails. So basic front end, automated follow-up or a quote unquote drip campaign.

Daniel Faggella: 16:10

And then they also have the ability to send out broadcast. So you can do some level of segmentation and you can send some broadcast to let's say this group that came in through this web form and some broadcast to this group that came in through this web form. Generally, Aweber and Constant Contact are in about the same level of functionality. For some businesses that will cut the mustard. But eventually, anybody that's going to really have email be sort of core driver of their business and wants to engage in additional automation, oftentimes they'll sort of move along to a slightly more functional software.

Daniel Faggella: 16:38

So a great example of something other folks might want to tune into, is Entraport and Infusionsoft. So some additional functionality there might be, you know, if they click this, then these other emails will kick off. Or if they click this, but then they don't click this, then they'll be reminded of the second one again three days later. You can calibrate and segment all of that automation in different ways. In addition to having more, behaviorally targeted front end sequences, ultimately can yield more money if you know what you're doing with them, in addition to that, you could also do better, pulling up of groups.

Daniel Faggella: 17:10

So I mentioned in Mailchimp, we could find everybody that came in through this web form and we could send them a broadcast. Hey, Facebook folks. You know, I know you found us online and but and we can talk to them as who they are. With Entrepreneur and Fusion Soft or some of these slightly more advanced programs, I can look up a whole bunch of data. I can find everybody that's been on my list for thirty days that has this tag because they've clicked for this interest and they also are from one of these three lead sources.

Daniel Faggella: 17:34

Boom. And I can pull all them in. And that allows me to snipe my broadcast messaging. See, I talk about the difference between red button emails and targeted broadcast emails. So red button email is the the big red button on your desk that just says blast.

Daniel Faggella: 17:48

Right. You just go wham, you just crank your whole list with one big old message. Right? And everybody gets a little sick of that and ultimately, we all know it's not as calibrated as it should be, but it's email, it's free, so we sort of get away with it. But once you start taking email really seriously and once you start honestly calibrating ROI per email, just like real serious direct response marketers do with physical mail, then you will want to snipe your broadcast just like you snipe your front end marketing.

Daniel Faggella: 18:14

So Infusionsoft, Entraport, sort of those tier two products, they allow for more richness in both automation and in database marketing. Right. Hopefully, that makes sense.

Brian Casel: 18:22

Yeah. Totally. So, know, it just gets much more personalized based on the the the person's interest, the actions that they've triggered in the past that they've kind of demonstrated and that results in a in a certain sequence of emails at the right time. So let's actually kinda dive in and take a look at what this stuff kind of looks like. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 18:41

So, I mean, you know, if you're up for it, we can kinda look at your your martial arts business and

Daniel Faggella: 18:45

Let's poke

Brian Casel: 18:46

around, man.

Daniel Faggella: 18:46

Let's do it. I'm gonna log in for you right now.

Brian Casel: 18:49

Okay. And can you share your

Daniel Faggella: 18:52

screen? Yeah. I'll screen share it up. Yeah. Let me just make sure I got the right screen up here.

Daniel Faggella: 18:57

Okay. I'm gonna go into campaign builder. So what I'll show everybody now, this is cool Brian, is I'm gonna go into let's see here. I'm gonna go into some of our front end marketing sequences and just show show some people. So I'm gonna hop into one right now just so everybody can see it.

Brian Casel: 19:18

I'll make I'm sure I kinda curious like, very first step, someone discovers you, they've never heard of you before, maybe like through like a Google search. Yeah. Yeah. What happens from there?

Daniel Faggella: 19:28

Okay. So in in we'll we'll use we'll expand these lessons to more illustrious business models, but this is our our nice little, very profitable, relatively hands off. We'll we'll want it to be martial arts business. You know, this is like our Tim Ferriss business, right? So but it's a nice example because we actually got into some pretty serious depth with this.

Daniel Faggella: 19:47

But I'll show some simple front end functionality and then we'll get into a little bit more advanced. So start. Okay, great. So let's check it out. Am I sharing screen on this thing here?

Brian Casel: 19:59

Let's see.

Daniel Faggella: 20:00

Share screen. Double click. There we go. How's this? Okay, got it.

Daniel Faggella: 20:06

Nice. Yep. Okay, great. So so cool. So this is this is us inside of one of one of my Infusionsoft campaigns.

Daniel Faggella: 20:15

So Infusionsoft, there's there's different language in different software. Some people say broadcast, some people say newsletter, some people say both, some you know, it's it's a little bit unique. But in Infusionsoft, a campaign is essentially a designated little set of automation that sort of relates to another set of automations. So when we're here, we'll we'll talk primarily about so I'm I'm in edit mode here. So when somebody the DVG is a program we have called David versus Goliath.

Daniel Faggella: 20:44

So I'm a very I'm kind of a smaller martial arts guy. I'm I'm really like, I was never all that big and strong and that's why I never played basketball. Did Jiu Jitsu instead. So we have a program called David versus Goliath which is really about beating bigger opponents. And I teach a lot of the techniques I've used in tournaments and things like that.

Daniel Faggella: 20:58

So if somebody comes in through a web form, Brian, and they get this tag DVG opt in,

Brian Casel: 21:03

which You is one of my know, real quick, can we like quickly like see your site like where on your site would they Yes.

Daniel Faggella: 21:10

Science. Let let me let me go for scienceofskills. So let's let's check this out, okay? So scienceofskill.com. This is a website from back in the old days but we get some really solid traffic and a lot of list building from this site so we can kind of dig into it from here.

Daniel Faggella: 21:25

So if you're on Sciences, can you see me now? Yeah. Fantastic. So check this out. So you might go click on this banner up at the top.

Daniel Faggella: 21:32

We have kind of an e book or sort of a white paper equivalent which is a breakdown of seven essential escape techniques for a smaller or lightweight grappler.

Brian Casel: 21:41

Very cool. You're on the home page, you got like a a pretty prominent call out right at the top, takes you to this targeted landing page.

Daniel Faggella: 21:47

Yep. Targeted landing page right here. And then once they land on this targeted landing page, really the only thing to do is you know, opt in. So they'll enter their name and information and then of course, they'll submit and they'll get their PDF, right? Gotcha.

Daniel Faggella: 21:58

Now once they get their PDF, oftentimes we'll present them with offers and there's a lot of thank you page strategy we could kind of delve into or whatever else. But this is what will put them into a very fundamental, very very simple front end automated sequence which we're gonna talk about right now. So check it out. So they get that tag when they opt in. So this is the DVG opt in tag.

Daniel Faggella: 22:19

There's a number of other tags that they get from that one web form specifically. We'll tag them for what they downloaded, we'll tag them for whatever criterion we want. We'll tag them as coming from my blog so we can tell that they're a blog lead because I might want to pull up all my blog leads and send them specific messages or figure out the ROI per blog leads as opposed to Facebook and those are very interesting stats to know. Infusionsoft allows me to do that. Inside the sequence, as I double click, this is just a very basic cut This is

Brian Casel: 22:46

basic? Okay.

Daniel Faggella: 22:47

Yeah. No. No. It is. It is.

Daniel Faggella: 22:48

Trust me. Trust me. No. This is this is very much in fact, we we've recently redone a number of campaigns that actually simplified some things. So this is just a common string.

Daniel Faggella: 22:57

So someone will hop in, they'll get a first email, they'll get a second email, they'll a third email, and then there's timers in between all these emails. So they'll, you know, they'll they'll receive a message and then it'll wait however long we want. In our initial front end sequences for this particular niche in business, I do other things in other niches in businesses, I do other things for software. This is just one example. We wait a day before we send another thing.

Daniel Faggella: 23:18

So this happens to be kind of a hobby space. A lot of b to c type markets where it's something that's fun for folks, you can really, promote a lot and, you know, do a lot of education, fun videos, and testimonials, and it's something that's engaging. It will actually be able to maintain a decent, high open rate even with a high frequency. And I like high frequency early because it gives us a chance to sell things.

Brian Casel: 23:38

Gotcha. So these emails, are they can we see like one

Daniel Faggella: 23:41

of Yeah. The We're gonna dive right in. So let's check out. So normally for a first email, right, This is welcome to MicroBGJ, please read this. So this says, hey, I'm Dan Fajella, blah, blah.

Daniel Faggella: 23:51

So basically, here's what happens in a first email. So this is if if you're going to have if you're gonna sell via follow-up alone, so so let me give you an example here. And there's all sorts of best practices and one of my jobs now is case studies. So I do case studies on all sorts of fancy dancy companies. But if you're selling b to c and and you're you're initially acquiring a lead without explicit reference to a product off the bat, oftentimes an initial good solid template for a first email is a very obvious, title of the email making it very clear that you're getting whatever you downloaded or this is me from this place.

Daniel Faggella: 24:27

I don't like to make it mysterious. I don't say like, hey, Billy, now you're here. It's like, what? Who is this? And what am I here for?

Daniel Faggella: 24:34

It's like welcome to Microbiote. It really doesn't get that much more simple. So then from here, what I'm doing essentially is I'm introducing myself. I'm talking about my expertise and I'm talking about what they're gonna learn from me. I'm delivering what I told them they would get for free, which is right here, or which is one of these links in this majigger.

Daniel Faggella: 24:51

And then and in addition to that, we're pre framing what they're going to learn moving forward, and I even have a tiny CTA at the bottom for an initial front end offer. So then again, this is, know, there's certain businesses where I wouldn't do this. There's certain businesses where I would. My consultancy, I stay away from kind of, I do a lot more qualifying before people will touch me. But in this business, I ain't gotta touch them.

Daniel Faggella: 25:14

They just have to click a button. So sometimes we'll have CTAs relatively early on. Anyway, moving along. If we go into other other emails, we might have more sort of education based emails. Some of these might involve interviews with world champions or something like that.

Daniel Faggella: 25:27

So oftentimes we'll be teaching individual lessons. So lightweight grapplers, how expert advice can supercharge your game. So we talk about, so here's our CTA for one of our main front end offers. And then we'll talk about some tenants and principles of skill development, things along those lines. And this is really kind of more hardcore CTA style, bigger links, a lot of people are reading on mobile.

Daniel Faggella: 25:48

You'll see our emails are generally narrow just for this particular niche. It's what we've chosen to do.

Brian Casel: 25:54

So I mean, links there, they're pointing to products on your site?

Daniel Faggella: 25:58

Yeah. Sales pages. Yeah. Individual sales pages. And again, those are generally free trials to membership programs or initial DVD courses or things like that.

Daniel Faggella: 26:06

Normally, we're aiming to fill up our front end membership program. So this business is at a little bit above $40 a month run rate for relatively nominal effort and at the same time we're going to aim to get it to 60 or 70 and then cash it out within a couple months here by really pumping up the pay per click. And the only reason we could spend a lot of money on pay per click, Rye, is because we have sequences that convert people. Right? I mean, if you're if you convert one in a 100, man, you you you really gotta be paying low for pay per click.

Daniel Faggella: 26:32

But we can sort of dump the money on there and ladle them in because we know that we'll have conversions in the back. So we move down to some other sequences. What I do here, just to give you an example, this is a fun a fun little what I call a roller coaster where we go into, you know, some initial offerings. So a lot of these initial emails are a lot of sort of offer oriented content, but then we'll go right back into education and we'll go into educational videos. There will be no reference of selling.

Daniel Faggella: 26:56

We'll talk about interviews, fun things that people can learn, and then we'll dip again into an offer. And this offer might have a slightly different bonus. So let me check this one here and I'm gonna see if this fits the bill for what I'm trying to explain to you here. So the talent code yada yada yada.

Brian Casel: 27:10

So just what I'm like on that diagram, basically I'm seeing like three lines and does that basically it's all one sequence, right?

Daniel Faggella: 27:16

Like it's is all all one It's one continued sequence, but basically this top line that I've just done this for my own aesthetic purposes. So this top line generally this top line references one particular offer and it gives a bunch of education. This second line references a different kind of stepped up offer and then other additional education. And then this bottom line is a totally separate offer that involves a binder and some other different products and services and what have you. And then I've represented it as another line.

Daniel Faggella: 27:45

So you can you can really skin the cat however many ways you want. I visually represented it this way because I have a kind of a three humped roller coaster as I like to call it, where we we we oscillate between offer and education slash testimonial content in three different ways because that helps us get the credit card out. A lot of people really fail, Bry, in the information marketing world and otherwise because their email sequences are six or 12 emails long and then it's give up time. For us, we we really don't like to give up especially on our core programs that really hold the roof over our head. So so we have sequences that are illustrious.

Daniel Faggella: 28:18

We have every single sales page that we have in here is being split tested. So all of our core sales pages is the Osmosis system. It's a a more of an in-depth skill development program that we mail out to folks or they can download digitally or what have you. And you know, any of these core sales pages in our core funnel are all being split tested. So we dump enough traffic through the top and we always know how to refine and tweak and have those checkpoints of refinement.

Daniel Faggella: 28:42

So we don't just have a sequence that hopefully does good. We have a sequence that does better and better every month. That's the ideal.

Brian Casel: 28:48

So, I mean, in in this in this kind of case study that we're looking at here, it's basically one long sequence. Right? Like, is Like, they're not so, like, the like, the top line, like, the first section comes first and then they're gonna get the next sequence of Yep. Of events and then the next one. So like what happens are there any like kind of like Oh, It's in behavioral yeah.

Daniel Faggella: 29:09

Behavioral stuff. So and there's all sorts of sequence where we get deeper into that. So one example that we have for a lot of our front end sequences like this one, although I'm not sure if we have it for DVG anymore. But if if like, we can we can attach a tag to specific links in emails. So if they click directly to an order form, we know that they click to an order form and if no purchase for that product goes through within four hours, we can send out a support email that will say, hey, you know, saw you ended up on the order form.

Daniel Faggella: 29:35

I just wanna make sure everything was right. Here's the page you are just on. Let me, you know, let me know if there's anything at all I can help with. Know, I'm happy to to, you know, to serve and and do whatever might be helpful. So that's a way to sort of generate now conversation and people will bring up objections.

Daniel Faggella: 29:50

They'll ask questions about the security of their credit card. They'll ask if we have a PayPal option. And a lot of the time, that'll get people in the front door for a purchase because we're giving them a level of calibrated response. We're addressing the fact that they had a concern or they were a little bit tentative, and we're calibrating.

Brian Casel: 30:06

Okay. So we're recording.

Daniel Faggella: 30:08

Okay.

Brian Casel: 30:08

So Yeah. Can you just go ahead and share your screen again? So we have Sure. Yeah. For those listening, we had a little cut out there on Skype.

Brian Casel: 30:14

So we're gonna try to pick it back up here. Cool. So we yeah. We were kinda looking at like, the sequence for for for DBG. That's a particular opt in that launches into a whole whole string of emails.

Brian Casel: 30:27

Yes. And each one kinda, like, leads in somewhere kinda it's like a mix of educational, mix of pointing to a particular product on your site. Very cool. So, like, how how do we get into some of the more behavioral stuff? So like you said, someone clicks to a checkout page or or do you do things where, like, a user opens up a particular category of product emails and targeting more more of that type of product to the person or

Daniel Faggella: 30:52

Yes. Completely. So, Brian, I mean, there's a million examples here. One thing that we do every week, so I'm gonna show you an upsell sequence. It's a little bit more advanced.

Daniel Faggella: 31:00

So when somebody does buy this product at the end of this chain that you're looking at here so this is the if we go back

Brian Casel: 31:08

Oh, actually okay. So one question on that. So I I mean, I saw a whole string of emails and and a number of them were linking to products. Yes. If they were to click okay.

Brian Casel: 31:17

So let's say that there's like 30 emails in that sequence and on on email number 15, they were to click and buy a product. Yep. Does that essentially take them out of that sequence and bring them into something new?

Daniel Faggella: 31:27

Yeah. Yes. It does. So that that is triggered by a core purchase. So the core purchase of the product that we're aiming to sell is the David versus Goliath program.

Daniel Faggella: 31:35

All three of those offers relate to the DVG program because it's our highest return on investment. It's our core membership program. It's really our flagship course. And it's responsible for most of the tens of thousands of dollars that kinda hit the bank account every month from this little internet, little fun web business here. So we really focus on that.

Daniel Faggella: 31:54

Now when they do buy that, they will be lifted from there and they will be placed into a series of other offers. One of our various upsell sequences, we just dig into one of my guys recently, helps to kind of build out some of these functionalities. So I'll be able to explain a little bit more of what I'm talking about here. But so check it out. So when they purchase, let's say a particular front end offering, we could go into absolutely all the triggering that's happening here and we could take until you know, Thanksgiving and next year or I could just give you a kind of an overlay of how this works and just you know, make it pretty evident that this stuff is more than helpful.

Daniel Faggella: 32:27

So you know, if they order a particular product, they can be put into one of two initial upsell sequences. So one of these upsell sequences promotes a particular product and this sequence will be let's say six or seven emails long and this sequence will end if they purchase that product or if they get to the end of this sequence without purchasing. If they get to the end of the sequence without purchasing, they'll be hit with this tag which you see my little mouse swerving around and they'll be hit with this tag. At which point, they'll be dumped into the next sequence which is the giant killer course up here. And then, you know, in this sequence, they have the opportunity to buy.

Daniel Faggella: 33:04

We're providing educational content, all sorts of material. If they do buy, they get booted out of it and they go on to the next one. If they don't buy, then they'll just move on to the next one regardless. So when they do purchase, we pull them out right away. If they don't purchase, they ride the whole chain until they go to the next offer.

Daniel Faggella: 33:19

If they already have this product, this one is called aggressive guard pass. If they already have it, they will skip this product and they'll go to the next one. All of that is set up through automation. So essentially, Brian, what we're doing here is we're setting up an upsell chain that takes people through a variety of price points and and, most desirable products that we have and presents them with them in sequence, never promoting anything that they've already spent money on because we want them to have a great experience.

Brian Casel: 33:44

Gotcha. Okay.

Daniel Faggella: 33:46

This is one this is one semblance of functionality and build out, not necessarily the most complicated thing I've done, but it gives you the idea of how you can rotate a lot of core products and offerings and really make the most in terms of profit per prospect.

Brian Casel: 33:58

Very cool. So I mean, know, just looking at the screen, you know, for the first time, it it can seem a little bit daunting. But obviously, when you're working in it, you know, every day, you you know all the kind all the nuances, all the ins and outs, and how it all works.

Daniel Faggella: 34:10

Completely. Completely. And it's really not rocket science.

Brian Casel: 34:12

Yep. Yeah. Totally. So, I mean, like, a day to day basis, like, what are you doing as you log in to Infusionsoft? Like, what are, like, the kind of the daily tasks that you're doing?

Brian Casel: 34:20

Like, you looking at reporting, analytics, making tweaks? Like, what

Daniel Faggella: 34:24

are you So so at at this point and and for this business, honestly, not maybe as much as you think inside Infusionsoft. I'm really focusing on client stuff and sort of bigger projects. But for this particular business, examples of what we might be doing, a lot of the reporting for how well our Squeeze and Sales Pages are performing, we do through optimization tools like Visual Website Optimizer and programs along those lines. Inside of Infusionsoft, one task that I am commonly doing and I'm doing on a pretty regular basis is sending out individual targeted broadcast messaging. So Brian, you brought up a great point.

Daniel Faggella: 34:58

If somebody purchases a certain type of product, won't we wanna rotate more of those kinds of things in front of them because it seems to be what they really like? And yes, you're completely correct there. So at the beginning of every week, I go through at the beginning of every week and month, I go through a standard operating procedure of our broadcast messaging where I sift through various segments and sub segments of the list and promote specific educational and promotional offers and content to the list in rotation and then we test and calibrate our sales pages and the effectiveness of those rotations. On a regular basis, I'm composing separate messages. So I might send out a specific message just for people over 40 years old.

Daniel Faggella: 35:37

I might do another message just for people that have purchased a lower level product about, let's say, Escapes, but they've never purchased my highest tier product about Escapes. That might be a couple thousand people and we'll send them an email that addresses what they have purchased but then talks about what they have yet to purchase and gives them a special offer or something along those lines. So we're constantly rotating through various profitable sub segments, speaking to people with educational content and with particular offers that are to their liking and to their needs that they talk to them like the person they are, the person that likes leg locks, the person who's a hundred and twenty pounds, the person who's in this for fitness, the person who's whatever their goals, motive, weight class, we have all sorts of data from various polls that we run, and then we rotate through those sub segs on a weekly and a monthly basis, and that drives a lot of our revenue because we're always presenting fun stuff and people keep good engagement with our list in our emails. We get great open rates.

Brian Casel: 36:28

Very cool. So, you know, one one kind of final question here about how how all this ties together. So you you talk about, like, broadcasting emails, and then, of course, we're seeing all these, you know, long automated sequences of emails. And I hear this a lot, the initial onboarding sequence, thirty, forty, 50 emails long. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 36:46

How how do you go about, like I I always kind of wonder, you know, are are marketers sending out broadcast emails to the people who recently opted into the list? No.

Daniel Faggella: 36:56

Yes. Or is it

Brian Casel: 36:56

like after they go through the whole initial sequence?

Daniel Faggella: 36:59

Yeah. You shouldn't. So if you're if you're if you're playing your cards correctly, we have a separate tag, Brian, called the broadcast tag. So go figure, right? Pretty self evident.

Daniel Faggella: 37:07

But we have a tag called broadcast tag and what goes down with the broadcast tag is folks will be after they receive broadcast tag, which is at the end of what we call their yellow brick road, which is their initial front end automation. At the end of the yellow brick road, only then will they get the broadcast tag and only then will they be broadcasted. Because of course, their initial two, three weeks of communication, we want to be very succinct and we don't want to break that chain with an offer that's sort of off kilter or with a message that doesn't relate to them. We wanna let them go through that yellow brick road properly and then of course we want to take them, you know, into broadcast only once our our initial yellow brick road has ended. So that's a good question.

Daniel Faggella: 37:47

And my answer is, in in this case, you know, that's that's the way to do it properly.

Brian Casel: 37:52

Very cool.

Daniel Faggella: 37:52

Generally speaking.

Brian Casel: 37:53

Cool. So let's just kinda hop off the the screen share for a second, and then we'll just kinda finish up. You know, what I one question that I kind of ask every every guest on this show is, you know, what are you kind of working on right now today? We're in the middle of 2014 here. What's kind of, like, your biggest challenge, and what are you working through it?

Brian Casel: 38:11

How are you working through it? And where are things going the rest of this

Daniel Faggella: 38:14

Yeah. Well, one of one of my my big upcoming goals is sort of scaling the team. So getting more getting more folks on board and talented people and hardworking folks is, you know, always always a pretty solid challenge, but luckily we're we're moving forward in that direction. In terms of projects for me now, one thing that's really important to me is staying on the cutting edge for both my various businesses here and then for the folks that we work with. So one of the things I'm aiming to do Brian, I'm really kind of in the midst of studying.

Daniel Faggella: 38:44

So just like I'm catching you at a certain particular time where you're working on certain things. One of the things I'm working on is leveraging different media to derive feedback contextually from prospects. So let me give you an example. I'm working with a software now that allows people to select at the at the end of a thirty second video, they can select a different branch of that video they'd like to watch. They can watch a section about this or about that or about what have you.

Daniel Faggella: 39:07

They can tell me a little bit about them. They can answer a survey question. And then by the time that all of that is by the time that all that's over and they get to that the end of that video, then they're prompted with an opt in. And then when they opt in, we have all that tagged and collected data afterwards. So that allows us to, select, or or parse out very important data about a person, their preferences, their goals, their business, what have you, before they ever even enter their email address.

Daniel Faggella: 39:35

So finding ways to coax out that rich data in non obvious, non obnoxious ways that are both fun for the prospect and also really help educate us on how to talk to them, that is a current big project for me, and I'm working on that for my consultancy here, and then also implementing that with the folks that we're working with including software companies. I really like to be able to plug that in with them

Brian Casel: 39:54

as well. So I mean, you know, when when you say gathering information about a about a prospect before they even enter their email, mean, are you talking about like kind of just tracking the source of how they found you, like URL tracking or or are you even going much deeper than that?

Daniel Faggella: 40:05

Significantly deeper. So I'll give you a little bit of example. So for CLV Boost for example, the the goal for the sort of video funnel that we're gonna be creating is yes, I mean the objective would be to figure out lead source for sure. But in addition to that, what industry are they in? In addition to that, what is the core metric mover of their business?

Daniel Faggella: 40:23

So in my consultancy, I'll give you a great example here, Brian. Basically, we're working with people that are focusing on three core metrics. Folks that sell through ecom want ecom purchases. Folks that sell in person, which means they need to get on the phone or something like that, they need appointments because they there's a lot of folks that sell you know, if you sell real estate, nobody's pressing a buy button for a house for $3,000,000. It doesn't really work like that.

Daniel Faggella: 40:46

So so consultative sales, in person sales, those people need appointments. E commerce folks, they need online purchases. And then apps and software, especially people working that kind of West Coast model where they really need a lot of users in order to take something to a next level, they're really focused on engagement and retention. So really, it's those three core metrics. Most business can can look me in the eye and tell me that one of them is the real needle mover for their business.

Daniel Faggella: 41:09

One of them is the real thing that they care most about now. So letting them select that in the video lets me know what kind of educational videos to send them early that will really wet their whistle. That'll not only help them, but let them know how we might be able to help them even further if they were to work with us.

Brian Casel: 41:24

Very cool.

Daniel Faggella: 41:24

So if they're doing ecom, we could do all kinds of cool case study videos for how we've helped other e commerce folks and you know, what some of the best companies out there in e commerce are doing as exact case studies, and they're gonna get the kind of education that's really most relevant to their needs. And then of course, that gives us the highest likelihood of having them select us as the folks that really help them out in terms of consultancy. So any data that would help us educate them and any data that would help them figure out if we're a good fit is the kind of data that we would want. And that is a broad variety of information.

Brian Casel: 41:54

Exactly. And I mean, that that's awesome. You know, you really kinda brought it, you know, full circle there. It makes perfect sense. And I I know that I have a lot to kinda go back and dig in here.

Brian Casel: 42:03

So I I Sure. I'm sure the audience will as well. So, Dan, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been great. And thanks for, you know, like, sharing your screen and everything and showing us Infusionsoft.

Daniel Faggella: 42:13

Of course, brother.

Brian Casel: 42:14

Very cool. So where can people kinda reach out to you? What's the best way to connect with you?

Daniel Faggella: 42:18

Yes. Certainly. If if if people are kinda tuned into this marketing automation world, maybe you're already using marketing automation software, you kinda know you need to step into the next level. Brian brought up some great frustration points. A lot of people feel like, man, we're emailing them, but I don't think it's optimized.

Daniel Faggella: 42:32

You can find us at clvboost.com and one of the the resource on CLV Boost is a white paper that goes through not only a bunch of case studies of how we've helped other folks kinda make more bucks, but also on some plug and play strategies that people can use. So we did talk a little bit higher up. In the white paper, we go into some immediate just plug this into your Mailchimp, plug this into your Constant Contact, your Infusionsoft, and start seeing some better results. So that's all there on clbboost.com.

Brian Casel: 42:57

Awesome. So we'll link it all up in the show notes and Dan, thanks so much.

Daniel Faggella: 43:01

Brian, thanks again brother.

Brian Casel: 43:07

Okay. Hope you enjoyed this one. I know I did. Again, if you wanna catch the video of this conversation and and watch everything that we were talking about, definitely head over to castjam.com/20seven. You'll see the video there and you'll also find the show notes.

Brian Casel: 43:21

And if you wanna kinda dig into the back log of previous episodes, again, that's also available on castjam.com. And as always, you'll find my weekly newsletter there and that's where I share more of the lessons that I'm learning by doing while bootstrapping my business. Enter your email, and let's do this. Thanks for tuning in.