Although being a student of Business Administration, I never confronted with the term “Funnel” in any marketing text books of my two universities and can’t even remember hearing the word in any of my professors lectures. But when I started my journey into Affiliate Marketing, I started hearing it from all over, from the begining till date. There are number of Software-as-a-Service Platform dedicated to offer Funnel Software for online businesses. And from the big list, I have chosen one to review in today’s post, the only funnel builder software I’m currently using for my online business automation – Systeme.io
Facts Sheet
- Site: Systeme.io
- Vendor: Aurelien Amacker, France
- Operating Tenure: 7+ years (apprx.)
- Category: Funnel Builder
- Free Plan: Available
- Upgrades: Yes, 3 Upgrade Plans
- Affiliate Opportunity: Available
- Commission Percentage: 60% Recurring
What the Hack is a Funnel?
Don’t conflate with the familiar old-school tube/pipe, in marketing, especially online marketing a funnel constitutes a journey a prospective customer goes through on the way to purchase. Here’s an example, suppose you provide solution to burn body fat so your prospective customers are those who are obese and wants to be lean. Your may have several products to solve the problem for your customers including equipments, workout and diet plan, training centres etc. Now you need a funnel to constitute a journey for your propective clients. You may have a few video training module on your Youtube channel from where you attract most of your customers attention to your solutions. So at the begining of the funnel is your youtube videos. If you get 1000 viewers each week then may be only 50 people may find interest to the other offers you have to solve the problem for them. You may take them to a step by step training course into a membership portal where the videos are hosted. So once those 50 people sign up to the membership portal you get their email address to contact further.Then this will be the 2nd step of your funnel. At the end of your step by step video series you may offer them some of the paid solution you have like discounts on equipments or a custom diet plan for them or you may invite them to your training centre to increase accoutability. This is how you start monetizing. But you understand that not all the 50 people will become your paid customers. May be only 10 people will readily buy one of the paid offers, what you will offer the rest? You have to have alternative solution. And this is how you build a sales funnel. Your ultimate goal is to give the transformation your clients are looking for.
What is a Funnel Builder?
A funnel builder is a software to aumotate the journey you are mapping for your prospective customers. For example, in the above example, the membership site can be built inside a funnel builder and set it up like that when someone subscribe to the training module he will be automatically added into an email list. Once someone is in that email list he or she will start receiving pre-designed email sequence for next 7 days. You can automate a lot of stuff using a funnel builder software. Once I will complete today’s review you will understand how to use it for your business as well. Let’s start…
Systeme.io: A funnel builder with a generous free plan and exciting affiliate opportunity
So, I am using systeme.io to build my funnel. It is not only a funnel builder, it also has its own email marketing software in-built into the system. So you don’t need to use getresponse, aweber, mailchimp or any 3rd party autoresponder if you use systeme.io. To my daily use I have found it very user-friendly. Let’s see what you can do with systeme.io.
Systeme.io Dashboard
After login Systeme.io will greet you with a very simple page like the following:
I like the simple dashboard of Systeme.io. It shows me my leads stat in last 30 days.
If I hover over to any lead’s email address it shows some more information of the lead. It is a very nifty feature:
Build a Funnel with Systeme.io
You can build awesome sales funnels using systeme.io. Once you log in to your dashboard see top menu bar and click Funnels from where you will find the Create button to start building your funnel.
After that you can design your sales funnel, set automation rules, see stats and leads data into the funnel etc.
You can create 3 sales funnel in free version.
Email Marketing with Systeme.io
As I said previously, Systeme.io has built-in email marketing feature. You don’t need to purchase any 3rd party software if you use Systeme.io. In my test, I have got excellant deliverabity of Systeme.io email service. I have got similar deliverabity with only Aweber. So, its inbox rate is pretty high in my opinion.
Likewise Funnels, Email Marketing features can be accessed from top menu. You can set up automated email sequences inside Campaign section and broadcast email from Newsletters section.
What I like about this email service is that you can store 2000 email addresses in systeme.io and send unlimited email to your list. You can also see the stats of your email, Systeme.io won’t restrict you from seeing your stat, even in free plan. You can also set 1 automation with a many email sequences as you want and 1 tag in the free version. You can see each email’s stat without any restriction and expiration and would look like as follows:
What else can you do with Systeme.io
Aside from creating sales funnel and email marketing, you can also do the following:
- Create community (Free version allows 1 community)
- Set up blog (Free version allows 1 blog)
- Create course (Free version allows 1 course)
- Set up your own affiliate program
What I like about Systeme.io
I think Systeme.io is pretty interesting for the following reasons:
- Generous free plan (no trial) gives people a no brainer funnel solution to test for their business
- 3 Paid Plans are also very affordable (costs $27/m, $47/m and $97/m)
- 60% recurring commission makes it a huge deal for affiliate marketers or online entreprenures (you can earn $16.2/m, $28.2/m and $58.2/m respectively from paid plan)
- 0% transaction fee is pretty awesome (although I am pretty sure it will set up a transaction fee at some point in the future)
- Unlimited Email Sending, Unlimited Students
- 24/7 Email Support
What I don’t like about Systeme.io
I have to say I love Systeme.io a lot as it is clearly following a value-first business strategy, which is how I like to do this business. But recently a pop up is featuring in Systeme.io in their homepage where I see clear inconsistency in marketing message. Below I have shared the exact pop up:
Systeme.io Home Page clearly states it is free forever and below the pop up it is also mentioned, but the pop-up is also featuring “Limited time offer, Get Systeme.io for FREE”. I don’t know how both can be true at the same time. Either it will stay free forever, or it will be paid after a while, can’t be both, in my humble opinion.
Aside from the ambiguity in marketing message, I have found everything is great in Systeme.io.
Update 15/01/2024: Someone I admire a lot in this space went through my post (I’m honestly glad that he did) and remarked that he doesn’t think there’s any mismatch in saying “Limited Time” and “Free Forever” at the same place. The thing is, you can grab Free Forever plan for Limited Time only, that’s the point. Which also means, those who join later may not get this plan. So, I think it is a good explanation of the promotion.
Do I Recommend Systeme.io?
Based on my review and experience of using it for last one and half year, I strongly recommend Systeme.io especially if you are looking for a funnel builder for your business, or want to build a course or community or just considering email marketing solution. You will love using Systeme.io.
The Next Steps
So if you decide to use Systeme.io for your business, here’s my recommended next steps for you:
Step 1: Click here to Join Systeme.io (It’s FREE)
Step 2: Enroll and Complete Systeme.io Certification (It is FREE too)
Step 3: Build, Automate and Enjoy