BYS 10 | Three Critical Pre-Summit Funnels Every Host Needs

Strategic funnel planning is crucial for summit success and it starts long before your event goes live or speakers start presenting!

In this episode, I share the three essential funnels every summit host needs to implement for maximum impact.   

Funnel #1 is highly recommended

Funnel #2 is nice to have, especially for experienced summit hosts

Funnel #3 is 100% necessary and your summit might flop without it...

Jump in now to learn more about the what and why behind each, plus the biggest mistakes I see and how to fix them.

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Transcript

Introduction to Summit Strategy

Speaker 1 0:07

Before your virtual summit goes live , before the speakers start presenting , before your email list explodes or your sales start coming through , there is a lot of strategy that needs to happen . Hey , I'm Jenzea , a Facebook ad strategist and launch partner for summit hosts and digital educators , and this is before your summit . Every Saturday , I'm going to be giving you short tactical episodes that are going to help you to develop your summit marketing strategy to include organic marketing , paid marketing and affiliates in a well-balanced plan for your summit . I'm here to give you tons of actionable tips and strategies , specific for paid ads , because I am a Facebook ad strategist first , and I'll be showing you the inner workings of some of the most and least successful summits that I've been a part of , so that you know exactly what works . So if you're a coach , educator or creator looking to use summits to grow your business , this podcast is for you . Hit subscribe now and join me for these Saturday strategy sessions to make your next summit the best one yet . Hello , today we are going to be talking about funnels . I am super excited about this . If we've never met before , my name is jensea , I am a facebook ad strategist and I absolutely love summits and supporting my clients with summits , and so with that , I'm bringing you a really , really important episode where we're going to talk about the different funnels that summit hosts should know about and should be using . We're going to do them in chronological order . We're going to do them in chronological order , so we're going to start with the one that is the furthest away from the summit and then end with the one that is closest to the summit in the timeline , but that's not the order of importance . The last one we talk about is actually the most important one , and if you walk away with nothing else , it'll be that third funnel .

Speaker 1 2:16

So the three funnels are your lead generation funnel , which is going to happen pre-summit . The second one is the waitlist funnel , which is going to happen pre-summit . The second one is the waitlist funnel which is going to happen right before the summit , like I would say two weeks to four weeks before registration for the summit opens , and then , of course , the registration funnel . So this is like pre-pre-summit , pre-summit and then summit , and so obviously , registration funnel is going to be the absolute most important for the summit . This

Three Essential Summit Funnels Overview

Speaker 1 2:50

is a non-negotiable . You need to have people walking through a very specific pathway to get them registered , purchasing the all-access pass and then engaging in the summit . And then the next funnel I would add in would be your lead generation funnel , where you're growing your email list before the summit . This is going to start like 12 plus weeks before your summit , and then your waitlist funnel would be the last one that I would be adding into the mix , and actually the waitlist funnel is the only one that you won't run ads to , but that's a totally separate conversation that we'll go through as we get into it .

Speaker 1 3:27

So let's talk about the first funnel , which is your lead

Lead Generation Funnel Explained

Speaker 1 3:30

generation funnel . It is used for growing your email list before your summit . Is on anybody's radar ? Yes , maybe you've ran the summit every single year and so it is kind of on people's radar because they know that every j June you host a summit or whatever it is . But you're going to be wanting to grow your email list between summits and the easiest way to do that is a very simple lead generation funnel where you go Facebook ad or other traffic source to opt-in page , opt-in page to thank you page , thank you page , to nurture sequence in your emails . The goal of this is to nurture your audience , grow well , actually to grow your email list and then your email sequence would be the nurturing piece as like a next step . Instead of just having a plain thank you page page , you can add a tripwire on the thank you page , which is something for sale . I do recommend most people are running free lead generation to paid tripwire into the nurture sequence , because that's just a really great way to grow your email list and I personally am not a believer in freebie seekers and people who are going to be like quote unquote , abusing the system to just get free things from you .

Speaker 1 4:53

I think that everybody is at different stages of buying for different things . Like right now , if you came to me and was like we have this really , really great playstation and all here's , all the features and the benefits and all the everything about the playstation , and you did the best sales pitch ever , I'd be like , okay , cool , that's great . We're not in the market , like we're not interested at all . But if you came to me and was like this fridge and you gave me all of the everything about your fridge and it had a drawer , a fruit pullout drawer thing , I'll post a picture of it on my Instagram stories . So if you listen to this in the first 24 hours after it's posted . You can head over to hey , it's Jenzea on Instagram and you can see what I mean about our pullout . But it's like you know how people have the drawer for the freezer . We have one of those , but it's for fruit , and so it's only like maybe six inches deep . Love it , and we need a new fridge .

Speaker 1 5:51

This fridge came with the house , so we bought it , and I would guess that it is original to the house , so the house was built in 2011 . So this fridge is like 15 . No , like 13 years old , 14 years old . At this point , I guess 15 wasn't that far off . But yeah , anyway , long ramble short .

Speaker 1 6:14

I'm not in the market for a playstation , but I am absolutely in the market for a fridge , and so people are in the market for different things at different times , what they're looking for , who they're wanting to work with , and so I don't necessarily believe that people are exclusively freebie seekers . I think that in some aspects of our business , we are and others we aren't , and so I think that by providing a free lead generation tool whether it's a PDF download or a video or something else , and that can be a really great way to get people into your audience , and then you can nurture them and then when they are ready to buy , they will buy from you . So the biggest mistake that I see in this lead generation funnel is not nurturing your audience after they are on your email list . Most people , I would say and I don't work with people if they don't have a welcome sequence set up . I think most people know the importance of a welcome sequence , so that's that automatic five to 10 emails that go out over a week or two weeks after somebody opts into your email list . But you need to continue emailing people after that welcome sequence .

Speaker 1 7:24

If you purchase the traffic because that's what a Facebook ad is right Like you're buying traffic to your opt-in page , so now you're paying to get someone to see your lead magnet that wouldn't have seen it otherwise probably . You're basically paying to get them on your email list and then you don't nurture them . It's just a waste of money . It's absolutely just a waste of money . So I would say if you have to pick between growing your email list and nurturing your email list , I would pick nurture . Every single time You're going to grow those relationships . You're going to increase your ability to be seen as an expert . You're going to increase your like trustability level by providing high value , quality information , nurturing your audience . Free , long form content every week , email sent out every week .

Speaker 1 8:15

Building that relationship , I would say , is more important than growing your email list . So yeah , so that's your first funnel . That in the timeline . It would start about 12 weeks before your summit . You can continue running your lead generation funnel all the way up until your summit . You can even run it through your summit . They run . They are different purposes . The audiences are probably going to be similar . There might be some fatigue in your audiences . There may be some like competition between your lead generation ads and your summit ads , but for the most part I've never really seen the competition thing play out . I have seen the audience fatigue play out . And so if you have a smaller audience or your budget is a bit on the smaller side and you're only running to like warm audiences , you do need to be a bit like careful about running the two separate campaigns . But if you have a larger budget and a larger audience , then you absolutely can continue running lead generation ads through your summit . I generally don't recommend it . I would rather you pour all of your time , energy , money into the summit registrations during summit registration period ,

Waitlist Funnel Strategy

Speaker 1 9:30

but it's totally an option . Once the summit is done , you can turn those ads back on Funnel number two is our waitlist funnel .

Speaker 1 9:38

The goal here is to build up excitement and hype around your summit before registration is open . You can have the waitlist page open basically all year round , so somebody stumbles upon your summit six months out from your summit or two months out from your summit . Then they would land on that waitlist page and then you would add them to a specific tag or group in your email marketing system like platform , depending on how it works . There's different ones that use segments or tags . So you'd want to identify them as somebody who has shown interest in your summit and then provide them with some sort of nurture sequence . And then this is important , key well , optional . I recommend providing some sort of benefit once your summit opens , so whether that's a discount code for your all access pass , or they get early access to the all access pass , or there's some sort of special bonus for being on the wait list . I like doing that rewarding people for showing interest , rewarding people for being there quickly and on the ball , but it is optional .

Speaker 1 11:01

The reason that this strategy is important , this funnel is important is because it builds that anticipation . You pre-sell your summit concept and you want to get confirmation that your idea is wanted and people are excited about it . And having a wait list and growing that anticipation before the summit even starts can be really fulfilling and really valuable information . As the summit host , you do want to make sure to email your wait list as soon as summit registration opens . You don't want them to find out from any other way . You want them to get that email from you , like immediately . I might even send an email the day before being like registration opens at 9 am . I'm going to send you another email at 8 , 45 or whatever to remind you and you're not going to run ads to this funnel .

Speaker 1 11:53

This is an organic , only funnel . You there's . There's nothing really in it for the person in that moment , right , there's not . So paying to get somebody to a wait list feels feels wrong to me . You want to get people excited through other means , organically , so like posting on your social media , sending emails to your email list and then just through like word of mouth , especially if this isn't your first summit , the biggest mistake that I see here is not doing anything with the waitlist so you don't have to have a waitlist , especially if you've never run this summit before .

Speaker 1 12:33

Once you've run the summit before , if you plan to make it an annual event , which I highly recommend , setting up a waitlist is a really great way so that people who participated in the summit already or who heard about the summit can stay in the loop . But you don't have to have a waitlist . But if you do have a waitlist , you need to do something with it . So , if nothing else , like I said , make sure that you email them specifically as soon as the summit opens . Some of the things that I recommend that you would do is give them priority access , some sort of early bird pricing . So if they get like , let's just say , your summit opens on September 1stst but you email your wait list on like august 30th , that gives them a bit of time to purchase their all access pass before it goes up to like the regular price quote unquote . You might also decide to do some sort of bonus training or a bonus download , some sort of bonus that only the early birds get , like the waitlist get uh , and then , like I already said , a discount code so you know they can save an extra ten dollars , or something like that again , I would say with the discount code they're on the waitlist . If registration opens on september 1st , the discount code is only good until like september 3rd or something Like . There's still a time urgency there . Yes , they were on the wait list . Yes , they should have this benefit , but maybe not forever . That's just my personal opinion .

Speaker 1 13:58

Okay ,

Registration Funnel Deep Dive

Speaker 1 14:00

last , definitely not least , actually most important is your registration funnel . You're going to use this during your summit registration phase , which is typically going to be 10 to 14 days before the summit opens . I do have a client who actually runs her summit registration period for four to six weeks before the summit , and one of the benefits of her all-access pass is pre-access to the presentations , and so by purchasing the all-access pass , you actually don't have to wait for the summit to start . You get early access , which I think is really cool , especially with such a long registration phase . People who are registering for a virtual event six weeks beforehand will often forget . Now she does a lot of engagement in the Facebook group and through email to make sure that these people stay engaged and that they are excited . Typically , I would say that the ideal range is 10 to 14 days . That way people don't register so early that they forget about the event or that they lose excitement in the event . But it's not like so close that people can't move their schedules around and figure out a way to attend .

Speaker 1 15:14

The structure of your registration funnel is going to probably look something like registration page , where they click a button to say sign up and then there's either a form embedded on the registration page itself or there's a pop-up . That happens Either way . You want to have these buttons all over that registration page so that anywhere through the process right at the very beginning , right at the very end and then multiple times throughout as soon as someone's like yes , I want to register , they register , they click that button and they can get their free ticket . Once they've signed up for the free ticket , then and only then present the all access pass . I personally don't believe that the all access pass should be promoted on the registration page . I think that it should be exclusively free tickets . And then on the thank you page like thank you for registering for the summit , we're super excited . Here's all of the bonuses that you can get from the all access pass . And then we promote the all access pass on that thank you page and then there's a second thank you page for purchasing , if they do purchase . And then we're going to go into our summit nurture sequence , and there I like having two separate nurture sequences for your summit one for people who purchased the all access pass and one for people who did it . And my reasoning for this is , if I've purchased the all access pass , I don't want a whole bunch of emails about purchasing the all access pass . I've already purchased it . I don't need to keep getting reminders of the all access passes available . I am one of those people .

Speaker 1 16:50

I'm actually in the midst of being a participant in a summit , not speaking just like attending a summit . Right now , as I'm recording this , it starts Monday , so in like two days , and I'm really excited about it . She's made everything available Well , not everything , but all the bonuses are already available for the all access pass . So I've gone in . I watched her intro video . I explored all of the things there's . I can apply to get hot seat coaching and I can apply to something else some other . Oh , I think there's two different hot seats Like they're different reasons , so only one was really applicable to me . I applied to that already . What else was there ? Oh , there's a voucher for something in there . So I have that code that I've saved and then I can see exactly where the presentations are going to live , where the live recordings because there's going to be live panels and live interviews and those hot seats so I can see where they're going to live . They're're not there yet , but and then there's a bonus section and I've already gone through all the bonuses because , again , I'm that person . I was really excited about this all access pass , so I went in and I just explored all of it and I don't need another email being like hey , purchase the all access pass , I already got it .

Speaker 1 18:04

So , but you do want to be nurturing your summit attendees from the moment that they sign up all the way to the process of the summit starting , and so making sure that you have some sort of nurture sequence that's going on , that , uh , introduce people to the summit and keep them engaged . You also want to get people into the Facebook group , so making sure that they're aware that there's a Facebook group , how to access it and make sure that they are there . And as soon as you open the Facebook group , if it isn't already open , you want to be making sure that you are interacting with them daily as part of this funnel , because the entire goal of your registration funnel is to get people registered , purchasing the all-access pass and engaging in the summit . I highly recommend that you have countdown timers so people know exactly how much time is left , especially if you have different pricing tiers , so they know how much time is left for them to purchase at this specific tier or how much time until the summit , using testimonials as much as possible . Highly , highly recommend .

Speaker 1 19:10

There's two mistakes that I want to go through for a registration funnel . The first one is confusion on the registration page of what to do , how to do it , what's expected of them , and this can come in a different , a couple different forms . So the first one is they don't know how to register . There's no buttons or there's only a button at the top and a button at the bottom and they can't really figure it out . That's why I said you want to have multiple different buttons all throughout the page so as soon as someone says yes , I want in , they can register right away . Another piece of confusion comes in if there is the all access pass there , then people start to go like , oh , do I want the free pass or do I want the all access pass , like what do I want ? And that can leave people to decision fatigue and they're not really sure , and so that's part of the reason why I'm like I just want them to register , get them in and then present the all access pass , because we're eliminating some of that decision fatigue and option fatigue . Yeah , so making sure it's really , really clear who the summit's for , when it's happening , how to register , is one of the biggest mistakes .

Speaker 1 20:14

And then the second one is this is with the all-access pass not having a fast action price point to create a sense of urgency . So the clients all the clients that I've ever ran summits for have they use deadline funnel or some equivalent to create like 20 minutes , 40 minutes at one of them's 19 minutes for $19 , and then the other one was like 20 minutes and then the purchase price was 47 and in both cases , as soon as that timer ran out , the price point doubled . That creates a bit of urgency . So someone sees , okay , I only have 20 minutes , I have to decide right now if I want it or don't want it , and then they can get in and they get it at the absolute best price . So having that creates that sense of urgency . It needs to be a legitimate sense of urgency and that's why using something like deadline funnels is really important , so that it isn't every single time they go to the page there's a 20 minute countdown . It only they only get 20 minutes once .

Speaker 1 21:15

Yeah , we've talked a little bit about when to use each of them and when to start the next one . So , like I already said , you can run those lead generation ads all the way through . I would probably recommend stopping them when you start your registration . The waitlist is four weeks out from the summit , maybe a little bit longer if you really want a long hype phase , if you're really excited about it . Your registration page is going to redirect to your waitlist page whenever registration isn't open . I would also recommend , with that , having a tag that's like your waitlist for your 2025 summit and then , as soon as your 2025 summit's done , we change the tag to waitlist for 2026 summit .

Speaker 1 21:58

But that's just me . I can be a little

Timeline and Implementation Tips

Speaker 1 22:00

neurotic with my tagging and then , like I said before , registration starts 10 to 14 days before the summit . Once registration is open , the waitlist is now closed and your opt-in for your lead generation is probably turned off , and then , once your summit is done , we can go back to lead generation , so I really hope that this was helpful . I'm very excited about it . I love talking about these like little details , and thank you so much for being here and having . I hope you have a wonderful , wonderful rest of your day . If you are looking for being here and having , I hope you have a wonderful , wonderful rest of your day . If you are looking for tips and strategies to make your next summit the best one yet , come hang out with me on Instagram . I'm at heyitschenzea . I would love to connect with you there , so send me a DM and let's do this thing . Thank you .