Changing From Improvement Offer To New Opportunity

The one little shift that transformed everything.

In today’s episode Russell mentions some of his preparations for Funnel Hacking Live. He also talks about changing the way he sees and talks about Actionetics.

Here are some cool things in this episode:

• What the difference is between an improvement offer and a new opportunity.
• Why Russell doesn’t want to call Actionetics a better email auto-responder.
• And what some of the features are that make Actionetics more than just an auto-responder.

So listen below to get a sneak peak about some of the stuff Russell will be talking about at Funnel Hacking Live.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell. Welcome back to Marketing In Your…actually it’s Marketing In Your Closet. I would do it in my car but, I tell you what, things are going so crazy right now getting ready for the event. I don’t even…..I’m heading into the office in a little bit here.

But I’m getting dressed in the closet. So you can hear me talk in here, which I hope is okay. I have something cool to share with you. If you’ve been following along for a long time, or most of you guys haven’t read the book yet, because it’s not actually out. Yesterday from the publisher we got back the guts of the book. The finalized design guts. We had to go through it last night. So Dave was up, we were at the office until 3. I can’t remember 3 or 3:30 or something like that. He went through the whole thing, there was like 10 or 11 little edits and I sent it back in, which means now we can get the books printed. Which means we’re going to be able to sell these things on time, which is insane.

So that’s all happening which I am excited about. And in the book I was talking a lot about this earlier while I was writing, in the podcast, for those who are listening along as we go. I talked about the foundation and building a big mass movement, or culture. There’s three things, there’s charismatic leader or attractive character, number one. Number two is a future based cause and then number three is a new opportunity.

We talked about how you can’t create improvement, but if you created something that’s an improvement, teaching people how to become better then you automatically dis-include 98% of the world’s population, which makes it really hard to sell. So if you struggled selling, it may be you’re selling improvement. People don’t want improvement, the masses don’t. They want a new opportunity, so you could always create a new opportunity.

So last night, the presentation I was working on was to show Actionetics, and if I ask 99% of people who have ever heard of Actionetics, what it is they say, “It’s an email auto-responder.” So as I’m working on my presentation yesterday I was like, “If I call this an email auto-responder, what leverage do I have?” The only leverage is to say this is a better E-R, a better auto-responder. By saying better, it is now an improvement offer. Which means 98 % of the world’s population will no longer care about it. Including people in my market. The only people who care are the 2% who are actually looking for improvement.

So if I pitch that way, I’m going against my own rules. So because I try to practice what I preach at all times, in all situations, I spent the last almost two days now trying to figure out how we position this presentation and the tool, Actionetics as a new opportunity? Because it is. We were here forever trying to figure out the title of the presentation and the hook and angle and all sorts of stuff. Anyway, it’s kind of cool. Literally I spent, I think I told you yesterday, 8 hours figuring out the headline and title. Steve Larsen had a burst of inspiration after all of us were sitting there trying to figure it out.

I had email funnel secrets and I had email funnels and I had all these things. He came up with this idea, this name which was follow-up funnels. And I heard the angels in heaven singing. That is it. That’s it. Actionetics is not an email auto-responder. If I was the Actionetics guy, “Hey here’s an email auto-responder.” I would beat him up. No, I’m so much more than that. But that’s how you classified me because you are trying to make it an improvement, you’re better version of an auto-responder, which is true, but it’s different. It’s a new opportunity. It’s a follow-up auto-responder. All sorts of follow-ups.

So after we got the hook we started looking in December and found out, we went through all of our front end funnels, for every one dollar we made in front end funnels, we made $16.73, something like that, in the follow-up funnel, which is insane. $16 to $1 more than that. I thought it was a typo. I thought we did the stats wrong. We did it ten times. We did 16 times more from the follow-up funnels, than we did from any of the front end funnels, which is crazy.

The front end funnels, I think we spent $85,000 in front end funnels. We made $96, we made $11,000. That was it. Anyway, it’s crazy. So I started going over the follow-up funnels when I started doing this presentation and showing how this is not an improvement, this is a new opportunity. How auto-responders, that’s an old, dead idea, concept. It’s from 1998. The future is follow-up funnels and Actionetics is the tool, the only tool that can do that. Because it’s legitimately a new opportunity. It’s a blue ocean, it’s all these things. There’s no other service that can do what Actionetics does.

Some people compare head to head with the email auto-responders. These ones might have more features, from an email auto-responder standpoint they may be a little bit better. Any time I’m talking about E-R, it’s an improvement offer. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a whole new opportunity. Emails or only 1/10th of the equation. It’s actually the rest of the stuff. I’m going to be showing in the presentation everything. When someone comes in how with Actionetics you can do Facebook follow-up auto-responders, changing the pixels, changing the traffic, the images based on where the funnels are hitting.

We’ll show you how you can change the message based on who they are, how the funnel they have changes. How somebody leaves, they can come back because of sticky cookies and buy 6 months, a year, 5 years, or ten years later and not even have to put their credit card in. There’s so many insanely cool things that Actionetics does. Because it’s not an email auto-responder, it is a new opportunity, it is a follow-up funnel. And that’s the magic.

I just wanted to share that with you because it was a big…..when I got that I was going crazy. But you gotta look at everything you’re selling you guys. If you looked at me, if I looked at myself two days ago, I was selling a better email auto-responder. I look at myself today, I’ve created a new opportunity and it is….that’s what Actionetics is.

So those of you guys who are going to be at the Funnel Hacking Live event, Day two, which is what? Wednesday morning, I’ll be giving that presentation. I spent almost 40 hours straight on this stupid thing and it’s still not done. So I’m going in right now to go finish it off. Then I got two more presentations after that, so we’re getting down to the wire, but what’s coming from it is legitimately amazing. I can’t wait to share with you guys.

With that said, I’m done, I’m getting out of the closet. Coming out of the closet. No, not like that. I’m literally walking out of the closet and into the bathroom and I’m going to go get my hair and head out because I got a call with Caleb Maddix and Emily Shai, I always say her name wrong, Emily Shay in 15 minutes. So if you’re watching Facebook Live’s come check it out, we’re doing Facebook Live’s with all the different speakers, telling out stories and it’s been so much fun. I’m having so much fun with this so far. Come hang out with us and I’ll see most of you guys at Funnel Hacking Lives. Thanks everybody and talk to you soon.