So, you’ve built a good website for your business. You’ve started using it to generate leads using a lead magnet & a system for gathering contact information.

You’re building a list of email addresses that each represent someone who could become not just a customer, but an eventual brand evangelist.

So what do you do next? To quote The Godfather, you make them an offer they can’t refuse.

This isn’t the time to send your new leads straight to your core offer, though. Remember that the Customer Value Journey is about building a relationship through small, incremental actions.

There needs to be a bridge between the two that lets customers experience the value of your product without too much risk.

We call it the Convert Stage, & the key player is what we call a Tripwire.

You can read more about the specifics of the Tripwire offer in a past blog post, but to summarize: a Tripwire is a low-dollar offer that exists purely for the purpose of turning leads into customers.

It’s an impulse buy, usually under $20, that lets a lead make a purchase without having too much skin in the game…but that will provide just enough of a positive experience to give them a stake in your product or service & begin to generate excitement about future purchases.

The conversion of a lead into a customer—even just for $1—is magical.

You’re not looking to make a living selling Tripwires. You’re looking to generate buyers, because there’s nothing more valuable for growing your business than a list of buyers.

And if you do this right, your leads will quickly advance from purchasing your Tripwire offer to experiencing real value from it to actually buying your core offer.

So how do you go from offering a lead magnet to advancing your new leads to the Tripwire stage?

The Free Plus Shipping Funnel is the superhighway to get your customers there.

What’s The Free Plus Shipping Funnel?

The Free Plus Shipping Funnel (also referred to as The Football Phone Funnel) is where you sell a small product (your Tripwire offer) for free while the customer covers the shipping costs.

The key is that the product you offer has to be of high perceived value while still being inexpensive. When the free product comes in the mail, the customer shouldn’t feel like they just paid for shipping on something cheap.

Once the customer makes the purchase & pays the shipping costs, you are able to offer additional products at checkout as upsells & downsells.

Remember, the best time to make an offer to customers is immediately after a transaction. That’s because having just taken an action related to their brand, they’re already in the frame of mind to purchase something else.

Therefore, the best time to offer your free plus shipping item is after customers opt in for a lead magnet…& the best time to present additional items is after they’ve committed to buying the Tripwire.

How This Hair Company Made $7,000 In Less Than A Week

For My Hair Evolution, a free plus shipping funnel was the ticket to a record rise in sales. This beauty company works with a contract manufacturer to produce hair supplements that help women regrow & restore thinning hair.

This company already was getting great results with the first three stages in their Customer Value Journey. Networking on Facebook, offering engagement content & gathering subscribers were bringing major attention to My Hair Evolution.

But the company still needed a way to nail the Convert stage with a great Tripwire offer….& that’s where the free plus shipping funnel comes in.

For their Tripwire launch, My Hair Evolution chose to offer a bottle of their hair vitamin product, regularly priced at $29.99, for free. They changed the price in their store to $0.00, then applied $12.99 for shipping costs.

However, one other step they had to take was to provide a reason for the lowered price. Most customers thought the offer was too good to be true & were looking for a catch or hidden costs.

So they set up the offer on a long form sales page that included a video of the owner of the company explaining the offer directly to customers.

Her passion for the product & the chance to expose more people to its benefits build the trust customers needed to take the plunge. They also created urgency & scarcity by making the free vitamin a limited time offer.

Once customers purchased the free plus shipping hair vitamin offer, they received an offer of upsell of a special t-shirt to measure their hair regrowth for $14.50, 50% off the regular price.

They also presented a second upsell—a set of hair moisturizing products at $37.50, also at 50% off.

The Tripwire offer of the hair vitamin had an overall conversion rate of 6%. While most Tripwire conversion rates can be as much as 30%, the initial suspicions of customers that the offer was too good to be true brought the overall results down.

However…the upsells got plenty of attention, with respective conversion rates of 24 & 20%.

Because of the limited 4-day time frame of the offer, Hair Evolution brought in a total of $7,000.

How Can The Free Plus Shipping Funnel Work For You

Maybe you don’t own a beauty business…but if you have an ecommerce store that offers physical products, the free plus shipping funnel is a great way to both introduce your merchandise to customers in a way that compels them to buy.

You’ll need to use your ecommerce platform to set up the individual funnel pages as well as automated email marketing software to send follow-up & welcome emails for purchases.

At Cirius Marketing, our patented Customer Value Journey formula makes it possible for us to create funnels that seamlessly transition customers from one stage of their adventure with your product or service to the next.

It’s a step by step strategy for taking strangers to your brand & transforming them into total evangelists for it.

We want to help you create funnels that turn more leads into customers & more customers into repeat buyers.

Want to learn more? We made you a workbook to help you get started. Check out the Customer Value Workbook to learn how the formula works & see how it could fit your business!