There is no question that the process of creating sales funnels has become an excellent way for any business or marketer to convert potential customers into buyers. This is going to help you take several steps that will gain the trust of each potential buyer.
A sales funnel is not an easy thing to create and it does require a good level of experience if you want to be able to achieve the results you want and need. This is the reason why software solutions have been created for the purpose of making this much easier to handle.
Today, we are going to provide a review on two of the best software solutions that are helping marketers all over the world create the best and most efficient sales funnels for their business.
What is a sales funnel?
The sales funnel is a series of steps that you take in order to give your potential buyers a more engaging experience. This is going to have a number of steps that have the final goal of turning each prospect into a buyer.
The steps are:
- You have a visitor on your landing page
- The visitor is presented with an offer to join your email list and they are usually offered something valuable free of charge as an incentive to join.
- Once you have this person in your mailing list, you can start sending them valuable and useful information. A series of emails can be sent depending on your approach.
- The prospect opens those emails and finds valuable information with some of those email follow-ups having a call to action to purchase a product or service.
- Once you have turned that visitor into a paying customer, you can follow-up with further offers.
This is a very simple explanation of what a sales funnel process is like, but there are many complexities involved. The main thing to consider with this is that you need to be able to use the best tools available to save time and to ensure that everything moves in the right direction.
Now that we have the basics about sales funnels and how they work, we can get to the details on both ClickFunnels and MailChimp.
ClickFunnels
What is ClickFunnels?
Founded in 2014, this particular platform helps business ventures that sell their items online in the process of creating sales funnels with the most effective and efficient strategies.
The process of building a sales funnel would usually require that people are able to code and to design certain aspects of their funnels, but this platform makes all of that process extremely easy. You will be able to create a fully functional funnel that integrates with your e-commerce store and enhances the user experience.
They offer several packages at different costs that are going to give you the option to decide what is going to be ideal for your needs and your budget. The return on investment is usually quite good and this is the reason why many marketers are using this particular service to boost their sales and profit.
How does ClickFunnels work?
The idea behind this platform and service is to give you the opportunity to create an incredibly powerful and convincing method to sell your products and services to your target audience.
ClickFunnels is able to make this happen in many different ways. One of those ways is by helping boost your customer experience. This is extremely important in current times when the competition is so fierce and you need to stand out in order to see any conversions.
Customizing your content is extremely easy and you can also link the account with several other services like email auto responders, payment platforms and ecommerce stores to further maximize your ability to reach your audience with efficiency.
The features of ClickFunnels
The following are some of the most relevant and useful features that come with this software. They are all useful for several reasons and they allow you to create very strong and convincing marketing campaigns.
- Templates
The use of templates to use for your sales funnel campaigns is going to be quite practical for those who have no experience. The templates that are provided by the platform have been created by professional marketers. The good thing about this is that you can also create your own version with a simple drag and drop system that is extremely easy to use.
Remember that you don’t need any coding knowledge in order to get this process started. The best thing is that the interface that you use to design this content is extremely easy to use and this makes it an even more reliable and cost effective investment.
- Page Elements
There are many customizable aspects to the ClickFunnels content and this is the reason why it has become so popular for people without coding and design knowledge. You can easily add images, videos, headlines, change font sizes, colors, etc. With these elements, the design process becomes very simple and easy to handle.
- Tutorials
If you are feeling a little lost with the use of the platform, you will find that they also offer a large number of guides and tutorials that are going to help you learn the details on this process. Another great thing about ClickFunnels is that the community is very active and there are plenty of external tutorials on networks such as YouTube.
- Integrations
Integration is a big part of ClickFunnels and there are several important platforms and networks such as Facebook, PayPal, Aweber, Get Response and Shopify etc that can be seamlessly integrated with this software to make it even more productive and resourceful.
- Sharing features
Sharing your sales funnels is extremely important and ClickFunnels makes this process easier. Remember that your ability to promote your business is always going to be the factor that will determine your level of success.
The cost of ClickFunnels
The cost of using this service is quite low when you consider the many advantages that come from using it. It can be even easier to consider buying a package thanks to their 14-day free trial. Once that trial ends, you will have several options that have different prices.
Package 1 is $97 a month and it allows you to build up to 20 funnels with a total of 100 pages included. This also includes 3 domains and 3 payment methods for your ecommerce. You also get excellent chat support for all technical and funnel building questions.
Package 2 is $297 monthly and you will have access to an unlimited number of sales funnels. You can also have up to 9 domains and 9 different payment gateways. This package also includes Priority Support and a huge amount of additional training modules covering all aspects of building successful funnels.
There are other packages available that might be of interest once you have mastered the basics.
ClickFunnels pros
- Easy to use and build pages
- Plenty of resources
- Active and helpful community
- Affordable costs
ClickFunnels cons
- No email blasting features
- Setups can be a little tricky at first for newcomers
- No customer relationship management
MailChimp
What is MailChimp?
The similarities between MailChimp and ClickFunnels are more than evident as they both offer a large number of features that pretty much the same. One of the things that MailChimp is known for doing better than any other service is that they have a very robust landing page creator. They also have several plans that people can choose from and they provide great support to their customers.
How does MailChimp Work?
There are many useful features to this service and the main thing is that it will let you connect and build your existing mailing list or online shop with the service in order to begin the process. You are going to be able to create a landing page and the process of funneling your visitors is going to be made quite easy and simple with the many user-friendly options that are available on all of their packages.
This platform is also known for being very stable and their features are all robust and easy to use. Perhaps the biggest thing to mention regarding this particular service is that they have a huge number of customers and this means that they have a stable business.
Features of MailChimp
There are some important features that are similar to those on ClickFunnels, but they do have slight differences. The following are some of the most relevant features for this platform that are seemingly their strongest points.
- Analytics
There are very few things as important as being able to track your campaign efforts properly. This is going to be one of the most powerful ways for you to be able to tweak your efforts depending on the results that you are getting. Those who know how to adapt their business based on analytics are usually going to get the best results.
- Integrations
Being able to integrate MailChimp to several services such as PayPal, Shopify, Social networks and other important platforms is essential. The more you can connect your accounts and merge them, the easier your job becomes in many fronts.
- Simple interface
Designing and modifying every element of your content is extremely easy with their drag and drop features. The value of this is that it can save you a lot of time and it can allow anyone to create amazing looking content and designs without any coding knowledge.
- Guides and tutorials
Their internal guides and tutorials are also quite good and they provide excellent resources for those who are having trouble using any of the features. The community is large, but maybe not as massive as the one for ClickFunnels in terms of support, but their library of tutorials is very comprehensive and it will help anyone familiarize themselves with the platform quite easily.
Pros of MailChimp
- Great templates that are attractive and functional
- Ability to send email blasts
- A very affordable option
Cons of MailChimp
- It takes a little effort to learn to use it at first
- Not as large of a supporting community
- Some key features are not available on all packages
The Cost of MailChimp
Their initial plan is free of charge and it allows you to learn to use the most essential features of this service. One of the main restrictions with the free service is that out can only send a maximum of 12k emails each month and your contacts list is limited to 2k. This may seem like high limit, but it’s quite limiting when you are running any campaigns in search for high volume in sales.
Their basic plan costs $9.99 a month and it gives you access to send 500,000 emails, 50,000 contacts, predicted demographics and lookalike audience finder that will help you engage a larger number of people with great testing tools.
Their standard is $14.99 a month and it offers similar features to the basic, but it does offer dynamic content that sets it apart from the basic plan. Also included is 100,000 contacts and 1.2 million email sends.
Their premium business plan is $299 a month and it offers a much more robust and powerful solution that brings plenty of additional features and capacity making it most suitable for larger business operations.
Final thoughts
There are many reasons why both of these services are worth using and this is the main reason why we recommend both of them. Clickbank offers more expensive and in depth packages than Mailchimp, but they both have great support, great tools, and a very reliable and versatile set of features.
One of the main things that you need to keep in mind is that using this type of service for your digital marketing needs is crucial if you want to succeed long term. It will allow you to simplify many tasks and it will save you precious time that you can spend on other aspects of your business.
Now that you know the essentials about both ClickFunnels and MailChimp, you can make an informed decision about which one is going to be better for your needs.
Although it’s hard to ignore the low pricing and benefits of Mailchimp for newer marketers.
Also, keep in mind this is a review on the features of each platform and not on specific user experiences. This is not meant to be biased in any way, and we encourage you to look into the details regarding both platforms to make a decision that fits your needs.