Let me show you behind the scenes of the new funnel we’re using to sell two comma club live. On this episode Russell talks about using the invisible funnel, which had basically disappeared over the last several years. Here are some of the cool insights to listen for in this episode:

-- Find out what an invisible funnel is and why it’s no longer in the Dotcom Secrets book.

-- Hear the story about how Daegan Smith invented the invisible funnel after an accidental dine and dash.

-- And see how Russell is bringing the funnel back to life after years of not using it.

So listen here to find out all you need to know about an invisible funnel and how you can use one in your own business.

Can you imagine going to a movie and be like, “I’m going to go watch the movie and after it’s done I’ll let you know if it’s good. If I like it, I’ll pay you.” You know, or go to a restaurant and be like, ‘I’m going to eat all the food. If it’s good then I’ll pay you. If not, I’m not going to worry about it.” That’s literally what you’re doing to your customers, you’re giving them this opportunity to come and like have a meal on me. If you love it, pay me. If not, don’t worry about it. I don’t really care. Imagine the reciprocity that builds with you and your audience.

-- ClickFunnels: Everything you need to start market, sell, and deliver your products and services online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)

-- DotComSecrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online With Sales Funnels."

​-- Expert Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Converting Your Online Visitors Into Lifelong Customers."

-- ​Traffic Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Filling Your Websites And Funnels With Your Dream Customers.

Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I’m going to be talking about a funnel called the Invisible Funnel.

And guess what, it’s back. Alright so if you read the original Dotcom Secrets one of the funnels I talked about was a funnel called the Invisible Funnel. And it’s interesting because I’ve used the invisible funnel for a long time, and then we wrote the book, I put it as a section inside the Dotcom Secrets book, and then the book launched, Clickfunnels launched and everything’s been crazy the last 5 or 6 years and I have not done an invisible funnel since then.

And because I hadn’t done one since then, nobody else did one. I haven’t seen an invisible funnel for 5 years. And even though it’s an amazing strategy, I talk about it in the book, I show the strategies. So when I was doing the new version of the Dotcom Secrets book I was like, “It’s a really cool thing, but people don’t use it, so it must not be that valuable, so I’m just going to write it out of history.”

So the new version of the Dotcom Secrets book did not talk about the invisible funnel. Anyway, so fast forward and actually, not fast forward, let me rewind. So let me tell you first where the invisible funnel came from, I’ll tell you what it is and how we’re using it right now. So the invisible funnel came from my buddy Daegan Smith.

So what happened was, Daegan and I were actually at a Traffic and Conversion event and we were hanging out at lunch time, we were eating a bunch of food, had a good time, and then we got done, we both got up and went inside the event room and we sat down and we started talking. And then he leaned over to me, I can’t remember, I leaned in and said, “Hey man, thanks for paying.” I’m like, “I didn’t pay.” He’s like, “I didn’t pay either.” We’re like, “Oh crap.” So we both jump up and we run out and we’re like, “Ah, we didn’t pay. We’re so sorry, we didn’t mean to ditch you. Here’s the money. Here’s the money for the food.”

And we went back in the room and sat through the rest of the event, and for me, I didn’t think much about it. But Daegan is a genius and the wheels in his head start spinning, start spinning. And he’s like, “Man, did you see what happened, the law of reciprocity? We got this meal, it was amazing, so much so that even though we technically wouldn’t have had to pay, because we got away with it, not knowing.

The reciprocity was so strong I needed right then to go back and make sure the person was paid.” So the wheels started spinning in his head and he’s like, “What if we did a webinar that way where, well not a webinar but like a class or course or whatever, where instead of charging someone up front you say, ‘hey, come to the webinar, experience it, and then after it’s over, if you like it, pay me. But if not, then don’t worry about it.”

And that was kind of the initial brainchild of the invisible funnel. It was a funnel that was basically backwards like that. So he kind of pioneered that, did the first version where he basically had a funnel and it was like, zero dollars, but you had to put a credit card in to just reserve your spot, come and attend the whole thing and if you love it, don’t do anything and after the webinar is over, I’ll bill you $100.

But at the end if you’re like, ‘uh, it’s not for me.’ Let me know and I’ll give you your money back. Or you know, I won’t bill your credit card. So it didn’t cost you anything. So he did the first version of that invisible funnel, and he did it, and it killed it for him. So I remember I saw it and I watched what people do and I was like, ‘That’s genius.” So the next day I was like, “Daegan, I’m going to do one of those.” And he’s like, ‘It’s called the invisible funnel.” I’m like, “Oh, that name is so good.” So I was like, alright, I’m doing the invisible funnel.

So we went and created on and it was that same kind of thing. And what’s crazy for me, if you look at a typical webinar, let’s say I get 1000 people to register, I might get 300 to show up, right, 30% show up rate. If I did a paid webinar, like a paid product, if someone pays $30 or $50 for a course, I may have sold, maybe I’d sell 100 of them. This is back then. So that was kind of my thing. If I do a free webinar, I’ll get 30% show up rate, if I do a paid, I think it was $47, a paid $47 webinar, maybe I’ll sell 100 to my list. That’s probably like, if I push hard I might get 100 sells.

So I did it, but I did this little flip. It was a webinar, ended up being, it was supposed to be a 4 hour training, 4 hour deep dive on this one topic. And it was free up front, you gotta put a credit card in to reserve your spot. Then you experience the whole thing, then at the end of it, if you decide, at the end of it, I’ll give you an email address, if you don’t love it you can let me know, you can email me and we’ll give you your money back free.

But if you do love it, do nothing, and then 2 days later or whatever, we’ll bill you the $50. So we launched it, and I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I feel like when I did that, I sold like, 300 people signed up. I was like, “Wait, what? That’s crazy.” So 300 people, so 3x more than I would have sold if I just sold it as a product.

Based on kind of my estimates of what I thought I was going to do. Then I did the webinar and what’s crazy, like 85 or 90% show up rate. People showed up because they were paying for it, they wanted to make sure. I had some people that told me, “I signed up just to prove you wrong. I sat through 4 hours and by the end I was like, man, Russell. You earned my money, definitely bill me.” When all was said and done I think we had 10% of people who canceled and asked for their money back.

So there was a little bit there, but even with 10% canceling, it means 90% of the people we actually billed, which is still way more than the 100 people that I would have had, had I sold it up front. So that was the thing, and me and Daegan tested a whole bunch of variations and variables on that and different things. One of the things we tested is basically, you sign up for zero dollars, and you pay afterwards, or if you want to prepay, you get a discount.

We tested that and it was like 50% of people put the prepay to save money. I was like, that’s crazy getting money up front too. Anyway, we did all these different tests and eventually, Daegan and I actually did a 2 or 3 daylong event in DC, with a group of about 100 really amazing marketers, and we taught this concept. And it was really, really cool. And fast forward a year later, I include it in the Dotcom Secrets book, and then it disappeared off the face of the earth.

So anyway, we were planning to do this new Two Comma Club Live event, some of you guys have seen it. If you go to twocommaclublive.com, as of right now we’re in the middle of it. And when we were kind of preparing this, just a thought in my head came and I was like, “What if we, what if we went invisible funnel on this?” Most of the people on my team were like, “What does that mean?” I’m like, but a couple of people knew from back in the day. They’re like, “We haven’t done that in forever.” I’m like, ‘I know, we should totally invisible funnel this thing.”

So that was the concept, so that’s what we’ve been doing. So for the last two weeks now we’ve been promoting it. So basically you come to Twocommaclublive.com, you put your credit card in, we don’t bill you anything and then we’re doing a 3 day live event. I’m going live for 3 days, intense, it’s going to be really, really fun. And then after the event’s over, if you love it, you pay $197, and that’s kind of how it works. And then there was a pre-pay where you can save $50 and get it for a$147, if you pre-paid, plus you got replays for like 5 days at the end, or something like that, whereas you don’t get replays if you do the other way.

So that’s kind of what we did, and that’s how we structured it. And right now it has been killing it. We are over 2000 sales so far, it’s like 60% of the people are taking the pre-pay, which is amazing because now we can spend tons of money to buy ads and bring people in. And we still have another week, about a week left before the event actually starts.

So my goal is probably 3 to 4 thousand people registered, which is amazing. And we’ll do the presentation and it’s going to be really, really fun. So that’s what’s happening and I just wanted to let you guys know the invisible funnel is back, and if you haven’t done one that’s the structure, that’s the concept, that’s how it works. If you want to see me talk about it in the original Dotcom Secrets books, you gotta find one of the old ones, which I don’t even know where you get those anymore. Maybe Amazon?

Or borrow your buddy’s book if he’s got one of the originals. But that’s kind of the concept of what the invisible funnel is and how it works. It’s pretty powerful. So I’m excited to see the stats afterwards, you know, to see if it’s like back in the day, only 10% of the people cancel. Maybe it’s less now? But I’m doing a 3 day event as opposed to a 3 or 4 hour webinar. But it’s pretty cool.

Anyway, I just wanted to kind of give you guys that as an idea, another selling tool, another type of funnel you could test. A way to get paid up front to create something, a way to get a massive goodwill to your audience and reciprocity when you have a chance to serve them, and they get to tell you at the end if it was good. Can you imagine going to a movie and be like, “I’m going to go watch the movie and after it’s done I’ll let you know if it’s good. If I like it, I’ll pay you.” You know, or go to a restaurant and be like, ‘I’m going to eat all the food. If it’s good then I’ll pay you. If not, I’m not going to worry about it.”

That’s literally what you’re doing to your customers, you’re giving them this opportunity to come and like have a meal on me. If you love it, pay me. If not, don’t worry about it. I don’t really care. Imagine the reciprocity that builds with you and your audience. And for some people, they’re going to take advantage of it, for sure.

But the majority of people are good humans and they’re going to love it, and it’s going to give you the ability to serve them when they may have said no ahead of time. They may have, for my people they might not have spent $200 on a ticket to a virtual conference, but now because we did this the other direction, they’re saying, “I’m going to test it out, just try it, see if Russell’s as cool as he thinks.” And because the barrier is lower, they come in. And then they can experience it.

Anyway, that’s what we’re doing and if you want to see one in action go to twocommaclublive.com, it’ll be up for the next couple of days before the event starts, and you can see what it looks like there. So that’s what I wanted to share with you guys. The invisible funnel is back, I hope you use it, I hope you enjoy it. And with that said, I’ll talk to you guys all again later. Bye everybody.