Utilize Free Lesson Funnels to increase sales by offering a free lesson to nurture leads into buying your product.
In This Article:
How to Create a Free Lesson Funnel
How to Edit and Customize Your Funnel
How to Preview, Publish, and Share Your Funnel
Need assistance with bug reporting, functionality questions, or feedback? Reach out to us via email at funnels-program@thinkific.com. You can also share your feedback through our Thinkific Funnels feedback form.
About This Feature
The Free Lesson Funnel is a powerful tool that empowers you to offer a free piece of your existing learning content to generate new leads and nurture them to make their first product purchase. By leveraging this feature, you can captivate your audience's interest and guide them toward becoming new students.
How to Create a Free Lesson Funnel
Follow the set-up prompts to create your new funnel as it guides you step-by-step through the process of creating a funnel flow. Once you have completed the set-up, the prompts will be utilized to generate separate landing pages and thank you pages, as well as a funnel flowchart for your Free Lesson Funnel.
- From the Admin Dashboard, select Marketing
- Select Funnels
- Click + Create Funnel then, Choose the Free Lesson Funnel
- Choose a course as your Main Offer to sell as part of your funnel, select a Discount price for your main offer, and click Next.
We recommend selecting a low-price product for your main offer, with a price range of $9 to $49 for business-to-consumer (B2C) purposes and $49 to $299 for business-to-business (B2B) purposes. If you don't have such a product available, you have the option to repurpose existing content to create a mini-course that specifically targets a single problem. This discount price will only be offered if they skip the purchase prompt with the full-price offer.
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Optional: Choose a Complementary Product to sell, select a Discount price for your complementary product, and click Next.
The complementary product with the applied one-time offer discount will appear alongside the main offer on the purchase confirmation page. We recommend selecting a complementary product that’s in a similar price range to your main offer.
- Select the Knowledge Level of your audience based on your audience’s familiarity with your course topic and click Next.
- Input information about your target audience in the textbox provided and click Next.
Share details about who they are, what makes them tick, what motivates them, etc. The more details you provide, the better!
- Input information about what problem(s) your main product is trying to solve in the textbox provided and click Next.
Provide details about the challenges or frustrations your students commonly experience and how this course can help them.
- Input information about the outcome students can expect from the free lesson in the textbox provided and click Done.
What will students learn from the free content and how will it benefit them?
How to Edit and Customize Your Funnel
Once a funnel flowchart has been generated you will be directed to the Funnels Flow tab where you can customize the content at each stage of the funnel to align with your brand. Funnel stages with text copy requiring customization will be marked with an Action required: review content prompt.
Funnel Settings
The funnel settings allow you to change to the main offer, cross-sell offer, and their respective discount percentage after the funnel has been created.
How to Update Your Main and Cross-Sell Offer
- From the Admin Dashboard, select Marketing
- Select Funnels
- Select the funnel you want to edit
- Select the Settings tab
- Use the dropdown header under Main offer or Cross-sell offer to change your product offering
- Optional: Type in a percentage under Discount to change the discount applied to your offer
- Click Save
How to Delete a Funnel
Before you delete your funnel, make sure to remove any URLs from your marketing activities that would direct traffic toward the funnel as it will no longer be accessible. Once you delete a funnel, it cannot be recovered.
- From the Admin Dashboard, select Marketing
- Select Funnels
- Select the funnel you want to edit
- Select the Settings tab
- Click Delete This Funnel
- Check-off I have removed all top of funnel references to this funnel's URL
- Click Delete Funnel
Lead Capture Page
A lead capture page, also known as a landing page, is a web page designed with the primary goal of capturing the contact information of visitors, typically in exchange for a specific offer or valuable content. The purpose of a lead capture page is to convert website visitors into leads by enticing them to provide their email addresses or other relevant contact information. These pages often feature a compelling headline, concise copy, a call-to-action, and a form where visitors can input their details.
How to Change the Design Template
- Click on Design in the top left-hand corner
- Select one of the designs from the dropdown menu to change the template
How to Customize Your Brand Style
Your Landing Page and Thank You Page style will inherit your Theme Settings.
- Select Brand Styles on the top right of your landing page
- Update your landing page's Fonts, Colors, Buttons, Surfaces, and Inputs
- Click Save
How to Add and Edit Header and Footer on Your Page
- Click on Page Settings in the top right corner of your page
- Select Page Layout then choose Header, Content, Footer
- Click Save
- Click Edit Header
- Add or update your header Links and Design
- Click Apply Changes
- Click Edit Footer
- Update your footer Design
- Click Apply Changes
How to Edit Text
- Click on any text box on your landing page
- Customize the text to align with your brand
- Optional: Use the integrated AI Text Generator to fine-tune your text
- Click Save
How to Update an Image
- Click on the media field on your landing page
- Select Image and click Upload
- Click Select Files to Upload
- Select the image you want to use and click Open
- Optional: Crop, circle, or rotate the image then click Save
- Click Upload
How to Add a Video
- Host your video on YouTube
- On YouTube, click on the share button and copy the link
- Select Market and Sell, then Funnels from your Admin Dashboard
- Click on the Sales Page card
- Click on the placeholder image
- Select Video then paste the link to the video under Video URL
- Optional: Upload a video cover image
- Click Apply and then Save
How to Optimize Your Funnel SEO
- Select Page Settings on the top right of your landing page
- Update your Page name, Page slug, and Page description
- Add Keywords, separated by commas, for SEO
- Click Save
Free Lesson
You will need to decide which lesson within your main offer course will be offered for free to your target audience. The free lesson will be the funnel that captivates your audience's interest and guide them toward becoming new students by enrolling in your full course. Your free lesson should be short and engaging.
Learn how to Create a Free Course Preview
Purchase prompt
The purchase prompt is what your lead will see as a pop-up after they have completed the free lesson to prompt them to make a full purchase of your main offer. You can make changes to the text of the prompt header, body, and CTA button.
Recapture one-time offer purchase prompt
The recapture one-time offer purchase prompt will only be shown to the lead if they skip over the initial purchase prompt by offering the course at a discounted price.
You can make changes to the text of the modal heading, modal body, and button CTA. Optionally, you can check off the 'Also display to discount prompt to users who get to the Free Preview content through the default Product page' box, if you wish to also offer your discount outside of your funnel. If you want to change the percentage of discount offered, you can do so in the Free Lesson Funnel Settings tab.
Drop-off recapture email
The drop-off recapture email is only sent if the lead has checked off the "Keep me up to date on free learning opportunities and the latest offers." box before viewing the free lesson, and has not purchased the product within an hour of seeing the purchase prompt.
The email can not be customized at the moment but can be previewed by publishing the funnel and going through it in an incognito tab to have the email sent to you.
Main Offer Checkout
The lead will be taken to the checkout page if they decide to purchase your main offer. The payment is processed through Thinkific’s built-in Performance Checkout.
Thank You Page with Cross-Sell
The thank you page allows you to acknowledge and express gratitude to your new students and encourages engagement with their newly purchased course while giving you an opportunity to cross-sell with your complementary product.
You can make changes to the text of the prompt header, body, and CTA button. If you want to change the cross-sell product offered, you can do so in the Free Lesson Funnel Settings tab
Cross-Sell Checkout
The lead will be taken to the checkout page if they decide to purchase your cross-sell product. The payment is processed through Thinkific’s built-in Performance Checkout.
Thank You Page
This thank you page is your school’s default thank you page. Changes made to your default thank you page within Site Builder are not specific to this funnel and will be reflected in all products purchased through your school.
How to Preview, Published, and Share Your Funnel
After customizing your funnel, you can easily publish it by toggling on the Publish Funnel toggle located at the top right of the page. Once activated, you can share your funnel URL directly to Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, or any social platform.
You also have the option to Preview Funnel to see your funnel from the student experience. To test your funnel, you will need to create a test student account and sign up through your funnel as a lead capture.
Learn more about How to Create a Test Student Account
How to Find Your Leads
Leads generated using the Free Lesson Funnel are created as student users. This means:
- The New Lead notification will not be sent for leads generated using the Free Lesson Funnel.
- The user will appear in the Students table
- The user will not appear in the Leads table
- The user will not trigger New Lead trigger in Zapier or New Lead Webhook
- The user will not trigger email marketing automations, where the trigger is New Lead
Find leads that have signed up through your Free Lesson Funnel through your User Report.
- From your Admin Dashboard, select Users
- Select All Users
- Select Filters and filter for External Resource from the dropdown menu
- Type in 'free lesson funnel' in the Enter a text value field