🍭 Strategy of the Week: Adding moments of surprise and delight to your funnel.

I often talk about funnels or sales funnels but it’s important to remember that what I’m really referring to is: your customer’s journey and experience with you/ your brand.

It’s an experience and it’s one that you influence in a million different ways.

So let’s look at some doable examples of adding surprise and delight into your customer journey.

These can work whether you’re selling digital products, courses, templates, workshops, or services.

1. Add an unexpected bonus to your email welcome sequence

Just a note here: the bonus doesn’t have to appear in the email sequence if you don’t use email marketing.
Perhaps you use the ManyChat automation with Instagram DMs. You can add the bonus through that channel.
The bonus could also be placed at the end of your freebie document as the next step.

This bonus could be anything.
You could give them a checklist, a template, a digital product, a free course, a screensaver, a coupon code or discount, access to a private podcast, a bonus training, access to past coaching calls, etc.

→ Here is my example:
In my very first freebie welcome sequence, I added a surprise freebie in email #4 (a client questionnaire checklist for Pinterest managers that my audience had been asking for) and it was a hit.

This image shows the first four emails of my 9-email welcome sequence.

You can see that it starts off strong with a great open rate and click rate.

According to Newsletter Operator* (affiliate link) a good open rate for your first welcome email is 60% and a good click rate is 10%.
So you can see our first email was a hit with an 80% open rate, and 69% click rate.

For general emails (not the first welcome email) a good open rate is 45% and a good click rate is 3-4%.
And for marketing/selling emails the numbers for good open and click rates are lower.

As you can see email #4 is when I added the surprise bonus and the click rate was 23.3% which is considered a great click rate for emails and told me my readers were loving the bonus.

I also received a number of emails saying it was exactly what they had been searching for online, which was more validation that it was a great surprise.

What could I have done better?
Those email subject lines could do with some serious TLC. But hey, this was Kathryn circa 2018/2019 so we’ll give her some slack.

2. Include bonus materials inside your product that weren’t advertised

In my course, I included additional checklists and workflows that weren’t on the sales page. These were tools I used with private clients, and students were so excited to receive them as a “secret extra.”

Bonus: it increases perceived value without adding friction to the sale. It led to more social proof and more customers that bought other offers down the line.

Here are some things you could include:

→ Video training on related topics OR topics unrelated to the offer but that your audience would love
→ Worksheets
→ Templates
→ PDF lesson
→ Graphics/ screensavers/ stickers
→ Private audio podcast 

Here is my pro tip: Add a bonus at specific milestones. This will help create momentum and increase course completion.

3. Offer a bonus live call or Q&A inside your offer

A moment of personalization that can be delivered to many.

→ Group live training call
→ Group Q&A call
→ Office hours Q&A
→ A group chat experience for a limited time

I’ve included a number of these and if you visit my website, you’ll see that the majority of my student reviews include that they loved the live calls.

If it fits with your offer, you can add this as a moment of surprise and delight for your audience.

4. Personal reply moments

Create moments of connection with personalized replies.

→ Ask a question in an email and personally reply to people who respond. It takes 10 minutes and builds a sense of trust and connection that no automation can match.
When your responses grow beyond your capacity you can try and respond to a handful each time and use a different surprise and delight method.

→ Send a personalized DM message on a social platform when someone purchases, recommends you, or engages with you in a significant way.

I recommended Jereshia Hawk’s newsletter and she sent me a voice note via Instagram to thank me. It was a wonderful and kind thing to do, that stuck with me.

I shared another creators LinkedIn post and she reached out to say thank you as it was her first few posts on the platform and it was an encouragement to her.

To me, these were moments of surprise and delight.

5. Send a digital thank-you card after purchase

You can setup an automation to send a digital thank-you card after your customer purchases and create your own version with your smiling face on it!

Or you can send a fun Loom video, a short thank-you note with a graphic, or a simple voice memo (this can be generic but make it impactful).

Totally unexpected and totally memorable.

→ One of my business coaching clients always sends me digital cards (shout out to you Sue Crites) and it’s one of my favourite things! It’s always such a surprise and such a joy.

→ One of my clients that does a quarterly Your Next 90 session creates physical and digital thank you cards in her store (shoutout to you Zoe Bishop). Every time she sends me one I get so excited.

Both of these business owners use this method to create surprise and delight in their client experience. Even if it seems small to you, it’s big for your audience and customers.

6. Celebrate their progress

If your program, freebie, or course includes steps or milestones, add a surprise reward, video, or email after one of them.

Something like:

→ “You made it through module 2? You’re crushing it. Here’s a quick video I created with my go-to tip (and a personal story about forgetting to hit publish) that I created to help with the next stage.”

You could also celebrate their progress in different ways:

→ A personal message in Instagram DMs
→ Creating a celebration video for each milestone hit and sharing your personal experiences at those milestones with lessons.
→ An automated email to their inbox with an encouraging message and a digital congrats card.
→ A discount for an offer that will be perfect once they reach that milestone (that is only available if they get to that point in the program).

7. Feature your customers or students

Delight them by spotlighting their win (with permission) in your newsletter, community, or on social media. It's fun for them, builds social proof for you, and encourages continued engagement.

→ Feature their wins
→ Feature their business
→ Offer your students that reach a specific milestone a spot on your podcast
→ Reach out to your email list and surprise them with opportunity to guest post on your blog
→ Feature them in a directory
→ Follow them on social media after they purchase and if they share any content that your audience would love, share it.

8. Add a sparkle of YOU into different spots

This is a simpler option to start with.

It could be:
→ Adding a GIF of you celebrating when they join your email newsletter or signup for an offer.
→ Creating an audio message that gets delivered when they signup for your newsletter.
→ Sharing some real business info like your real stats, a personal BTS moment, a short video saying hi and welcoming them.

This is sharing more of you and building a connection during the customer experience.

⛰️ Real World Example

I recently signed up for Jordan Gill’s B-Roll shotlist. I received the free download and entered her welcome sequence.

Here is a moment of surprise and delight she created:
In her 4th email in the sequence she delivered a surprise bonus.

Her bonus was related to a service her business offers called the Opportunity List™. She delivered a sample of what the service can do and that sample was specifically using my Instagram audience.

It was a personalized bonus which is a whole new level of surprise and delight that you could introduce into your funnel.

But my pro tip: start with a surprise and delight moment that is easy and simple to implement. Then grow from there.

And guess what was an even bigger surprise?

That video walk through you see below, was not a generic walkthrough of the service or how to use the list.
She recorded a video specifically for me which added an entirely new layer of personalization and delight.

Here is the email her team sent 👇

Do you know the best part about this example of surprise and delight?

It landed in my inbox 2 days after my email last week about creating moments of surprise and delight! I knew immediately I had to share this example with you.

Now remember…

You don’t need to go to this level to create moments of delight for your audience. Your audience is unique and YOU know them better than anyone else.

So what works for one person may not work for another.

🎯 This week’s action: Pick ONE place in your funnel to add surprise or delight.

Keep it small, free, and make it doable.
Then see what happens and how your audience interacts with it.

You might just get that “Oh my goodness, I didn’t expect this” reply.

And if you’re mapping your sales funnel and still feeling stuck, you can book Your Next 90 Days session with me and we’ll make a game plan together (offers, customer journey, funnel touchpoints and all).

Your audience is already paying attention, so try and make it fun to stick around.

The goal isn’t to overload your funnel with distracting things.
You’re trying to create a memorable experience that also works towards your own business goals.

And the more human your funnel feels, the more your customers will want to stick around.

Did this week’s email give you any ideas for some moments of surprise and delight you could add to your customer experience?
Send me a reply and let me know. I’d love to hear what you’re thinking and brainstorming.

🫡 KM Tip of the Week:

Where are people dropping off in your email sales funnel?

If you’ve got great leads and low conversions, something might be missing in the middle.

Here’s how to troubleshoot:
→ If email open rates are low, your subject lines might need work.
→ If click-throughs from your emails are low, try rewriting your email call-to-actions.
→ If your checkout page isn’t converting, check that your offer is clear, the transformation is front and center, and there’s no tech friction.
→ If you’ve tested the above, try and adjust your messaging to see if that is the issue.

Your funnel is like a story. If someone stops reading, you just need to figure out which chapter lost their attention.

🦄 I’m In Your Corner:

You are the expert (even when it doesn’t feel like it)

It’s easy to think someone else has the “right” way to do it.

But you’ve built something real, you know your people, you know your offers, and you know how you want to show up.

Trust that.

The best strategies aren’t always the ones that follow the rules, they’re the ones that follow your strengths.
And you’re more ready than you think.

Are you reorganizing your Google drive for the 97th time but not getting that digital product shop off the ground?

If your Google Docs is a tressure trove of ideas but every time you open it, you get overwhelmed with what to actually move forward with.

Then let’s spend 2 hours together working through your ideas and your goals so we can create clarity around your action plan for the next 90 days.

In this 2-hour session, we’ll create a personalized 90-day plan tailored to your goals, business model, and working style.

Use it to:

→ Map out the creation & launch of a digital product
→ Restructure your business to take Fridays off
→ Streamline systems or workflows
→ Reset your mindset and get clear on your next move

You don’t have to figure it out alone.

🙋‍♀️ Am I right?!

Launching without a plan is like going on a road trip with no snacks.
Technically possible, but absolutely tragic.

Start small and choose one moment to make special. Then build from there.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, “This sounds amazing, but I don’t even know what my next step is…”, I’ve got you.

Just reply and tell me a bit about your business, and if you have a funnel already setup. We can brainstorm one moment of surprise and delight together.

You don’t need to do this alone.

— Kat 🍭