How to build your first funnel in Systeme.io

Most service businesses do not need a bigger website. They need one page that does one job properly, and a way of following up with the people who land on it.

That is a funnel. It is not a complicated thing, and in Systeme.io you can build the whole of it in an afternoon. Here is the order I build them in for clients, and why each step is in that order.

Decide what the funnel is for before you open the builder

A funnel does one job. Get someone onto your email list. Book a call. Sell one thing. If you try to do all three on one page, the page does none of them.

For most service businesses, the first funnel should collect email addresses in exchange for something genuinely useful. You are not going to sell a two thousand pound project to someone who found you ninety seconds ago. You are going to earn the right to email them.

Build the four steps, in this order

Step one: the opt-in page

One headline that says what they get. Two or three lines that say who it is for. One form. No navigation bar, because every link out of the page is a way to leave without giving you an email address.

In Systeme, this is Funnels, then Create, then Build an audience. Pick a squeeze page template and strip it back rather than adding to it.

Step two: the thank you page

Everyone treats this as a dead end. It is the most valuable page in the funnel, because you are talking to someone who has just said yes to you.

Tell them the download is on its way, tell them which email address it comes from so it does not sit in spam, and then make one offer. A call. A low priced template. Something small.

Step three: the email that delivers it

Set this up as an automation rule, not as a campaign. Tag applied, email sent. That way the same email fires whether they came from Instagram, a blog post or a Meta ad.

Step four: the follow up sequence

Three to five emails over a week or two. Not a hard sell. Show them you know the problem, show them what fixing it looks like, then invite them to talk.

The three things that break funnels

• No tag on the form. If the form does not apply a tag, nothing downstream can fire. Check this first when a funnel is silent.
• The thank you page is a full stop. No next step means the momentum you just built goes nowhere.
• The freebie is thin. If the download takes ninety seconds to read and says nothing they did not already know, the follow up emails will not be opened.

How long it should take

Once you know what you are building, the page is an hour, the emails are two, and testing is thirty minutes. The part that takes real time is deciding what to give away and writing something worth downloading.

Build it, send ten people through it, and watch where they stop. That will tell you more than another week of tweaking the headline.