---
name: funnels-and-offers
description: Use when designing or auditing offers, pricing and funnels for digital, info, service or physical products — funnel unit economics ("dirty math" — CPA, AOV, COGS, rebills, how much CAC you can afford), price tests, whether order bumps/upsells still pay on Meta, which funnel to launch with per vertical (DTC, info, high ticket, subscription app), choosing pain points and awareness level for a DTC offer, back-end LTV/ascension behind a low-ticket front end, email (storytelling emails, post-opt-in sequences, promotional cadence), lead magnets and CTAs, referral/event lead gen, AOV bundles, above-the-fold CRO, LTV:CAC, CAC payback, gross margin, prepay and payment plans, membership churn, and scaling a coaching business. Triggers on "how should I price this", "is my funnel profitable", "should I add an order bump", "what funnel should I launch with", "email sequence after opt-in", "how many emails should I send", "raise average order value", "LTV to CAC", "payback period", "how do I reduce churn", "scale my coaching business".
---

# Funnels & offers (unit economics, pricing, funnels, email, lead gen, retention)

Synthesised from Alex Hormozi (Acquisition.com/Skool, 2025–2026: rules of thumb from high-ticket
services, coaching and memberships), Stefan Georgi (direct-response DTC/info funnels, 2024 and a 2026
live workshop), Smart Marketer (DTC cases from Ezra Firestone's brands), Common Thread Collective
(ecommerce email cadence) and Alex Cattoni (email for info businesses). Everyone here sells programmes
or agency services. Treat every number as a heuristic or single case, not a benchmark. Notes live in
`${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/`.

## Core playbook

1. **Read price from close rate** (salesperson-led sales): 80%+ means ~3–4x underpriced, 30–40% is about right, under 30% means fix the avatar or sales motion before cutting price. Never match a cheaper competitor. → pricing-by-close-rate
2. **Services need 80%+ gross margin.** 70% vs 90% is $233 vs $900 gross profit on $100 of cost. Low margin usually means a commoditized offer. → gross-margin-targets
3. **LTV:CAC target depends on human steps:** 3:1 if fully automated, then 6:1, 9:1 or 12:1 as each of attraction, conversion and delivery involves people. → ltv-to-cac-by-human-touchpoints
4. **Recover CAC within 30 days.** Month-one gross cash should exceed COGS + CAC. Pull cash forward with setup fees, front-end programmes, bundles and prepay. → cac-payback-and-30-day-cash
5. **Always offer prepay:** at least 10% off; buy-10-get-2 gets 15–20% take-up, 30–40% with bonuses. Fallbacks are half now/half in 30 days, payday-aligned splits, layaway, financing (+35% sales claimed). → prepayment-and-payment-plans
6. **Cold traffic gets a mini-offer, not "book a call".** Reveal a problem, offer a trial, or give one step of many, delivered as software, info, a service or a physical item. Never solve the core problem free. Gate by qualification. → lead-magnet-types-and-delivery
7. **Name the result, test the name, then ask clearly and often** (clear CTA + next action + reason now, with honest capacity scarcity). → lead-magnet-naming-and-cta
8. **Sanity-check the funnel:** ~10% of Meta leads close in person, 2–5% of webinar opt-ins buy, reps close ~35%, pages convert 1–2%. Call leads within 60s. Keep calendars ~70% full. Rule of 100 for volume. → sales-funnel-rules-of-thumb
9. **Referrals: give the friend something valuable and ask "who are you bringing?"** at every visit. Use events and workshops with a diagnostic freebie for high-trust, high-ticket offers. → referral-offers-and-event-marketing
10. **Lead cold traffic with a bundle or system**, chosen on AOV, CPC fatigue and volume together, not on product-page conversion rate. Pre-sell articles beat product pages for top of funnel. In the Boom case AOV went ~$38→$78 with no site changes. → aov-flagship-bundle-offer
11. **On the site, fix the hero first.** About 40% never scroll. A benefit headline, the best asset moved up, a guarantee under the CTA and a clear selector gave +16% conversion in one case. → homepage-above-the-fold-optimization
12. **Retention multiplies everything.** Average Skool retention is 80% a month; under 70% is the priority. Get members past day 90 and month 6. 20%→10% churn doubles LTV. → membership-churn-benchmarks-and-ltv
13. **Reduce churn by subtraction:** tag cancel reasons every ~20 cancels, ask loyal members why they stay, cut overwhelm (30%→5% churn in one case), add a cheaper tier only for ideal customers, aim for a first win within 24h, a weekly call, 10 regulars. → membership-retention-tactics
14. **Educational businesses:** dominate locally first, drop low-ticket events that lose money, expect warm motions to break on cold ads, and charge one-time skill transfer up front with cheap continuity ("big head, long tail"). → scaling-coaching-and-education-businesses
15. **Do the dirty math first:** CPA, day-zero AOV, COGS → gross profit per customer. Then pull the four levers (lower CPA, lower COGS, raise AOV, raise LTV) where the biggest leak is. Peer benchmarks + drop-off analytics + cart recovery took one funnel from −$146 to +$56. → funnel-economics-dirty-math
16. **Pay above first-order profit only with rebill cash and a model.** Meta CAC is a market price, so high-LTV brands outbid you. Low-LTV brands must stay first-order profitable. → paying-above-first-order-cac
17. **Test price both ways.** $59→$79 on one tier held conversion. A ~40% cut doubled-to-tripled conversion and enabled scale. ~1.3 ROAS at low spend won't scale. → price-testing-dtc-offers
18. **Don't bolt bumps/upsells onto a scaling Meta funnel** (Stefan, 2026: AOV ×2 ≈ CAC ×2). Do AOV work on the back end. Contested by bundle cases. → aov-and-upsells-on-meta-cac
19. **Launch with the simplest funnel:** ads → PDP (DTC), ads → lander (info), VSL → qualified booking (high ticket), quiz → trial (subscription app, expect to run negative), low-ticket test before high ticket. → launch-funnel-simplest-structure
20. **Pick a bleeding-neck pain point and a fast, felt win.** Add problem-aware ads/pages to scale past solution-aware buyers. Keep mechanisms short. → dtc-offer-pain-point-and-awareness-level
21. **Low-ticket front end, flat LTV → build ascension:** a WhatsApp community, lives that mix value and pitches, a flagship done-with-you offer. Seed quiet groups with 5–15 active members. → low-ticket-ltv-ascension-and-community
22. **Post-opt-in email:** deliver the promise first (a relevant low-ticket P.S. offer), then problem → proof → objections → real deadline. The non-sales first email drove the most revenue. → cold-lead-workshop-email-sequence
23. **Bridge every story email to the offer with one sentence** (lesson, compare/contrast, metaphor), and mix story and sales emails. → storytelling-email-story-bridges
24. **Ecommerce email is promotional:** tie every campaign to a dated moment with a revenue target. BFCM: 3/week → daily → 3/day → 2-day extension → shipping-cutoff sale. → promotional-email-cadence

## Note map

| Note | Read when |
|---|---|
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/pricing-by-close-rate.md` | Setting or raising price on a sales-led offer; a competitor undercuts you |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/gross-margin-targets.md` | Checking if the price leaves room for acquisition and overhead |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/ltv-to-cac-by-human-touchpoints.md` | Deciding whether the business is ready to scale paid acquisition |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/cac-payback-and-30-day-cash.md` | Cash-constrained growth; restructuring an offer to pay back faster |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/prepayment-and-payment-plans.md` | Annual/prepay discounts, split payments, layaway, financing |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/lead-magnet-types-and-delivery.md` | Choosing what free or low-cost thing to offer for leads |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/lead-magnet-naming-and-cta.md` | Naming or testing a lead magnet; writing CTAs and scarcity |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/sales-funnel-rules-of-thumb.md` | Judging lead-to-sale rates; speed to lead; sales-team capacity; lead volume |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/referral-offers-and-event-marketing.md` | High-ticket local service; designing a referral programme or event funnel |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/aov-flagship-bundle-offer.md` | Raising AOV; choosing which offer to run to cold paid traffic |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/homepage-above-the-fold-optimization.md` | Quick CRO win on a page receiving paid traffic, without a redesign |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/membership-churn-benchmarks-and-ltv.md` | Is my churn good? Cohort churn; how retention changes LTV |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/membership-retention-tactics.md` | Reducing churn in a membership, community, course or coaching programme |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/scaling-coaching-and-education-businesses.md` | Growing an info/coaching business; continuity design; adding paid ads to a launch model |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/funnel-economics-dirty-math.md` | Is this funnel profitable? Which lever to pull first; abandoned-cart call centre; peptide case |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/paying-above-first-order-cac.md` | Deciding max CAC; rebills and going negative; market CAC on Meta; low-LTV constraints |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/price-testing-dtc-offers.md` | Planning price tests; package grids; front-end price when ROAS is marginal |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/aov-and-upsells-on-meta-cac.md` | Should I add an order bump/upsell/subscription checkbox to a Meta funnel? |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/launch-funnel-simplest-structure.md` | Choosing a launch funnel per vertical; high-ticket beta; subscription app on cold traffic; VSL vs text |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/dtc-offer-pain-point-and-awareness-level.md` | Angle isn't working; weak pain point; solution- vs problem-aware; affiliates; mechanism complexity |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/low-ticket-ltv-ascension-and-community.md` | Cheap front end sells but LTV is flat; WhatsApp community; reviving a quiet group; list monetisation |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/cold-lead-workshop-email-sequence.md` | Writing the email sequence after a lead magnet or webinar; open/click benchmarks per email |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/storytelling-email-story-bridges.md` | Writing newsletters or story emails that end in a CTA without an awkward pivot |
| `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/marketing/funnels-and-offers/promotional-email-cadence.md` | How many campaign emails to send; BFCM email/SMS schedule; calendar-driven email |

Related elsewhere in the base: app and web-funnel pricing and upsells in
`${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/mobile-apps/web2app/web2app-upsells-and-downsells.md`,
`${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/mobile-apps/web2app/web2app-tripwire-pricing.md`,
`${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/mobile-apps/monetization/paid-intro-offers.md` and
`${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/wiki/mobile-apps/monetization/paywall-price-display-and-plan-count.md`.

## Gaps

- **Order bumps and post-purchase upsells:** take rates are only anecdotal (Stefan's "20% → 40%" upsell example). Whether they raise Meta CAC is contested (aov-and-upsells-on-meta-cac), with no controlled test.
- No controlled tests. Hormozi numbers are rules of thumb, and Smart Marketer cases are unaudited in-house wins.
- Not covered: value-stack/guarantee construction from *$100M Offers*, price-increase tests on existing customers, downsell ladders for courses, EU/VAT or payment-provider rules for prepay and financing, refund rates, email deliverability and unsubscribe benchmarks, SMS/WhatsApp flow benchmarks. One low-ticket → core email funnel has real numbers (Cattoni), but there's no data for continuity tiers.
- Retention benchmarks come from Skool communities. B2B SaaS and app subscriptions differ.