Full Funnel Nudity [Edition #12]: The E-commerce Tripwire Funnel—How to Turn a $18 Pair of Socks Into $90 of Average Order Value

Let me know if you’re familiar with this problem…

You sell premium-priced products.

Like all brands do, you need a way to attract and convert new customers each and every day.

But you do NOT want to use limited-time constant discounting as your go-to attraction method.

So without deep discounting, how do you get a new customer to enter your world and take a chance on your products?

Well, that’s the problem we are going to solve today.

In this edition of Full Funnel Nudity, you’ll get to see inside a funnel that attracts new customers to a simple $18 product…

… And quickly turns that $18 order into a $90 plus sale.

You will also discover how to create an ad that doubles to quadruples the sales of your best introductory products. 

I hope you’re ready for this one!

Because the powerful little funnel we’re dissecting today may just knock your socks off.

But before we pull the sheets back and reveal how this funnel was made, here’s a brief reminder about… 

The strategy behind the E-commerce Tripwire Funnel

The tripwire funnel is one that will be familiar to anyone who’s spent any time in info marketing.

And, BTW, I did not come up with the name “tripwire funnel.”  Nor do I love calling it that.

I am not in favor of blowing up, tricking, or deceiving customers. 

I would much prefer to call the funnel the “entry” or “intro” offer.

But If I did that in this post, I might miss out on snaring all that sweet tripwire-curios traffic.

Lord knows this site could use some more traffic. 

And by lord, I do, in fact, mean Google. 

So, in this instance, SEO > ethics.

All right, back to the important stuff.

In Info marketing, a tripwire is a low-priced, can’t-miss offer.

Usually, it’s some kind of offer for a course or Ebook that looks too good for the target prospect to pass up.

The strategy behind this offer is simple.

Even though the tripwire offer itself is not a huge profit maker, it allows the merchant to break even on acquiring a new customer.

And from there, the money is made using cart bumps and follow-up offers that maximize order value.

The tripwire is a tried-and-true sales mechanism in the info marketing world.

But you don’t see it used much, if at all, by DTC e-commerce brands that sell physical products.

The reason being it’s a little harder to pull off.

In info marketing, there’s no real additional unit cost to selling a course or digital workbook.

So deep discounts make sense if it helps get new prospects to cross the chasm and become customers.

However, if you’re selling physical goods, there is a cost for every unit you sell.

Which means if you discount the bottom out of a popular product, you’ll never see a dollar from it.

That product will become a loss leader instead of an earner…

Unless, of course, you don’t discount that front-end offer.

Instead, you sell purely on need and value.

And that’s what you’re going to see with this E-commerce tripwire funnel.

Selecting the right tripwire product

The product you’ll see in the tripwire funnel we’re examining today is a pair of socks.

Why socks?

Well, for one, these socks are special. 

They have an advantage over similar socks in this category.

Two, this product, the socks, are something EVERY potential customer in the target audience can use.

Three, the cost.

This product is in the lowest price tier for this merchant.

At $18, the customer can literally dip their toes into trying out a new brand.

So what we have here is a tripwire trifecta.

1) A unique and superior product, 2) that every target customer needs, 3) that’s priced lower than the rest of the merchant's catalog.

When you build your own tripwire, see if you can nail this trifecta.

At the very least, to make your tripwire effective. you need a product or offer that appeals to most of your target market, and a low-friction price point.

The third leg of this stool, product superiority, will help enhance your marketing and your customer retention.

Let’s move on to promoting your tripwire product.

Sell the whole story

The trend with e-commerce ads is to use short copy.

You don’t want to say too much and scare away the customer. Instead, let the creative do the work.

I am on board with that approach when it comes to retargeting.

But NOT when it comes to trying to win over new customers.

When you’re trying to attract new customers who may never have heard of your brand before, you can't skimp on your sales story.

Instead, you need to blow your prospects away with an innovative solution that solves an immediate problem.

So when designing your tripwire ad, start by writing some banger ad copy.

If you want proof of how important copy is to your tripwire ad, examine the example below.

This ad goes deep on the copy.

As for the creative… well, when the media buyer tasked with running this ad saw the "black socks pic..."

... They thought it was so bad they laughed at it.

To their surprise, this ad pulled a 7X ROAS for multiple months last year. (Who's laughing now?)

In fact, it did so well we had to turn it off because it sold out the product well ahead of the re-supply date.

Why did this ad copy crush it?

Let’s break it down.

The dumb sales letter ad

This ad reads like a mini sales letter…

… If you dumbed that sales letter down so much that you could turn it into a kid's picture book.

Which I think is the key to this ad formula.

Here’s how you can recreate a "Dumb Sales Letter" for your own ads.

Write the story of your product as if you are writing a mini-sales letter. (We are talking short form here. Just a few hundred words or less.)

You can write your ad from the point of a creation or founder’s story.

After you’ve written your initial text, go back to the top of your draft and write down the most attention-grabbing thing you can say about your product 

This first sentence is your grabber. It’s the only part of your ad text that people will see at first glance when they are scrolling Facebook.

The next sentence is like a headline. 

It’s where you say the second most important or compelling thing you can about your product.

Now take the rest of the text you wrote and re-write it like it’s going in a children's picture book.

You can even pack it full of emojis if you are so inclined.

And that’s it. You’re done.

You’ve just created a dumb sales letter.

Don’t confuse dumb for stupid here.

If you write your ad like this, it’s likely to stand out because it won’t look like any of the other ads your customer sees on Facebook or Instagram.

And if your offer is as on target as your copy, this ad is likely to be a great feeder for your tripwire funnel.

Aim small miss small 

Eventually, we did invest in improving the creative in our tripwire ad.

But not until after proving our ad was effective.

So if you build this type of funnel, my advice is to aim small, miss small.

Start by testing your ad copy. See if it attracts enough high-quality traffic to feed your tripwire funnel.

If your ad shows potential, the next step is to optimize your offer.

One is good, three is better, and five is best

Okay, so your customer read your dumb sales letter ad.

They clicked through to your product page.

If all they do next is buy your product, great! That’s a good start,

However, as we talked about before, you’re selling a low-cost product.

Which means unless your conversion rates are astronomical, it’s going to be hard to cover your ad costs with $18 conversions.

So how do you increase the order value and make your e-commerce tripwire funnel profitable?

Offer multiples right on the product page.

And give the customer an incentive to go bigger.

Keep it bumpn' in the cart

Some customers will go for the value pack you offer on the product pages. Others won’t.

So the next step is to optimize the cart.

You do this by adding cart bumps and conversion elements.

Your cart bumps are other products that go with the tripwire product.

And the conversion elements let your customer know how they can increase the value they get for their dollar.

For example, in this instance, the customer gets free shipping once they reach a $200 order.

You can also test discounting bundles in the cart.

The VIP AOV party is in the back

I can’t stress this enough…

The back end of this funnel is your money maker.

When we first started testing this funnel, we had no back end.

But it still did great because of the free shipping incentive on larger orders.

This incentive encouraged customers to create their own bundles, which in turn kept the average order value high.

We learned from watching customers create their own bundles.

Then, we used what we learned to make our cart optimizations.

And that’s how you go from an $18 offer into a consistent $90 order that converts new customers like crazy.

Key Takeaways

Here’s a quick recap in case you missed any of the important details in this funnel breakdown:

Once your e-commerce tripwire funnel is humming with traffic and sales…

… you can add on more sales optimizations like back-end upsells, email cross-sells, etc.

Those optimizations will add even more of a boost to your revenue.

But if you do only what we covered in this breakdown, your funnel should still be a huge earner.

All right, I shared enough.

Now it’s your turn.

What did you think of this breakdown? Did it blow you away? Or did it trip you up?

Share your take in the comments below!