Funnels used to feel like magic—you’d write a few emails, automate the sequence, and boom, sales. But times (and subscribers) have changed. In this episode, Liz shares why the “set it and forget it” model doesn’t cut it anymore, what to do instead, and how to actually make funnels work for you—not against you.
Episode Highlights
- Why Liz turned off her own funnel and focused on weekly newsletters instead
- The importance of knowing your audience and why your list is always evolving
- How “set it and forget it” funnels can make your business feel cold and outdated
- Why live launching helps you understand your customers better than automation ever will
- The truth about passive income (spoiler: it’s not really passive)
- How to use a multi-channel approach—even inside your funnel—to build real connections
- The danger of relying on templates without doing the deep audience research first
Key Takeaways
- Funnels fail when they’re too impersonal—people want to connect with humans, not robots.
- You need live selling experience before automating so you understand what actually converts.
- Your audience changes over time; what worked a year ago may not resonate today.
- Templates are tools, not shortcuts. Without audience insight, even the best copy falls flat.
- A healthy marketing ecosystem includes multiple touchpoints: email, podcasts, social, live sessions, and beyond.
Links and Resources
Episode 61: How to Get Replies to Your Email Newsletters
Episode 166: get the maximum results from your email list by doing these four things!
Join Liz’s annual pass waitlist here!
Join the Email Sound Booth Facebook group here
Check out Liz’s free welcome sequence here
Liz’s Kit [Convertkit] affiliate link
Transcript
What’s up, Liz Wilcox? In your ears.
So excited.
If you listen to 168, y’. All.
I recorded that yesterday. I was just in a mood. I had slept maybe like three hours.
But I also am so tired of my own BS and not getting stuff done that I was like, nope, I’m recording. I don’t care.
Now let that be inspiration. Maybe that, like, hey, you don’t have.
To show up perfect to show up. And let that be inspiration that you.
Don’T have to put up with your own bs.
Now, I did want to record this episode yesterday as well, but after recording the one, I was like, I can’t do it.
I’m out. So anyway, here we are today with episode 169, why Funnels Don’t Work the Way They Used to. Now, this one actually comes from the same person from yesterday, Andrea, you know, an email subscriber. Listen, if you’re not subscribed to the email list, the link is in the show notes or in the YouTube description. Join now because I take you freaking seriously. If you email me with a question, I’m going to answer you. And sometimes I’m going to make it a podcast episode because I think it’s so.
What’s the word? Poignant?
Relevant.
Anyway, listen. Funnels.
I’ve never really. Never.
Funnels.
Don’t know him, right? I. My main offer is $9. Okay. So I actually, a couple years ago.
Yeah, I think, I think two summers ago, one summer ago, I don’t know. Anyway, I created a funnel quote unquote for email marketing membership. So I turned my four part welcome sequence into like a ten part welcome sequence slash funnel.
And I ended up turning it off because I just realized I don’t really need that. It’s $9, you know, like buy it or not, bro. So it just, it just didn’t feel right. I was getting more unsubscribes and I realized that I would, you know, since I email one, two, sometimes three times a week and I mentioned my emm, my email marketing membership all the time, I just realized like, maybe I don’t need this funnel. I’d rather them be getting my evergreen newsletter or.
Or.
I’m sorry, I’m rather than be getting my weekly newsletter than this evergreen sequence because. And this is, this is my point number one, you have to get to know your freaking people. And because my list grows every day. New people come on the list every day. So my.
I look at my email list like water, right? And it.
This is like, you know, either Like a great lake. Shout out Michigan or the ocean or.
The Gulf of Mexico. It is like, you know, the waves come in and the waves go out. My email list is constantly moving and grooving, which is what you want. I’m so happy about it. So who was on my list a.
Year ago is not the same as.
Who’S been on my list this year, right? So I need to be in constant contact. And with funnels, the set it and forget it it model of like, oh, I’m gonna write this funnel and, you.
Know, set it and forget it. It’s just like, too impersonal. Okay? You gotta shift from that line of thinking. And I know everybody wants passive income.
I’m here to tell you that’s pretty much a myth.
I mean, I have passive income now, but I’ve been working at this for almost 10 years.
Okay?
It takes a lot of upfront work, okay? So you gotta shift to relationship building. I say it all the time. And I got it from Mike Kim. He’s a copywriter. It’s not about closing a sale. It’s about opening up a relationship. You have to be human to human. I don’t care what your business is. I don’t care if you are a professional selling to professionals in the military.
Okay?
You. It’s still two guys sitting at a desk writing each other via email. Okay? Like, you gotta get replies. Check episode 61 if you need help with replies. Okay? You.
You can’t be too impersonal. And that set it and forget can become really outdated and very impersonal very quickly. And it becomes outdated because the consumer, your readers, the people you hope buy from you, they’re more and more savvy.
As time goes on.
Even if you’re very business to consumer. Like, I used to sell in my RV travel days, my ideal customer was, you know, a man in their 60s. 70% of my audience were men above the age of 50. Right? And this was like back in like 2016.
And yeah, they weren’t very Internet savvy. You know, they trusted a lot more. They’re reading, you know, going through a funnel. Wow, this is amazing. But now they’ve seen it, they’ve done it, they’ve been there, you know, got the T shirt. You know, they want that human. Like, am I talking to a human right now? And we talked about that in yesterday’s episode, addressing the AI elephant in the room. People just want to talk to humans, okay? Now you. Also, a lot of people that set up funnels, they. And this goes hand in Hand, really? They just haven’t done enough live selling. I believe it’s Amy Porterfield that’s kind of famous in some circles for telling people like, you gotta live launch something three times before you make it evergreen. And I 100 agree with that. I have live launched, so my annual pass is coming up for Black Friday.
I have live launched that thing at least 10 times, and I’m not putting it on Evergreen. I like the live launch. I learned so much with every launch and I do a launch every four months. Each one’s a little different because I learned so much.
Right?
And you can’t do that when you build a funnel. The data is a lot more slower to trickle in, etc. So before you build a funnel, or.
Whatever you’re going to call it, you gotta.
You gotta live launch, you gotta sell live. You know, this has never been more true. Customers are super Internet savvy. I already mentioned that.
Right?
This rings hella true right now. So you have to truly know why your offer sells. You also have to know why people don’t buy. And you have to know who is on your list and who you think is on your list and if those two things are different, because they’re often different. Oh, yeah, I sell too, blah, blah, blah. But you have no blah, blah, blahs on your list. So you know that when you live launch, right? When you can get in the trenches and you can see why people are buying, why they’re not, when they’re buying, when they’re not, what emails are selling them, which emails are falling flat, right?
Do that several times and then you can create the funnel. You know, you need to be constantly evaluating to see where your stuff needs.
Tweaking and where it doesn’t.
Now this bleeds in. These are all kind of bleeding in together. And y’, all, I’m gonna preface, you already know, my friend. I sell templates. Email marketing membership has hundreds of templates. But. And if you get the annual pass, you get this for free. I do have a $500 course called Launch Course. Guess what it’s about? It’s about launching those live launches I just told you about, right? And I guess you could use those emails for funnels. But I created Launch Course the way I created it. Because if you just copy paste a template and you’re not doing your own research, which we just talked about, why is so important if you’re not getting to know your subscribers, if you’re not getting those replies, if you’re not really truly learning about who’s joining Your list, the templates are going to be garbage. So when you get launch course, the way I teach a launch, before I even give you the templates, I’ve got you doing some work. And y’, all, I think I said this in yesterday’s episode.
Episode 168. Damn it. I say it with love. You gotta do hard stuff.
This is work.
It feels like homework.
And so in this course, I give you basically work. I want you to work.
There’s like I think 10 questions and I, and I think I invite you to spend like 30, 35 minutes on these questions.
And if you run out of time, go back because you didn’t answer them.
Fully enough of like, you know, who is your customer? Like, what if they don’t solve this problem? What will happen? What won’t happen? Right? You know, how often are they thinking about this problem at night? Right? What, what keeps them up at night? What does their daily life look like? I want you to go so deep into who is buying your freaking thing so that when you get to my templates, you can actually fill them in. It’s not like you don’t even have to ask chat GPT because you’ve already done all your homework.
Okay, so funnels, really, you know, if you don’t do that and you’re just using, like you buy my launch course or you join the annual pass and you don’t go through those exercises. My emails, they’re either not going to work or they’re not going to work well, right? Because you’ve got to know your people. And again, the first thing I said was, you know, the set it and forget it to impersonal. You got to get replies. You got to be a human. The second thing I said was, you haven’t done enough live selling because you’re not getting that live feedback. This all bleeds into when you use templates. If you haven’t done those first two things, if you don’t go through and write, yeah, what, what is the problem.
Here with my customer?
What does it feel like for them? And really, like, you might know it off the top of your head, but I want you to write it down. Seriously, process it. Babe, I’m saying all this with love. I hope it’s received that way. So. And the last thing that I want to say, and I hate this for you, oh, God, do I hate it. I hate it for me. I love email marketing. I love to email. If I could just email all day, that’s what the freak I would do.
Okay.
But often depending on Your customer base and your program, the size of it, the price of it, how good you are at selling, how long you’ve been in the game selling it.
We often need a multi channel approach, okay? It’s not enough to just have a funnel. Even within email, you could have your funnel, but within the funnel, you know, you’re linking to videos, you’re linking to podcast episodes, you’re linking to social media posts, you’re sharing case studies, testimonials, right? This is multi channel, right? It’s not enough to just write the words. Sometimes they need to hear our voice.
They need to.
See our faces is what I was looking for here. Side note, did I ever tell you.
I suffered a concussion a few years.
Ago and sometimes my mind literally goes blank and I can’t think of words. Ah, yeah. Anyway, I don’t, I don’t know how football players function. Anyway, hate it for you, but you.
Need that multi channel approach even within your funnel. But outside of your funnel. Some people might need the funnel, but they might also need ads running a podcast or YouTube or a big social media presence. And by big, I don’t mean a bajillion followers, I just mean that you’re consistent.
Okay?
Now for me, and again, I turned my funnel off. I mean, I still have my welcome sequence. And then, you know, I funnel you.
Into my newsletter, right?
But I don’t have this big funnel you’re thinking about. I use my podcast, right? And I use my YouTube channel, I guess on other people’s podcasts. I go on other people’s, in other people’s groups, etc. And then even within my email. What I was just saying, you know, I email at least once a week, sometimes two or three, and then in Q4 every day, Monday through Friday. I don’t email on the weekends. I’m not saying you have to be everywhere, but if you’re going to do the funnel thing, you definitely, you know, need your, your, your face, your presence in different places. And I talk about this on episode 166, episode 166 about, you know, you got to be live with your people. You know, I am like even I’m recording this. Tuesday, October 28, 2025, and in a couple hours, I’m doing a live brainstorming for Black Friday. Just anybody can come. Let’s just brainstorm some ideas for Black Friday because that’s coming up in less than a month.
And if you don’t have an idea.
Yet, I want to hang out with you.
And we’re just Literally just going to be hanging out on Zoom. I don’t have any real agenda other than to serve people.
You know, I don’t have slides or anything like that, but I just, I want to get my face in front of people and so something like that is perfect.
If you don’t want to have a podcast, you don’t want a social media presence. How many times are you going live? How many opportunities are you giving your.
People to come into your world? All right, so that’s, that’s kind of.
My opinion on that. Again, you know, the set it and forget it is too impersonal. Customers are way too savvy. They’re taking a multi channel approach. You know, they’re looking at everything.
So you should too.
Maybe you haven’t done enough live selling to actually build the funnel. You don’t actually know who is on your list versus who you think is on your list. Right. And copy and paste templates do you? No good. If you haven’t done your research, if you aren’t sure who’s coming on your list, if you know you are getting too impersonal and forgetting about that human to human thing. All right, so that’s my opinion on why funnels don’t work the way they used to. It used to be a lot easier, but basically, you know, 16 minutes in, I could have just said, well, the customer is savvy and you’re not doing enough research. I mean, damn, that could have been a 30 second podcast. But it’s not. It’s 16 minutes and 30 seconds. All right, if you do want more help learning how to get those replies, learning how to be personal in the inbox, that’s exactly like to a freaking T what I teach and what I show you and what my templates show you. Inside email marketing membership, it’s nine bucks a month. If you’re not in there, link is in the show notes and the wait list for the annual pass where you get a year into my membership and all my other products and trainings for just 108 bucks. That’s gonna open up soon, so be on the lookout for the wait list.
Anyway, I’m Liz.
You’re awesome.
I’ll see you on the next episode, my friend.