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Hey—It's Tim. 

Coffee count: three.
Funnel drafts in Coda: five.
Working funnels in real life: …depends who you ask.

Quick dive, quick read.
Here’s why so many funnels face-plant.

People don’t march in single-file

The classic arrow chart is comforting.
Awareness
→ Interest
→ Desire
→ Action.

It’s easy. It’s simple to explain.

Real buyers?
They hop, loop back, ghost you, binge reviews at 1 a.m., then finally Google “pricing” on their phone while doom-scrolling.

Design for hop-scotch: every page should feel like a doorway and a welcome-back mat.

How? Paste your content into Chattemuss Gee, ask it what a reader would be looking for next. What questions do they have after reading this? THEN MAKE THAT THING.

Built a funnel. Immediately fell into it.

True story: I once gated a “lead magnet” so hard the only person who made it through was… me, QA-testing.

Every extra field felt “strategic.”
Every nurture email felt “necessary.”
All it actually did was qualify people out.

Trade the maze for micro-wins: show a snippet, prove a point, remove one doubt, then ask for the email.

I’ve done this. 
It’s one of the main drivers of newsletter growth.

We have the Jobs To Be Done mini course on the home page. It offers “know what to write for people looking for you”.

It has a 95% completion rate. All I ask for is the email.

If you wanna do it, signup is on penfriend.ai/the-penny-drop 
Joins you back into the newsletter at the end.

One CTA to bore them all

If every email, blog button, and retargeting ad screams BOOK A DEMO, you’re the guy dropping to one knee on a first date.

Offer side doors:
• an ungated case study
• a sandbox to play with features
• a Slack invite to lurk and learn

Match the offer to the traffic temperature:

• 🥶Cold traffic → you do the warming. Teach, entertain, solve a micro-problem. Ask for nothing.

• 😎Warm traffic → small asks. Email opt-in, free trial, follow on LinkedIn.

• 🥵Hot traffic → they’ve binge-read your stuff and reply with emojis. Now you can talk money.

Rule of thumb: the colder it is, the more value you pour in before taking anything out.

ICYMI - The fix? I wrote about it on Saturday.
Start at the bottom. Make your way up.

That’s it. Coffee’s gone; so am I.

✌️ Tim "Funnel go brrrrrr" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. In 2 days I announce the winners to the open rate comp. There is still time to send me your favourite Tim quote from past emails.

I’ve upped the score to 5 more points per quote to help settle some ties.

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.