My Favorite Funnel Building Tools

There are a lot of reasons that building funnels can feel overwhelming. 

The amount of tech options, tools, and integrations out there is incredible – but it’s also the #1 thing that gets in most people’s way when starting to build funnels. They simply don’t know which ones to choose or where to start, and so they simply don’t start at all.

Lucky for you, building funnels and integrating tech is my love language 🥰️ Over the past 5 years of growing our digital marketing business, we’ve tried a loooooot of these marketing tools out. Some we loved, some we didn’t. Some we trudged our way through, and some have made our life insanely easier.

Today, I want to help you choose the BEST marketing tools for your funnels so that growing your business and launching your programs or services will feel easy-peasy (because with the right systems, it totally can).

Now before I share what I love and recommend, a few disclaimers…

Like I mentioned, there are a LOT of options out there. By no means is this a comprehensive list. If you have specific questions about a tool not mentioned, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a DM at @jordanjones.co – I would love to help you figure out if it’s the right fit for your biz!

Also, my recommendations are not the only ones that work – they’re simply my favorites and go-to’s. They’re the ones we personally believe in and use in our business to launch and scale our own programs, education, and services.

And finally, this post will contain affiliate links – which simply means I may make a small commission if you decide to use one of the tools I recommend (at no additional cost to you). Actually, most of the time my link will help you save money (wooo!). BUT fear not, friend: I only recommend what I truly love and use myself – so you’re in great hands.

Now, onto the fun stuff – it’s time to talk tech 🤓

Here are my favorite tools for building funnels, in no particular order:

Funnel Mapping Tool – Draw.io

So before you ever start building out the pieces of your funnel on the respective platforms and integrating all of the tech, my biggest advice is to MAP IT OUT.

Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be – you could honestly use a whiteboard or a good ole’ pen and paper to do this.

If you want to be a little more tech-friendly, I highly recommend using Draw.io to map out all of your workflows, process, and funnels! 

Here’s why I love Draw.io & use it to map out all of the marketing funnels for myself and my clients:

• Draw.io is a free Google tool
• Because it’s part of the Google Suite, your Draw.io docs save right to your Drive
• This makes them easy to access from anywhere, easy to share and collaborate with teams, and easy to update and edit as you grow

If you’re not familiar with process mapping, it may take a tiny bit to get used to, but honestly, it’s super simple to use. I recommend choosing certain shapes to represent different pieces of your funnel (ex: rectangles are actions and diamonds are decisions) and creating a “key” so you can easily read and share your funnel plans.

Landing Page Builder – Leadpages

With any funnel, you’re going to need to build some sort of landing page. Whether it’s an opt-in page for a freebie, a webinar registration page, a thank you page, or a sales page – you’ll likely need at least ONE (more likely, many) landing pages to build your funnel.

Over the years, we’ve tried a lot of different options when building our landing pages. We kept it simple with website builders like WordPress, Squarespace, Showit. And we’ve used software specific to building landing pages such as ClickFunnels, Instapage, and Leadpages.

At the end of the day, my favorite and top recommendation is always Leadpages.

Here are my top reasons why I always recommend Leadpages for my clients (and why I use it to build all of our landing pages):

• Leadpages’ drag-and-drop builder makes it incredibly easy to design landing pages without any crazy coding or website skills
• Leadpages has tons of templates to choose from and start with
• Speaking of, you can share Leadpages templates across accounts (this is super convenient when I build a landing page in my own Leadpages account and later share with a client or sell as a template!)
• Forms easily integrate with tons of other tools (like WebinarJam, Drip, Convertkit, etc) and it’s also on Zapier which means it pretty much integrates with anything (more on this later!)
• Leadpages makes it easy to customize your mobile and desktop views while still staying mobile-responsive
• Leadpages allows you to split-test your pages (which is insanely important for any marketing but especially when running evergreen funnels and launches)
• Leadpages gives you a “rating” on how well it thinks your page will convert with suggestions on how to improve the score (aka if your buttons are hard to read or a headline is too short or too long)
• Leadpages now allows you to build an entire website within the tool 
• Leadpages also allows you to build amazing opt-in boxes (like pop-ups) and announcement bars for your website

Honestly, I could go on and on about why I love using Leadpages but as you can probably tell by my list of favorite features, it’s pretty darn rad.

You can see what my love is all about by grabbing a free trial of Leadpages here!

Integration Tool – Zapier

No matter which tools you need, you’ll likely need a way to make them all work together.

While many of the apps these days do integrate innately, we’ve never built a funnel that didn’t require us to use a third-party integration tool to make it all work exactly as we wanted.

And our go-to integration tool (and perhaps our favorite tool altogether) is Zapier.

Here’s why we love and recommend Zapier for building your funnels:

• Zapier works with thousands of apps and tools, meaning the likelihood that your tool is on there and able to work in your funnel now is super high (if it’s not, I’d honestly consider choosing a different tool that’s Zapier-compatible)
• You can try Zapier for free (up to 5 zaps) to see how this can work in your business
• Zapier is one of the easiest ways to send your Facebook leads directly into your CRM pipeline or email system
• Zapier’s step-by-step builder makes it simple to figure out your triggers and action steps
• Zapier also has a ton of templates and recommended “zaps” based on which apps you use

Honestly, there are a lot of tools I’d get rid of before I stop paying for Zapier. At just $20/month it makes our lives insanely easier because it makes so many pieces of our puzzle fit together seamlessly and automatically.

Webinar Software – WebinarJam & EverWebinar

These days, if you’re in the online marketing world, you’ll probably be hosting a webinar or free training at some point. 

I know, I know – you may be one of those folks who hate webinars or think they’re dead. I’d urge you to reconsider. Our evergreen webinar is what allowed me to earn $30k+ and take a 3-month maternity leave as an entrepreneur, all while serving even more students better.

I won’t go into the intricacies of webinars or why they’re so powerful (if you do them the right way), but if you ARE going to be using a webinar in your funnel, then I highly recommend WebinarJam and EverWebinar.

Here’s why:

• WebinarJam and EverWebinar work together, so it’s easy to turn a live webinar into an evergreen funnel
• Both WebinarJam and EverWebinar have step-by-step guides to help you set up all of the details of your webinar (like schedules, reminders, replays, tracking, integrations, etc)
• The systems look and feel super professional and clean
• They make it easy to send email, text, and even call reminders (if someone opts in for that) so you can increase your show up rate
• WebinarJam and EverWebinar have really great internal reporting so you can get a real-time feel on how your webinars and offers are performing
• They integrate with tons of apps innately as well as Zapier (see Zapier above)
• You can track each stage (registration, attended live, watched the replay, etc) with your Facebook pixel events
• You can still use your own registration pages and easily customize the registration buttons to embed (we use Leadpages for ours – see tip above)
• The “Just in Time” evergreen option allows people to register and watch the training quickly, meaning more people show up 

I know this may sound like mumbo jumbo if you’re not familiar with webinars or evergreen funnels. So if you have questions, be sure to pop them in the comments section below!

Related post: What is an Evergreen Launch?

Note: while they’re technically owned by the same company (Kartra), you pay for these two tools separately. WebinarJam is for hosting live webinars and EverWebinar is for running evergreen webinars. If you’re going to run a live webinar and turn it into an evergreen funnel (this is what we do), then you’re going to need BOTH tools.

I know it may seem like a pricey option, but in my opinion, webinars are still extremely high-converting if done the right way. In our most recent live webinar launch, we earned over $9k in 5 days. Paying for these systems more than made up for itself right away.

If you want to try them out for yourself, you can grab a free 14 day trial of WebinarJam and EverWebinar with my referral links.

Email Software – Drip

Long story short, Drip is our #1 email marketing service at the moment. We’ve tried tons of options (like ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign), and while we are starting to transition our new business growth over to Flodesk, the majority of our funnels run on our Drip account.

A comparison of email service providers is another post for another day, but for now, I’ll share why we love and still use Drip for a majority of our marketing funnels.

Why we love using Drip for a majority of our marketing funnels:

• Drip has a ton of power and automations without feeling overwhelming (many other options are super limited with what you can do with workflows, meaning more outside integrations and more complicated funnels)
• Drip integrates easily with Leadpages (our landing page builder) and about every other app you could ever dream of with Zapier
• Drip has crazy awesome tracking, especially when it comes to eCommerce (aka tracking revenue generated from your emails)
• Drip’s workflow builder is really beautiful and visual and makes it easy to take your funnel map (from Draw.io) and make the tech happen in Drip
• Sending personalized emails (even one-off broadcasts) is incredibly simple AND you can “resend to anyone who didn’t open” at a later time (ex: 2 days later)

You can learn more about Drip & grab a free trial here!

Chat Box – Drift

If you have a shop or sales page for your funnel (which I’m going to assume you do), then I recommend including a chatbox as a way to help answer questions and overcome objections. 

Chat boxes may seem super difficult to add in your funnel at first, but the Drift app makes it easy. 

For years, our #1 selling course was $497 – so nothing too expensive but a high-enough price point that people had a few hesitations before buying. Adding a chat box option to our sales pages had an enormous effect on people getting off the fence and actually buying.

Here’s why I recommend using a Chat box for your sales funnels, specifically the Drift tool:

• Drift is easy to integrate and embed on your sales pages
• You can set “online” and “offline” hours manually or whenever you’re on the tool or app
• You can add multiple team members to your chat box to help manage requests (if needed)
• Drift has an app for your phone, making it easy to reply to questions from anywhere, at any time
• You can customize your Drift “hello” messages and away messages
• Drift allows you to track the conversations and conversions right in the program
• You can even create playbooks to help automate your chat conversations

Drift is our go-to chat box tool because it’s free, easy to set up, and super easy to use! 

Deadline Software – Deadline Funnel

If you’re going to add any kind of deadline into your funnel (ex: a discount that expires), then you need a deadline software. There’s no point in saying there is a deadline if there actually isn’t anything holding them to that deadline.

This is where Deadline Funnel comes in.

Here are a few reasons why Deadline Funnel is our #1 choice for this kind of tool:

• Deadline Funnel has a step-by-step guide to set up the deadlines within your funnel
• Deadline Funnel integrates with a ton of other tools so you can accurately track your subscribers to each funnel and the resulting revenue
• The appearance of the countdown timers and bars are easy to customize so that your sales pages and emails stay on brand
• You can add a simple code into your emails to show a real-time countdown timer and you have special tracking links for sending emails
• Deadline Funnel has flexible pricing tiers depending on the number of deadlines you need

If you haven’t considered using a deadline in your funnel, now’s the time to add one in. Especially in evergreen funnels, deadlines create a sense of urgency and incentivize your audience to take action. 

Here’s just a snippet of how one week of an evergreen funnel with a deadline has grown our business:

You can try DeadlineFunnel for yourself here!

Project Management – Asana

Once you map out your funnel in Draw.io (see tip above), you’re going to need a plan to put it all into action. To run your business in general, but especially when it comes to building marketing funnels, I highly recommend using a Project management tool. 

My go-to project management tool is Asana.

There are a ton of great project management options out there, but for now, here’s why I love and use Asana:

• You can easily organize workspaces and projects
• For each task in Asana, you can set deadlines and assign owners, making it clear who needs to do what and when
• You can comment on tasks and tag other people in your workspace
• You can upload files and documents as needed to tasks
• Asana allows you to breakdown each task into smaller subtasks, with their own owners and deadlines
• You can color-code tasks within Asana
• Asana has multiple views (ex: Board or List view) depending on the type of project and how you prefer to work (ex: I keep my content calendar in a Board view but my evergreen funnel builds in a Listview)

How to build your funnel on Asana could be an entire blog post in itself, but for now, those are just a few of my top reasons why we use it in our business. It’s helped me stay organized as an entrepreneur, especially when it comes to laying out all of the little steps that it takes when building a funnel.

More Funnel-Building Tools

Please note, this is an ongoing list that I will continue to update and edit! I’m constantly building and optimizing funnels for our clients and our own business, so I’ll be sure to share my list of favorite tools as they grow and evolve.

In the meantime, I’d love to learn what your favorite tools are! Did I miss any that are your go-to’s? Do you have any questions on the ones I shared? Let me know in the comments below!

*Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links and I would love it if you decided to use them. Affiliate links + referrals programs help educators like me to fund the free content that we provide on our blogs at no additional cost to you.