GrooveFunnels Review
I know how hard it is to do online marketing. Sometimes I feel like I’m stretching myself too thin but I can’t avoid it.
I got all the passion in the world but it’s just not enough. Past a certain point, the energy I put into marketing gives diminishing returns.
It took me a while to realize what I was doing wrong and then it dawned on me — I need tools. Lots and lots of tools.
Any tool that helps me make not just more sales but effortless and painless sales is worth a premium price. That can help me expand my business while maintaining a work-life balance.
Let me tell you: stress is a real thing and once you’re burned out, you’re not coming back. My advice is to explore everything that can help you minimize stress to maintain work-life balance.
Big tools, small tools or just plain automation through coding and scripts; all of it can help you be more productive without getting stressed and burned out.
In this case, we’ve got GrooveFunnels, an automated online sales, marketing and customer management platform. I know it’s a mouthful, so let’s just call it a platform.
Is it any good? Read through my 5,000-word review and find out.
If you would like to learn more about GrooveFunnels, or try it for FREE, I’ll leave a link below:
- Important: Click here to activate your free account
Hint: You can also skip to the very end and just read the Conclusion section.
What is it GrooveFunnels?
GrooveFunnels is a platform that helps one person do the job of a dozen without burning out. It’s got 16 tools, with each helping you do a certain task.
These are:
- GroovePages
- GrooveSell
- GrooveMail
- GrooveAutomations
- GrooveAffiliate
- GrooveMember
- GrooveVideo
- GrooveProof
- GrooveDesk
- GrooveCalendar
- GrooveSurvey
- GrooveKart
- GrooveWebinars Live
- GrooveWebinars Automated
- GrooveStreaming Live
- GrooveStreaming Automated
As of November 2020, some of them are merely announced and will be added to the roster later.
There is a free Base plan but it has some limitations I’ll cover below.
The membership price is sure to increase with more features, so there’s some merit to buying a membership right now at a discount.
Keep an eye out for more of my GrooveFunnels reviews as that happens.
Who is it for?
The target audience is online marketers and solo entrepreneurs but all types of marketers can get value from Groovefunnels.
Newbies can test their mettle in the online marketing scene without wasting money. Experienced marketers can choose just one tool to add to their tool belts.
Course creators can use it to stand out from the competition. Website owners that do eCommerce can find that one tool they’ve been missing.
Agency owners can use the platform so their agencies provide consistent value to clients.
Even if you’re merely interested in learning automation and programming, you can find useful inspiration in GrooveFunnels.
GrooveFunnels review — feature list
GroovePages
This is your default workspace where you build your websites, sales funnels and so on. The interface is drag-and-drop, helping those who have no inkling of programming produce something workable.
GroovePages loads everything in the browser, which means it’s got fast loading speeds. That makes it responsive so it doesn’t interrupt your work when you’re experimenting with a bunch of quick edits.
Different preview options let you find the balance between desktop and mobile features. Instead of making two versions of your page, you can combine them and cut your maintenance in half.
Constant maintenance also causes stress, so anything that minimizes maintenance is a major asset.
You can also use templates, with the tool able to suggest some based on the chosen industry. That’s really good if you’re looking to simply get the page up and running.
There aren’t that many templates but those that are there do have a lot of synergy. That’s quite good if you want to make a multi-page site where the theme won’t clash with one another.
You can peek at and edit the source code directly, which provides transparency and flexibility. If you like to tweak your webpage code, it’s a wonderful way to tinker and learn.
Direct code editing might even be the preferred way to do things, since I noticed GroovePages still has some bugs. For example, moving some elements in the drag-and-drop editor around can be a real pain in the neck for me.
In my opinion, GroovePages is a solid tool for figuring out the best possible layout for a landing page. It allows up to 3 pages with the Base plan, though I did notice the makers kept expanding the value here.
GrooveSell
This is the payment processing tool. It has no monthly fee, transaction fee or commission if you’re on the Platinum plan, which pays off if you’ve got an established business.
It supports Proof Widget, real-time social proof that eases visitors into buying stuff from you. If a visitor isn’t sure about buying something from you, the Proof Widget will pop in with a “customer A just bought this product”.
Social proof makes sense, seeing how I always go and check out reviews for a product before buying it; I’m sure you do too. Anything that puts the customer at ease helps negotiate the final sale while avoiding buyer’s remorse.
GrooveSell supports these payment processors:
- AuthNet
- Braintree
- Merchant Account
- NMI
- PayPal
- Stripe
In addition, you can toggle order bumps, up- and downsells. They help the order flexibility and ameliorate the abandoned cart syndrome.
The data shows that about 70% of all customers who go to the shopping cart abandon it. The top two reasons are:
- The shopping process isn’t flexible
- People can’t be bothered to go back to redo everything
Mind you, this is an industry-wide problem and nobody knows how to solve it. If we all adopted a cool solution that makes the shopping cart experience better, it would be a win-win.
Another option I like in GrooveSell is the “cancel subscription” feature. Instead of the customer having to do a chargeback, which is a mess for everyone involved, he or she simply cancels the payment on your website.
I know how much stress it causes me to have to deal with stubborn recurring subscriptions. Anything that adds flexibility and functionality to any eCommerce platform I have to deal with will minimize overall stress in the long run.
GrooveMail
Released in September 2020, GrooveMail handles all e-mails and e-mail analytics. This means showing you delivery, open, clickthrough and conversion rates.
I can tell you that all the fancy apps and gadgets mean very little if your e-mail game isn’t up to par. E-mail is hands down the most essential component of any online marketing project and will remain so in the future.
If you can’t read e-mail analytics, you’ll have no idea where the bottleneck is. If you can, you’ll be able to cater to every customer profile.
GrooveMail also lets you assign tags and categories to help automate e-mail sending. This cuts down on manual labor and lowers your stress levels.
It makes me feel great when I can tag stuff and then set up a system that sends e-mails out on schedule. It’s like watching a fine clockwork in action and it’s very relaxing.
GrooveMail even helps me manage additional mailing platforms, like MailChimp. Instead of juggling several tools at once and spreading my attention, I have it all in one spot.
As of November 2020, GrooveMail is still not fully ironed out and has some quirks. I do recommend trying it out but only in addition to some other e-mail management platform.
You can also run e-mail campaigns that affect only a part of your customers, separating them by tags. In essence, you can really customize each e-mail the way you want it.
My advice is to always customize e-mails as much as possible. That overrides the customer’s reflex to mark your message as spam and entices curiosity.
GrooveAutomations
Write triggers to coordinate between different bits of code to make stuff happen. You can automate sending out e-mails or text messages a few hours or days after a purchase, a sign-in or whatever else.
By automating, you put forward the appearance of having an entire support team behind the scenes when it’s only you. That builds confidence in the customer’s mind that everything will work just right.
In my opinion, this is the best part of GrooveFunnels since it gives you the most freedom. You can learn so much about how platforms interact behind the scenes through GrooveAutomations and start programming.
What I’d like to warn you against is using too many too specific triggers. You should plan things on a large scale to minimize your maintenance or you’ll have serious headaches later.
That programming problem is known as spaghetti code and it applies to all programming. When you program for too many specific events, you can’t straighten anything out, let alone improve on what you have.
In essence, avoiding spaghetti code is done by using three principles:
- unified standards
- unified style
- comments
Unified standards mean you always solve the same problem the same way. This makes it very easy to spot mistakes and fix them.
Even when you’re distracted or stressed when writing these triggers, unified standards mean you can provide the same quality. Basically, you want to make it a reflex to do things so you can do them in your sleep.
Unified style is all the best programming practices you discover through work. These are real time-savers that minimize conflicts, bugs and glitches.
Finally, you should use comments whenever possible to document what you were doing. If you don’t, you might accidentally delete a crucial trigger without even realizing.
GrooveAffiliate
Affiliate management and reporting tool. Create exact commission rates and customized links for campaigns and promotions.
Making a great affiliate program comes down to balancing two factors: exposure and commission. The more exposure you want, the higher the commission you have to offer to your affiliates.
Affiliate programs are notorious for having low margins. If you want high returns, this most often means going for digital over physical products.
That applies to you as an affiliate and your own affiliates.
Physical products have 5-10% margins so you shouldn’t bother with them unless you can move a lot. One exception would be supplements, which can be overpriced and still sell well.
Focus instead on digital products, which can have up to a 50% commission.
You can also offer one-time commissions or recurring commissions. In my opinion, you should only offer recurring commissions on digital products with a recurring subscription.
I suggest against creating or using content specifically made for affiliates. You can expect it to be used so much that it becomes a noise everyone ignores.
However, I think you should create and use guidelines, such as how to structure a call-to-action and so on. That helps send a unified style, which already helps create familiarity and engagement.
In my opinion, good affiliate campaigns focus on quality over quantity. You should start building your good reputation and maintain it, since it’s easily damaged and difficult to repair.
Just like we saw with other GrooveFunnels tools, the interface leaves much to be desired. I found it lacking and unwelcoming, though functional.
In the future, the makers of GrooveFunnels plan on adding ClickBank and JVZoo functionality.
GrooveMember
Here you can create membership sites and launch online courses. Synergizes with GrooveMail and GrooveFunnels.
In essence, GrooveMember is about building engagement. This translates into more loyalty and higher conversion rates.
Online users will typically visit a page to get what they need and bounce off. If you can provide enough value to stop them, you will build engagement.
Online courses are meant to stop and engage an online user by providing a sense of persistent information flow.
If you can get the viewer to want to come back and listen to your course multiple times, you’ve made it. This repetition creates familiarity and makes a call-to-action unnecessary.
You can sell anything at any price to one such engaged, loyal person.
There are many ways to build engagement; they generally come down to optimizing the user experience to make it as comfortable as possible.
However, I don’t like that the design of GrooveMember is so barebones and lackluster. It is functional but it could definitely use some sprucing up.
The templates are also way too rigid. I’d like to see more customization and flexibility before I consider GrooveMember actually worth my money.
You should eventually look into creating an entire community around your website and your brand. When you do, GrooveMember won’t cut it.
Visitors today expect all the bells and whistles that come standard with social media. I think GrooveMember has barely any and can’t match what platforms like Facebook are offering.
You should just create a Facebook Group and stream courses using Facebook Live instead of fiddling with GrooveMember.
As your community grows, you should allow some freedom of expression, seeing how freedom of speech attracts attention. If you hire moderators, let them be volunteers from your fan base.
GrooveVideo
Upload videos, add call-to-action and track the analytics. The idea with this tool is to help you create an engaging, immersive environment without distractions.
Online content is a soup of information from many sources, which creates distractions for your visitors and customers.
They might start watching your video or reading your article but then get interrupted. Something as simple as a notification means your visitors will bounce and likely never come back.
The idea is that GrooveVideo would help you minimize distractions and also let you track how well you’re doing. Viewers bouncing at a certain point might indicate something pushes them away at that moment.
I am not happy with this tool. It feels like a half-baked feature added to pad out the number of GrooveFunnel tools to nudge users into purchasing the Platinum pricing plan.
Again, templates are way too limited for my comfort. I couldn’t even import any video from another platform.
Using GrooveVideo instead of something like Youtube feels like being brought back to the early 2000s. I wasn’t impressed by the feature set here, though GrooveFunnels creators promise a lot more in the future.
You have zero video editing options on GrooveVideo but you do get 100GB of storage if you connect an Amazon account. To put this in perspective, 3 minutes of 1080p video is about 1GB.
So, you get about 5 hours of 1080p video storage. If you bump the quality down to potato camera level, let’s say you quadruple that to 20 hours.
All in all, it’s pretty limited. I can only see it used for experimentation.
The worst past is you can’t prevent downloads. Someone can simply take your content and use it themselves.
My advice is to find a cool video hosting platform instead of GrooveVideo. If that’s not Youtube, try out something like Vimeo.
GrooveProof
Customizable social proof that pops up on your sales and landing pages. When a visitor arrives to either of those, there will be floating notifications enticing a purchase.
The notifications are most often worded as “Person A in country B just bought product C”.
There is a solid marketing theory behind this called “social proof”. The idea is that individuals want to do what the majority of people around does.
You’ve probably experienced it too in real life; I know I have. If you’re standing with a bunch of people who all start gazing over your shoulder, you’ll get an irresistible urge to turn around.
In the case of GrooveProof, this means your visitors should see everyone else buying GrooveFunnels and join too. That’s what should happen, but I think it’s just wishful thinking.
I doubt there’s any social proof in these instances.
A group of people in real life is one thing and creates a strong urge. Pop-up notifications telling me total strangers halfway across the world bought into a marketing platform are another.
It simply doesn’t have the same effect.
Social proof works on me when I see people in my immediate surroundings doing something; then I want to join in to avoid FOMO (fear of missing out). If it involves total strangers, the social proof effect is much lower, if any.
FOMO is another interesting marketing concept that says people underestimate the chances they have to experience something. Also, they overestimate the pleasure they’ll get from it.
Those two misjudgments mean you can put any price on a product and sell it, as long as you can create FOMO around it.
One common way FOMO marketing is used is through countdowns, which I’ve seen by the thousands. They actually don’t do anything for me, so consider this a warning — don’t go overboard with social proof or it won’t do anything.
GrooveDesk
Slated for release in December 2020, this help desk tool lets you receive, sort and process support tickets. What would otherwise be done by a support team can be handled using a single GrooveFunnels dashboard.
Integrated with GrooveMail and expected to support live chat. Conversations will be stored server-side.
The tool isn’t released yet, so all I can say is general advice related to customer support.
When a customer has a complaint, it most often has nothing to do with the product or service. Sounds strange, but in my experience that’s overwhelmingly the case.
A customer first needs to hear encouragement and feel listened to. Most often, the customer will be agitated and won’t be able to articulate the problem.
If you take an agitated customer seriously, you’ll become agitated too. This will quickly turn into stress, especially if you get dozens or hundreds of such cases a day.
So, try to have a calming effect on your customers and let them know it’s all going to be fixed.
Ask for proof of the problem, such as pictures, error codes, videos and so on. Customers might get offended, thinking you don’t believe them, so assure them it’s for record-keeping purposes.
If all else fails, consider just issuing a refund. You’ll lose money but you’ll protect your reputation.
GrooveCalendar
Schedule events, such as meetings and in-person consultations. The calendar is publicly visible and updates in real time, preventing double-booking.
Events and reminders can be set, along with recurring text messages and e-mails. Customers’ real location can be used to schedule events across time zones.
From what I’ve learned so far, scheduling is a crucial component of success. You have to use a calendar or you’ll have too much idle time where you’ll slink back into wasting your day.
One Australian millionaire businessman I met actually splits his day into 15-minute segments. These segments include playing the guitar and cuddling with the doggie as much as making major business deals.
In this way, he maintains the work-life balance and minimizes stress. I’m not saying you should do the same but do find some sort of scheduling that works for you.
This same strategy of scheduling will also help you minimize distractions. Instead of having the social media constantly open and distracting you, there’s a 15-minute segment for it and you move on.
Scheduling helps you figure out your goals and then focus your energy into them. Once you start doing both, you’ll feel an incredible improvement in your life.
At least that’s what happened to me.
GrooveSurvey
Another feature slated for release in December 2020. It allows you to create surveys with multiple-choice answers but also quizzes.
The customer feedback lets you figure out your mistakes and shape your future goals. Without customer feedback, no business project has a future.
You must listen to your clients and fulfill their wishes. It’s as simple as that.
My advice is to ask for and appreciate as much feedback as possible. However, you shouldn’t be obsessing about any given piece of data.
Instead, look for general trends and address them to avoid overreacting. If 10 visitors mention your landing page in a negative way, it doesn’t mean you need an overhaul; perhaps a tweak will do.
Making a fun quiz can also be an excellent way to engage visitors and entice sharing. You don’t need to be an expert copywriter or even a writer at all, seeing how Wikipedia has so much ready-made info.
My advice with quizzes is to avoid pop culture quizzes but instead mix and match questions from all areas of life. That will capture the largest segment of the audience.
GrooveKart
eCommerce tool. This is the most important tool in GrooveFunnels, the one that actually lets you generate sales.
It is a standalone product provided only through the Platinum Lifetime membership. In that case, you get unlimited stores with as many products, sales funnels and order bumps as you’d like.
My favorite sales idea is a print on demand store. The visitor comes to your store, orders a print they like and gets it in their hands in a couple days.
Easy, simple and straightforward. All the best store ideas are like that.
In my mind, an ideal store would be minimalistic and unobtrusive. A visitor that wants to buy from this ideal store should be able to do it in 2-3 clicks.
Dropshipping is another cool idea you can do with GrooveKart. Instead of spending money to rent warehouses and shelves, you order directly from the vendor and send the goods to the customer.
However, buying into Platinum Lifetime just for GrooveKart doesn’t feel right for me. It makes much more sense to just use a dedicated store, which would cost less and have a milder learning curve.
Speaking of which, I did find GrooveKart took me a bit of time and effort to actually learn. If you’re a newbie, steer clear and use something simpler instead.
GrooveWebinars Live
Scheduled for release in January 2021, this tool is meant to help you stream webinars. This is actually a pretty cool idea, seeing how live video is the most relevant content form today.
I mentioned the idea of engaging visitors with value and information. Webinars fit all the most recent trends perfectly.
If you’re not making and streaming webinars, you have no idea what you’re missing. Everyone is eager to learn, especially in a cozy home environment and at their own pace.
My advice is that you keep your webinars within your comfort zone. Viewers can immediately see when you’re teaching beyond what you know and they don’t like it.
If you can subtitle them, that’s an amazing bonus as well for non-native speakers. Anything you can do to enhance accessibility will be worth the effort in the long run.
Make a hashtag for your webinar and get it trending on social media. If it goes viral, you’ll get plenty of attention for little to no investment.
You should also prepare yourself well in advance. I suggest you make a detailed outline of the webinar and polish it as many times as it takes.
The goal is a smooth, natural and relaxed presentation. When the viewer feels cozy and fuzzy, it’s the most suggestible state and the one where you’ll find it easy to sell any product or service.
GrooveWebinars Automated
Same as GrooveWebinars, except done on a schedule. Also slated for release January 2021.
This does have some merit, especially for people who missed a part of your webinar. If they’re coming back, that’s a great sign you’ve got an engaged audience.
Nurture and accommodate those people who want a repeat of whatever you’re serving. Whenever possible, make their journey through your content as comfortable and customizable as you can.
Ideally, you would want to have everything in your webinar structured as standalone modules that can be viewed separately.
Each module should last about 45 minutes. That’s the standard school class duration for a reason — that’s how much a person’s attention span can last.
Besides that, automation is the most significant way to boost your income in the 21st century. You set up seminars, let them run on their own and just collect your money.
Your ultimate goal in any business should be to automate as many actions so you can find that work-life balance I mentioned. Money isn’t the ultimate goal but it is the means to reach your ultimate goal, which is relaxation and happiness.
Work less and work smarter instead of working more and harder. That way you’ll make more progress in your career and have less stress in your life.
GrooveStreaming Live
Stream to multiple platforms at once. Works with LinkedIn, Facebook and Youtube.
Slated for release December 2020.
This is another cool tool that sounds great in theory but I’d like to see it in practice before gushing about it. Anything that helps us produce more video content is a major marketing benefit.
Those three platforms provide you with enough variety so you can cover all kinds of demographics. You can reach young and old people, which makes it more likely your message will resonate with someone.
Every platform attracts a certain demographic and your success on a platform relies on your finding the right platform. For example, Snapchat and TikTok are almost exclusively oriented towards young people.
The problem is that you pretty much have to specialize for each platform. You either get the young people or the old; it’s difficult to get both at the same time.
This kind of unification effort GrooveStreaming Live is trying to do is really special. In my opinion, the platform could drop everything else and just focus on this tool and it would be worth the price.
One announced feature is the ability to have viewers send live comments and answer them during the stream. If done right, this could be a game changer
GrooveStreaming Automated
Finally, we have the same streaming tool except with a dash of automation. Also set to release late 2020 or early 2021.
To properly use automation, you should analyze your data and follow your audience. This means that, if your audience comes from a single time zone, you should adapt your schedule to that time zone.
Listen to user feedback, create theories and test them in practice. All successful businesses do the same behind the scenes; otherwise, they can’t survive.
No matter how strange the conclusion sounds, just follow your data and you’ll always do well. Avoid making any assumptions and lose any prejudice you might have about an audience demographic.
Scheduled streaming lets you have a global impact without it interfering with your work-life balance. Use it as much as you can while focusing on content quality.
As you gain exposure and build your reputation, use it to make a change for the better. Create goodwill with your audience and leverage it to reach success you previously only read of in magazines.
GrooveFunnels Pricing & Cost
As of November 2020, there are two pricing plans:
- Base
- Platinum
If you would like to learn more about the GrooveFunnels Pricing Plans, I’ll leave a link below:
- Important: Click here to check out the pricing plans
Base plan is free but it limits you to 6 tools: GroovePages, GrooveSell, GrooveAffiliate, GrooveMail, GrooveMember and GrooveVideo. In theory, this should be enough to start experimenting with online marketing without any risk.
With Base plan, you can play around and stage mockups to see what your website would look like. Most marketers would just want to jump in and use a ready-made solution, but I think experimentation is a big deal.
If you would like to learn more, we created a dedicated article going over the latest GrooveFunnels pricing.
Right now, the eCommerce industry is sorely lacking in innovation. Nobody wants to innovate but somebody has to.
I mentioned the abandoned cart problem for a good reason — it direly needs some sort of innovation and maybe it’s you who will deliver it.
Platinum plan comes in three tiers:
- Platinum Monthly, costing $299/month, not available yet
- Platinum Lifetime, with the first month free and then a lump payment of $1,897
- Platinum Lifetime One-Time Offer, with 14 days free and then 3 monthly payments of $497 a month
The Platinum plan also promises the release of GrooveBlog and GrooveQuiz by the end of 2020.
Signing up for either of Platinum Lifetime plans grants you a 40% commission on tier 1 referrals and 10% on tier 2.
You’ll also be getting learning resources, which as of November 2020 are:
- Live eCommerce marketing webinar
- Live digital marketing training webinar
- GrooveKart Academy
- GrooveFunnels Academy
- Live in-person workshops year round
- VIP tickets to GrooveKon (convention)
A Capacity Booster Pack add-on for $100 a month gives you:
- 50GB video storage
- 100,000 contacts
- 1TB video bandwidth a month
What About A GrooveFunnels Free Trial?
Like we mentioned so far, you can get a free GrooveFunnels account.
The cool thing about the GrooveFunnels free plan is that we don’t need a credit card to sign up.
If you would like to learn more about GrooveFunnels or try it for free, I’ll leave a link below:
- Important: Click here to activate your free account
So I do like how we get the chance to try out the platform before we decide to pay for it.
Final GrooveFunnels Review Thoughts
Platforms such as GrooveFunnels are created every month. What sets GrooveFunnels apart are the free Base plan and the lifetime purchasing option.
If you would like to learn more about the GrooveFunnels Lifetime plan, I’ll leave a link below:
- Important: Click here to activate your lifetime plan
Like we discussed in our review, you also get a wide range of tools which is why GrooveFunnels is well known for being an all in one platform.
They also have a free plan (with no credit card required), which means there’s no reason not to try it out for yourself.
If you would like to learn more about GrooveFunnels or try it for free, I’ll leave a link below:
- Important: Click here to activate your free account
GrooveFunnels does have a lot of potential, but it’s not perfect in my opinion. Still, I do think newbie marketers eager to explore and experiment should try it out.
The good news about GrooveFunnels is that they are constantly updating, and fixing any bugs that exist on the platform.
They’re adding plenty of new features on a regular basis as well, however as it stands in 2023, GrooveFunnels is still a work in progress.
So it’s not going to be a flawless product (at least for now), but will we find out in the future whether or not this platform will live up to their claims.
I’ll be sure to update my GrooveFunnels review article in the future for you as the updates roll out.