Chances are you’ve heard of someone who tried to turn their live launch into an evergreen funnel system and it didn’t work. So you keep running live launches, wearing yourself out in the process and putting up with a fluctuating income.

The goal of this post is to show that it’s possible. I know this because I’ve not only done it in my own business, but I’ve done it for clients as well. 

One of my clients has long been launching programs and offers. But her health challenges meant it put a huge strain on her each time. She wanted to see the cycle stop, but didn’t want that reflected in her income.

The thing is, live launches are draining. They take a lot of energy and as your energy depletes, people pick up on that. By instead automating your live launch, you get to show up fresh every time – and not have the feast or famine repeated.

And that’s what worked for her.

Before I provide some steps on how to do this, let’s start at the beginning.

What does evergreen marketing mean?

People new to online marketing often are perplexed by this term “evergreen”. But really, what it means is that the marketing campaign is always running. It doesn’t stop.

For the most part, evergreen refers to sales funnels, as these are the marketing elements that are always running. However, you can make a live launch evergreen by automating parts or all of the live launch. 

So the person receiving your pieces of content – whether emails, webinars or other content – feel they’re receiving them live. When in fact, it’s happening without you having to do anything in real time.

What is an evergreen launch?

To expand a bit further on a live launch versus an evergreen launch, when launching live you can release the emails and pieces of content to deliver on certain dates. Everyone who’s experiencing the campaign receives the same piece of content at the same time.

In an evergreen funnel system, to your audience it appears to be doing the same thing as the live launch. However, your start and end dates trigger when someone in your audience enters the funnel. Pieces of content then drip out at the same interval for each participant, but they just may be happening on different days.

If you have a live launch you’ve been running for a while now with a level of success, then this is a perfect opportunity to turn your launch into a system that works all the time for you.

The advantages of evergreen

There are so many reasons you want to consider going evergreen. Here are just a few reasons:

• You have the ability to keep your cart open all the time, rather than opening and closing at certain times of the year
• It can mean consistent cashflow throughout the year, rather than large sums only a few times (that in itself can be stressful if you don’t have a particularly successful launch due to timing, system failures or a multitude of other reasons)
• There’s less stress and intensity due to pre scheduling everything
• There’s less moving pieces to deal with on a daily basis, and therefore less chance of things going wrong
• You can optimise the funnel based on the data over time, which means it’s continually improving. It’s often more difficult to optimise your content from launch to launch, as many factors can come into play at different times of the year or due to budget limitations or changes in traffic generating platforms.

One thing I do want to point out though is that just because your system is evergreen, doesn’t mean you can set and forget. It still requires work. The system needs a consistent flow of traffic going into it, whether that’s writing blog posts, running a Facebook ad campaign, doing joint ventures or some other traffic generating strategy.

It’s this point that is why often evergreen funnel systems haven’t worked for people. They think they can set it up and not have to worry about it anymore.

Starting with a live launch

I always encourage clients to start with a live launch. The reason being is you can often get data quicker through a live launch to help you refine your systems. It’s also such a great way to build your audience.

Otherwise, starting with evergreen can take a lot longer to define what works and what doesn’t, unless you’ve got a large budget behind you. You want to know that when you set up your evergreen system, that you’ll have the highest chance at success from the start.

Once done, then you’ll be right to go evergreen.

The reality is, there are a lot of similarities between a live launch and evergreen funnel. 

Step 1:

You start with a way for people to enter your email marketing system – either a webinar, challenge, video series or other piece of content. With a live launch you might deliver those lead magnet elements on a set date and/or deliver them live. 

Step 2:

Your audience then goes into an email sequence, where your goal is to both nurture and then invite them to take the next step by investing with you before a set date or time (or sometimes when you sell out a product or a program is full).

In a live launch, you send out these emails at a set time. Often business owners and marketers write and send these emails in real time. Although, I always encourage clients to pre-write these emails and even to schedule them inside your email marketing system. You can always then tweak them as your launch goes on. Writing daily emails can otherwise end up burning you out.

Of course, in an automated system these emails are prescheduled to drip out at certain intervals. Someone will receive them not based on a set date, but rather based on a set time schedule.

Step 3:

The final pieces can then often be a combination of a live element (often a webinar) and opening and closing your shopping cart. In a live launch, the cart will open on a set day and close on a set day. In an automated funnel you can use different strategies, depending on what feels right for you. I’ll go into a little more detail on this in a minute.

Different approaches to live launches

Partially automate your live launch

The thing is, you don’t have to go from live launch to fully automated in one step. Or you may never want to go fully automated. And that’s OK.

Instead, you can set up all the parts of your launch so they’re pre-done – email sequences, webinar pages, video sequences, and pre scheduled social media content.

You may choose to keep doing your launches based on dates, but have the majority of your launch pre-done. This is how many of my clients do their live launches.

Automate elements of your launch

If you want it to run all the time, you can just automate elements of your launch – like the email sequences. You can even go so far as to automate the “teaching” part of your webinar but still appear live at the beginning and end. This is a hybrid webinar. For example, my WebinarNinja account allows me to upload a pre-recording of the “content” part of my webinar. This is really the body of my webinar. But the intro with my face and the outro where I answer questions at the end I deliver live. 

It’s as easy as starting your webinar, introducing yourself live, then flicking on your pre-recorded webinar. When it finishes, you come back on the screen live again and ask if there are any questions. Easy! 

And the best part is, you show up as your best self every time. One of the downsides of doing regular live webinars with the same content is you can start to sound tired and disinterested after you’ve delivered it a few times. This way you’re always fresh.

Fully automate your launch

You may think this one doesn’t work as well, but you’d be mistaken. You see a fully automated launch can still work.

I’ll always advise you to run elements live to figure out the details FIRST, but here’s how you might automate your launch:

1. Determine the best traffic generating strategies to attract the right people.
2. Work out how you want to deliver your lead generating piece of content – either pre-recorded video, 3-part video series dripped out, a challenged delivered via email or something else.
3. Write your automated email sequence that nurtures and then leads people to the cart being open for them to invest. Do this in an email marketing system that allows automation (which is most these days).
4. Send a series of emails that invites readers to invest in your offer. You may support these emails with Facebook or Google retargeting ads.
5. Decide how you want the launch to end – a limited number of spaces, a timer that counts down, expiring links or language that shows them why now is a good time to invest.

Which approach will you choose? Maybe you’ll move through all 3 stages.

Tips for evergreen funnel system success

It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing a live launch, a sales funnel or an automated launch, you want to come across in the right light. You can do this through the content you create, the strategy you choose and the software you use.

A lot of people won’t change their live launches to evergreen, because they feel they’re cheating their audience. But I want to share a few tips that allow you to still be authentic, but to also achieve success with your evergreen funnel system.

• Properly organise your content. I have a dedicated Google folder that has all the elements – from webinar scripts to Google Slide presentations, emails and images to ensure it’s easy to turn a live launch into an evergreen system if there’s obvious success there.
• You may need to consider repurposing your lead generation content – whether that’s a live webinar you make automated, a 5-day Facebook challenge you turn into a dripped email sequence, or live videos into an automated video sequence.
• To achieve the same feel as a live launch through social media, consider retargeting ads either via Facebook or Google. This way your audience is feeling a heightened energy through the evergreen system. Depending on the volume of people going through the funnel, you can potentially show different ads to people based on where they are in the funnel.
• Use an email marketing system that allows you to fully set up drip sequences. Even better is to find a system that not only does automation, but can go a step further to segment people based on an if/then command. ActiveCampaign, Keap and ConvertKit are some to consider. This means that you can segment people based on the actions they take – like clicking a link, watching a webinar or visiting a sales page.
• Consider an email marketing system that allows deadline links. Keap’s Infusionsoft does this, where you can have the sales page links in every email in your sequence redirect to a different page once a timer has finished. This means you can take away any bonuses or special prices that you only want to have appear for a limited time. Another tool is Deadline Funnels, which is a third party tool you can connect your landing page and emails to.
• Partner with someone who can offer a bonus if they purchase your offer that expires by a certain date. This requires a little more work, but a great way to bring in a new audience.
• If you don’t like expiring links or don’t want to have a countdown timer that stops after a certain period of time (we’ve all seen these and know that when we return, the page and offer still exist), then use language and stories that show them what not purchasing now will mean for them. The reality is if your offer perfectly aligns to what they want and you show them the value and benefits to them, then often the product can sell itself.

So are you ready to start your evergreen funnel system?

If you’re unsure what emails might go in your system, then grab a copy of the Email Marketing Toolkit. This package of tools and training will help you write a captivating sequence that will transition people from your free offer to wanting to invest NOW.

Need to do a live launch first? Then download the Six Weeks To Launch Checklist.