If you’re in sales, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the evergreen sales funnel. It’s a way of selling that’s based on the idea of working less and selling more. In other words, you focus on generating a steady stream of leads, rather than working hard to close every sale.
Say you have a successful online course or a product you’ve worked hard to sell offline and now want to transfer its hype online. The launch process went very well, you built a sustainable sales funnel, sales were average initially, but now your product is barely selling.
You’ve employed some of the best tried-and-tested sales strategies but only seen selective sales. Constantly working on launching and relaunching your campaign is exhausting and monotonous with no favorable end in sight.
It’s at this exact point where evergreen funnels come in to put your efforts on autopilot so you can refine your core strategies for better sales.
At Growth Hackers we see an evergreen sales funnel like a self-driving car: once it’s set up, it keeps moving, letting you focus on strategy while leads flow in automatically. In this article, we’ll discuss all things evergreen sales funnel and how you can get to the point of building yourself an awesome and successful evergreen sales funnel for your business.
What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is a process that businesses use to identify and qualify potential customers, and then guide them through the purchase journey.
It’s called a “funnel” because it starts with a large number of prospects at the top (awareness), and then gradually filters them down to a smaller number of qualified leads (interest) who are ready to buy (decision).
The key to mastering successful sales funnels is to keep moving your prospects through each stage, from awareness all the way to purchase. At each stage, you need to provide relevant information and messages that will help your prospects move one step closer to becoming customers.
By following this process, you can ensure that you’re making the most of your marketing efforts and generating more sales for your business.
What is an Evergreen Sales Funnel?
By definition, evergreen sales funnels can be a lot of things from tools to processes to entire systems. Simply put, an evergreen sales funnel is a marketing and sales system that you can set up once and let run on autopilot.
Evergreen generally means “always available,” which in this context means your products or services are always available for sale, and your sales funnel is always open. Typically, an evergreen sales funnel will include some kind of lead magnet or opt-in (such as a free report, checklist, or e-course) that entices people to sign up for your email list.
Once they’re on your list, you can then nurture them with helpful content and weekly emails until they’re ready to buy your product or service. And that’s just the basic framework—you can get as creative as you want in terms of what goes into your evergreen sales funnel. The sky’s the limit!
But the benefits of having an evergreen sales funnel are clear: you can generate leads and sales on autopilot, without having to constantly create new marketing campaigns or launch new products.
If you have a business that you want to scale, an evergreen sales funnel is a great way to do it. Before Growth Hackers built an evergreen funnel for one of our B2B SaaS clients, their sales team had to chase every lead manually but after we implemented one on their behalf, their sales system ran on autopilot, producing steady revenue with minimal ongoing effort.
What Makes an Evergreen Funnel so Popular?
Many businesses opt for an evergreen sales funnel because it’s a smart, sustainable way to generate leads and revenue. Evergreen funnels are popular because they’re simple and effective – they’re easy to set up and maintain, and they’re a great way to keep your passive sales process rolling.
An evergreen funnel is always “open” meaning that leads can enter it at any time and receive the same offer. Plus, it’s also available on autopilot to your audience, unlike a traditional sales funnel which has a limited time frame.
You never have to worry about losing potential customers who come in after your window of opportunity has closed.
Moreover, you can segment your evergreen funnel so that different audiences receive different content based on their needs and interests. This type of personalization helps you build relationships with your leads and customers, which can result in increased loyalty and conversions.
And because evergreen funnels are always open, you can continue to add new content and leads into the mix, making it an incredibly scalable solution for businesses of all sizes.
All of these factors contribute to why an evergreen sales funnel is such a popular choice for many businesses. At Growth Hackers we view an evergreen funnel like a 24/7 storefront: always open, always serving the right customers, and continuously turning interest into sales.
What Are the Tools You Need to Build Your Own Evergreen Sales Funnel?
If you’re looking to build an evergreen sales funnel, there are a few key tools you’ll need.
1. A digital product
Any sales funnel starts with a great offer. You need to have something of value to give your potential customer in exchange for their contact information. This could be a free eBook, a discount code, an online course, or access to a valuable piece of content.
2. Landing page
The next step is to create a landing page. This is the sales page that potential customers will land on when they click on your ad or link. The landing page should be designed to capture the attention of the visitor and encourage them to take action, such as signing up for your email list or downloading a white paper.
At Growth Hackers, we’ve designed a landing page for one of our Fintech clients that boosted conversion rates by 27%, turning casual visitors into engaged leads.
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3. Paid advertising and paid traffic sources
Once you have built a robust offer, you need to drive traffic to it. This can be done through paid advertising, social media, or search engine optimization. Before Growth Hackers managed their paid campaigns, one of our manufacturing clients saw sporadic traffic and low ROI. That’s when we jumped in. After targeted advertising strategies, their offers reached the right audience, producing consistent, high-quality leads.
4. Lead magnet
Then your focus should move to capture leads. This can be done through a number of methods, such as opt-in forms on your website or landing pages, gated content, or even lead magnets. You need to provide an incentive for them to enter their contact information into your lead capture form.
5. Email marketing system
Finally, you need to nurture those leads into customers. This is done by sending them valuable content and building a relationship with them over time, preferably through your email marketing campaign. Of course, you need a reliable email service provider to help you get started.
The goal of your email marketing should be to build trust and relationships with your subscribers so that they eventually make a purchase from your online store. One fashion client struggled to convert leads until Growth Hackers implemented a structured email system. What happened? Within 10 weeks, their engagement skyrocketed and sales began flowing steadily.
6. Checkout page/Sales page
Finally, you’ll need a way to convert leads into paying customers. This is typically done through a sales page or order form.
By following these steps, you can create an evergreen sales funnel that will help you drive traffic, capture leads, and close sales on a regular basis.
How to Build Your Own Evergreen Funnel | The Easy Way
An evergreen funnel doesn’t have to be complicated to be profitable. Here’s an easy version you can adopt as a stepping stone to gradually refining your sales sequence to suit your own business.
1. Start with a free version of your product
It doesn’t have to be a version of your product. It could be something related to your course or eBook, some coupon, some downloadable cheat sheet, but something relevant on your main landing page.
You have to give it away to your target audience so it needs to be enticing and actionable, pulling in your customer without much effort. This implies marketing your product in a way that fulfills the immediate need of your audience.
2. Put up a limited-time offer
This special sales page is aimed at those action takers who like to get what they’re seeking immediately without having to wait and read through weeks of warm-up mails.
The limited-time offer page appears once your customers click on the freebie you offered on your landing page. One reason why your audience will appreciate the LTO page is that it skips the hassle of traveling through the entire funnel, waiting for weeks to avail of an offer they can obtain right away!
3. Step into a high-performing email sequence
Those who prefer to gain more education and knowledge of your online course will prefer to skip the LTO page. Before Growth Hackers created structured email sequences for one of our healthcare clients, they struggled to nurture leads effectively but after working with our team for less than 4 months, their emails delivered consistent value, resulting in higher loyalty and measurable sales growth.
The next step is getting their attention and loyalty through a dedicated email sequence that begins from addressing their problems to gradually selling your proposition but offering no-nonsense value at every step.
You can always use evergreen sales funnels email templates to customize your message according to your customer’s needs instead of starting the sales sequence from scratch.
4. Optional but still on the cards, an evergreen webinar
Investing in evergreen webinars is highly recommended since it’s an opportunity to tell your audience in detail how your product or course can truly help solve their problems.
A convenient thing about creating a webinar is that you can pick and drop aspects from your live webinar with some customized changes to settle seamlessly into a solid evergreen funnel.
Evergreen webinars are typically needed when your online course or product is premium-priced and you really need to build a strong connection with your audience to convince them that your solution is their ideal solution.
A simple automated system like this might not be ideal for a product that has a high-driving sales cycle since you’ll need additional tools and insights to track and measure your progress.
However, if you’re just beginning out and creating your first evergreen funnel ever, going the easy way helps you understand that evergreen funnels are not as intimidating as they seem.
How to Build an Evergreen Sales Funnel | The Detailed Way
Whether easy or detailed, evergreen sales funnels are diligently strategic in operations. It is just a matter of getting those steps right to be successful. The underlying strategy in an evergreen funnel framework is what makes it a resilient backbone to suit various business needs.
1. Start with your lead magnet
If you’re not already using lead magnets to build your evergreen sales funnel, you’re missing out on one of the most effective marketing tools available. A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer in exchange for someone’s contact information.
It can be anything from an e-book, ePub or pdf guide to a video tutorial or an email course. The key is to make sure it’s something that your target audience will find valuable and that is relevant to your product or service.
For example, you might offer a free report on the top 10 ways to improve your website’s conversion rate.
2. Collect leads via an opt-in form
Once you’ve created your lead magnet, the next step is to create a landing page or opt-in form where people can sign up to receive it. This is where you’ll collect email addresses so that you can follow up with potential customers and continue marketing to them even after they’ve left your website.
By creating a lead magnet and a landing page, you can quickly and easily create an evergreen sales funnel that will continue to generate leads and sales for your business.
3. Create a sustainable evergreen sales sequence
Your evergreen sales sequence is a series of value-centric emails with a specific goal at each stage. You’re taking your new lead/subscriber on a journey where they know almost nothing about your service/product to a point where they’re desperate enough to buy what you’re selling by actually taking the desired action.
While each email should offer value to your leads, there are specific stages and attributes to follow.
- Stage 1: Start without any fluff and filter; offer direct value in the form of freebies or giveaways, or comprehensive resources.
- Stage 2: Keep giving value to increase your authority as a thought leader in that niche. You’re trying to nurture and hold your subscriber’s attention so offer informative material like cheat sheets, whitepapers, case studies, and more.
- Stage 3: Keep building your relationship with your leads and gradually introduce your sales pitch. Offer direct benefits through a solid offer and make sure to connect it with your lead’s problems to stay relevant. Structure your approach and ensure a firm call-to-action at the end of your email sequence.
Here is a quick example of how you can structure your emails to build solid conversion rates. Do keep in mind that there can be any number of sales emails that you choose to include in the sequence, but always maintain the value/promotion ratio to 70/30.
Email 1: Introductory mail
In the first email, try not to come across as overbearing but introduce your product in a way that shows your reader how it’ll address their problem(s). Give them a valid reason to stick around.
Email 2: Address and connect your subscriber’s problem to your free giveaway
Start building trust by addressing a pain point that your product can alleviate. Instead of promising a single solution, take your subscriber through the situation by outlining the main hurdles and practical ways to overcome them. Then present your free giveaway keeping it relevant to their journey.
Email 3: Take a deeper approach to your subscriber’s issues
In the following mails, you delve further by examining just how difficult your subscriber’s issue is. But your main goal is to help them acknowledge their situation and that they need an ideal solution, something that your product/service can fulfill. However, don’t offer the solution just yet. Keep providing value through infographics and checklists they can follow to help themselves break down the situation into manageable chunks.
Email 4: Offer a solid solution by introducing your product’s/service’s benefits
Recap your subscriber’s journey to help them realize that your product/service is exactly what they need now as a solution to their needs. Give them the details of your offer, the benefits, and how they can maximize its potential through effective implementation. Treat your subscribers to the offer they’ve been waiting for without further ado.
Email 5: Turn to sales and create a sense of ‘sold out’ urgency
You’ve done your best to ensure your subscribers are taken through the learning curve and are now in sync and familiarized with every aspect of your course/product. Gradually push for sales by offering instant access at a reduced price. Further, create a sense of urgency by introducing a scarcity of your course availability. Tell them that the offer expires in a limited time period. This sense of losing out on a course/product at a lowered price tends to drive people to take a desirable action.
4. Automate and link every process
Once you have the email sequence ready, begin automating the process through a reliable autoresponder tool. Feed in the subscriber emails and the time lag at which duration every email gets delivered.
While most of the process is automated, make sure you automate the removal of subscribers who make a purchase from your sales sequence from receiving further emails post-purchase.
At Growth Hackers, we’ve helped an e-commerce client automate and link every step of their funnels, resulting in more efficient lead nurturing with minimal manual effort.
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5. Create a deadline funnel
A deadline funnel is a tool that allows you to create scarcity and urgency for your products and services by setting a countdown timer that expires when a certain number of people have signed up or taken action.
The idea is that the more scarce and urgent a product or service is, the more valuable it is perceived to be, and the more likely people are to take action on it.
A deadline funnel also allows you to segment your list so that you can send different messages to different groups of people based on their actions, which can further increase the urgency to act on your offer.
6. Go live, test, and tweak
Ensure all functions of your evergreen funnel are ready for action before finally going live. The only way you’ll know whether the sales funnel is working or not is when you go live and allow some time for the sales data to build up. At Growth Hackers we think of going live like launching a spaceship: you need to check every system, monitor the data, and make precise adjustments to ensure a smooth journey to success.
Getting the best result takes time and adjustments based on analytical tracking. Most email service providers offer tools to analyze and track your evergreen funnel sales data. Various metrics like the open-click rate and funnel conversion rates are crucial to helping track and convert leads into sales.
Boosting Your Evergreen Funnel Creation Efforts
Sure, your evergreen sales funnels are going to get you that passive income you’ve always dreamed of. But how about you take your efforts another step forward and keep attracting weighty leads to boost your evergreen sales?!
Social media channels, investing in paid ads like Facebook ads, and SEO are a few ways you can explore to get those website visitors converted into potential leads. Create a stream of never-ending traffic sources to your online courses or blog post and sit back while the sales keep rolling.
If you’re excited to get building a great funnel to drive evergreen sales and need some help getting started, Growth Hackers is the growth agency partner at your service.
As a globally successful digital marketing agency, we help businesses build their evergreen sales funnel and drive traffic and revenue to boost their business growth. We focus on organic growth strategies, which means you can grow your business without spending a lot of money on advertising.
Also, we use creative marketing tactics to drive traffic and increase conversions. We also use data-driven analysis to figure out what’s working and what’s not, so we can constantly improve your results.
If you’re looking for a partner to help you grow your business sustainably and consistently, contact Growth Hackers today.
