5-Part Evergreen Funnel That Sells Online Courses on Autopilot
When you set up an evergreen funnel, your audience can buy your online course or membership all year long. They don't have to wait for a live launch with an open and close cart date. It is a great way to attract more students who are ready to buy so they can solve their pain points quickly.
Online course creators should have an evergreen sales funnel set up in their business to gain sales 24-hours a day, seven days a week, all year round. You can still host a live launch whenever you want, but your evergreen machine will create consistency in your course or membership sales.
In this post, I’ll walk you through my favorite 5-part evergreen funnel that sells your online courses on autopilot. I wanted to point out that you don’t need all the parts to this funnel at once. You can start small and add each part one by one until you have the entire funnel built.
Note: Some of these links below are affiliate links, which means I may get a commission if you try them and purchase. However, none of the fees have been increased to compensate me.
Your Evergreen Sales Funnel That Sells Online Courses on Autopilot
Part 1: High-Converting Landing Page for your Free Gift
The first part of this evergreen sales funnel includes a high-converting landing page for your free offer. This gift entices your audience to sign up and relate to the other products and services you plan to promote further down your funnel. This lead magnet is what you’ll use to build your email list, and you will promote this lead magnet everywhere!
When setting up your landing page for your lead magnet, you’ll want to ensure that it will convert a high percentage of the traffic, especially if you’re running paid ads. After all, you don’t want to spend all that time, energy, money, and effort driving traffic (aka people) to the landing page for your gift and have the visitor leave without signing up!
Here are some essential tips on creating a high-converting landing page for your evergreen sales funnel.
Choose a landing page builder, such as Leadpages, that has a good reputation with preloaded landing page templates that are proven to convert.
Keep things simple and avoid a ton of verbiage and visual elements on your landing page. It is the most common mistake that course creators make with their landing pages. Go straight to the point and promote your gift so you can get the most sign-ups possible.
The more straightforward your landing page design, the easier it will be for your visitors to navigate and convert.
Get rid of navigation elements. You'll lose your potential new subscriber if you have a top navigational bar that distracts your visitor, and they could potentially click to leave and forget to sign up.
Part 2: Have a Small Tripwire Offer on your Thank You Page
A tripwire is a low-cost offer that accomplishes two objectives:
First, it helps to offset the cost of the ads if you’re driving paid traffic to your sales funnel. You're not looking to profit from your tripwire. You simply want to use it to increase the size of your email list for free.
Second, it's faster to convert people who have purchased from you in the past. So, starting with a low-risk tripwire product is an excellent way for them to get to know you and how you teach.
Research has proven that you can increase your signature product's conversion ten times more by simply having an effective tripwire offer.
For online course creators, mini-courses make great tripwire offers. This gives your new customer a taste of what it’s like to learn from you and, if they like your teaching style, they will be much more likely to buy from you in the future.
If you offer a membership, a percentage discount (e.g., 50% off coupon) on the first month can be effective in getting new members to join and try it out to see how they would like your membership.
It’s important to note that you will be promoting other products and services further down the funnel, so make sure that your lead magnet and tripwire offer aligns with your product portfolio.
Part 3: An Automated Email Sequence
You’ll send them an automated welcome email sequence in this next step. You’ll need to create two email sequences:
For customers who purchased your tripwire offer
For email subscribers who opted in for your gift but did not purchase your tripwire offer
For customers who purchased your tripwire offer, you’ll start the onboarding process to introduce them to you and the contents of the product they just purchased. For instance, if your tripwire offer is a mini-course, you’ll walk them through how to get started in the course and move through the course material.
For email subscribers who opted in for your gift but didn’t purchase the course, you’ll deliver a welcome email sequence where you can give them one last chance to purchase the tripwire (possibly at a higher price than the fast action takers).
Part 4: Promote Your Signature Offer
After you successfully onboard your new student or email subscriber, it’s now time to promote your signature offer.
Here’s the excellent news. You have a warm audience to sell to. These new email subscribers have raised their hands, saying, “yes, I want to hear from you,” and they’re ready to listen to how you can help them.
Plus, you have already gained the trust of these new students and email subscribers by offering tremendous value with your lead magnet and tripwire product. They are ready to hear more from you and how you can help them with their pain points.
Depending upon the price point of your signature offer, you may want to invite your audience to an evergreen webinar, or you can set up an email sales sequence to promote your signature offer.
For example, if your signature offer is a $2,000 course, an invitation to a high-value webinar training would be warranted.
If your signature offer is a course priced between $200 - $500, an email sales sequence would likely work for your audience.
Part 5: Add in Upsells or Down Sells Depending on the Action Your Audience Takes
At this point, a percentage of your new email subscribers will have purchased your tripwire offer and your signature offer.
Some may even be ready to purchase a higher-priced offer like a VIP day with you.
Others may still be at a point where they’re not ready to buy your signature course yet. For these individuals, you can do a flash sale of your tripwire offer (if they didn’t initially purchase) or provide another offer that you have in your business.
Some individuals are interested in more high-touch services rather than trying to DIY. If you offer services in your business at the beginning of your sales funnel, have a question in your email sequences to identify these individuals so you can help them sooner rather than later.
With this funnel, it’s essential to tag your email subscribers, so you know what they have purchased and clicked on throughout your sales funnel.
This will help you determine how to help them and what to offer them next as they move along the buyer’s journey through your evergreen sales funnel.
Take Baby Steps
If this 5-part funnel seems overwhelming or if you’re just starting out building an evergreen sales funnel, start with the lead magnet funnel and add each part one by one as you build out your product portfolio and evergreen sales funnel in your business.
An evergreen sales funnel is the best strategy to sell your online courses. With this approach, you will start selling your courses 24/7 all year round.
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