173: The Hidden Formula to Pick the Right Sales Funnel
In this episode of the Creators MBA podcast, I dive into the confusing world of sales funnels, specifically focusing on the differences between tripwire and evergreen funnels.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
How tripwire sales funnels can generate quick wins and nurture new leads.
The complexities and benefits of evergreen sales funnels for higher-priced offers.
Clear, actionable tips to help you decide which funnel to use and when.
By the end of this episode, you’ll have a crystal-clear understanding of these powerful strategies and how to implement them in your business.
Mastering Sales Funnels: Tripwire vs. Evergreen
Sales funnels are an essential tool for digital product entrepreneurs looking to generate consistent revenue and build strong relationships with their audience. Two types of sales funnels often used are tripwire and evergreen sales funnels.
Understanding the differences between these two funnels and knowing when to use each can significantly impact your business’s success.
In this blog post, we will delve into the specifics of tripwire and evergreen sales funnels, providing practical insights and actionable steps to help you optimize these strategies for your business.
What is a Tripwire Sales Funnel?
A tripwire sales funnel is designed to turn new leads into paying customers quickly by offering a low-cost, high-value product immediately after they sign up for your lead magnet. This funnel is an excellent way to give new email subscribers a quick win and start building a relationship with them from the outset.
How Does a Tripwire Funnel Work?
The process generally begins with a lead magnet—a free resource that attracts potential customers to your email list. Once they sign up for the lead magnet, they are immediately presented with a tripwire offer. This offer is typically a low-cost product, priced to be a no-brainer decision, usually available for a limited time (e.g., 15 to 30 minutes).
For example, after a new subscriber signs up for your lead magnet, they might see a page that says, “Wait before you go! We have a special offer just for you.” This page will present the tripwire product at a significantly reduced price. The goal is to entice the new subscriber to make a purchase quickly, providing them with a valuable resource while also covering the cost of acquiring the lead.
Benefits of Tripwire Funnels
Tripwire funnels are highly effective because they leverage the initial excitement and interest of a new subscriber. By offering a low-cost product right away, you increase the likelihood of a quick conversion, which helps to offset the cost of your lead generation efforts.
Research has proven that once someone makes a purchase from you, they are more likely to buy again in the future, as they have already demonstrated their willingness to spend money with you.
What is an Evergreen Sales Funnel?
Unlike tripwire funnels, evergreen sales funnels are designed for higher-priced offers and operate continuously, nurturing leads over a longer period. These funnels are ideal for products or services that require more consideration and a longer sales cycle.
How Does an Evergreen Funnel Work?
An evergreen funnel typically begins with a lead magnet like a webinar. Potential customers sign up and are then guided through a series of automated emails and follow-up sequences that provide value, address objections, and build trust. The ultimate goal is to convert these leads into paying customers for your higher-priced offers.
For instance, if you have an $800 course or coaching program, you wouldn’t expect someone to purchase it immediately after signing up for a pdf lead magnet.
Instead, you might invite them to a webinar where you provide valuable content and then pitch your offer at the end. This webinar can be followed by a series of emails that include testimonials, case studies, and additional information to help the lead make an informed decision.
Optimizing Evergreen Funnels
One of the critical aspects of a successful evergreen funnel is ensuring it’s well-optimized. This involves regularly reviewing and tweaking your emails, sales pages, and webinar content to ensure they resonate with your audience and effectively address their pain points and objections.
Additionally, using tools like Deadline Funnel can help create urgency by setting specific time frames for offers, even within an evergreen setup.
Combining Tripwire and Evergreen Funnels
For maximum impact, you can combine tripwire and evergreen sales funnels. This hybrid approach allows you to capture leads with a tripwire funnel and then nurture them through an evergreen funnel, ultimately leading them to your higher-priced offers.
How to Implement a Hybrid Funnel
Start by offering a lead magnet that feeds into your tripwire funnel. Once a new subscriber makes a tripwire purchase, follow up with a series of nurture emails. After a week or two of nurturing, invite them to a webinar that kicks off your evergreen funnel. This approach ensures that you are continuously engaging and converting leads at various stages of their journey with your brand.
Key Takeaways and Next Steps
Understanding and implementing tripwire and evergreen sales funnels can transform your business by creating a steady stream of revenue and building stronger relationships with your audience. Here are some key takeaways to keep in mind:
Tripwire funnels are excellent for generating quick wins and offsetting lead generation costs.
Evergreen funnels are ideal for higher-priced offers that require more nurturing and consideration.
Combining both types of funnels can create a powerful system for continuously converting leads into paying customers.
Regularly optimize your funnels to ensure they remain effective and resonate with your audience.
If you’re ready to implement these strategies in your business, consider using my free resources linked in the show notes. I have a workshop to help you select your best offers for your tripwire funnel and a planner for creating profitable evergreen sales funnels which also comes with a Spotify playlist with all of my evergreen sales funnel podcast episodes.
By understanding and leveraging the power of tripwire and evergreen sales funnels, you can create a more efficient and effective sales process, leading to consistent revenue growth and a thriving digital product business.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Join 10,000+ other digital product business owners & subscribe to the Creator's MBA newsletter to swipe my top marketing tips each week: Go here.
Funnel Cure Mapping Workshop: Learn how to choose high-converting offers for each funnel stage. Sign up here.
Plan Your Profitable Evergreen Sales Funnel Planner (includes Spotify Evergreen Sales Funnel Playlist). Grab it here.
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Transcript:
Dr. Destini Copp [00:00:07]:
Welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destini Copp, and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desk, constantly live launching, or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hey there. Destini here. And in today's podcast episode, I am super excited to chat about this particular topic. I'm very passionate about it. And I know that there's lots of confusion about this.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:00:50]:
In one of my recent emails newsletters, I had mentioned the difference or talking about Tripwire versus evergreen sales funnels. And I mentioned if you had questions about those, if you didn't know or understand the differences between the 2, email me back and I'll be more than happy to give you a little bit more information. Well, I got so many questions about it that I wanted to do a special podcast episode just on this topic. Now I think first before I go into when you would want to use 1 versus the other, I really want to describe and kind of paint a picture of how each one of these sales funnels look like. So, for a tripwire sales funnel, basically what you would do for a funnel like this, you would have your lead magnet. And then once they sign up for your lead magnet, they input their name and their email address, and they hit submit. And then on the next page, you're gonna have this page that pops up that says, you know, wait before you go. I have this special offer that I think you'll be interested in.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:02:06]:
And this is going to be what we call your tripwire offer. Now I know a lot of people don't like that term tripwire offer, but that's kind of a standard term in the industry, so it's what I'm going to use here. So you have this trip wire, a limited time offer. Generally, it's gonna be, like, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe even 30 minutes, where they can make a decision to buy this special offer at a greatly reduced price. And the goal is to make that a very much a no brainer type of offer. So that when they see it, they read the information on their sales page. They're like, yes. This is exactly what I'm looking for.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:02:44]:
It's a great way for your new email subscriber to get a quick win. It's tied into your lead magnet. They click to buy. They go to the checkout page. And on the checkout page, you have this order bump, possibly. That's another kind of a no brainer type offer. It It might even be something super cheap, $7, $9, something like that, but gives them a lot of value. They input their credit card information, maybe give you a little bit more name in terms of or their name and their address there, and they click to buy.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:03:15]:
And then from there, you can even have additional upsells or downsells or cross sells in that particular funnel. That is a tripwire offer, and you can set this up on the back end of one of your lead magnets. If you're, you know, maybe hosting a summit, you can have a VIP pass on the back end of this. Maybe you are hosting a bundle. You can put something like this on the back end of that free bundle where you have an upsell premium type bundle that people can, you know, purchase and you can have a a sales this tripwire sales funnel on the back end of this. I mean, there's a lot of different ways that you can use a tripwire funnel in your business. And I think for most of you out there, having these set up in your business running kinda constantly in the back end is a very good idea because we know, and the research has proven to us, that once somebody purchases from you, they are more likely to purchase from you in the future. And I can about tell you that every single one of my higher in customers, meaning people who have signed up for maybe my 1 on 1 coaching services or one of my higher end products or offers that I have.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:04:34]:
They have purchased one of these tripwire type offers from me in the past. So they've gotten to know know me. They know my teaching style. They like how I teach. They like working with me, and it was just a really good kind of introduction, if you would, into my business. Okay? So, that is my definition of a tripwire funnel. An evergreen sales funnel is a little bit different from this and I think a little little bit more difficult to optimize. Of these.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:05:14]:
They're a little bit more difficult to optimize. Doesn't mean that you can't and it certainly doesn't mean that you shouldn't have them in your business. Because I absolutely believe that you have, especially if you have, like, a higher priced offer in your business. Okay? So let's say that you have a course or program or offer or coaching program that you want to sell. And let's say, for sake of argument here, it is, you know, close to $800. So seven $97, let's just say. That is your offer here. So not a super cheap course or offer and not something that you would sell in a tripwire funnel.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:06:01]:
Somebody's for the most part, somebody's not gonna make an $800 decision. Even if you have a payment plan, they're not gonna make that decision within 15 minutes or 20 minutes, especially if they don't know you. Okay? So for something like this, you're gonna set up an evergreen funnel. And generally, what you're gonna do for one of these is gonna be a webinar type format. So somebody's gonna come in, they're gonna sign up for your webinar, they're gonna watch your webinar, they're going to, you know, maybe buy directly on that webinar. So at the end, you're gonna do a pitch for your offer. So, you know, they've spent 45 minutes with you or 30 30 minutes or even an hour. You know, some webinars are an hour.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:06:56]:
If you can get somebody to sit through an hour webinar format. So, and at the end, you're gonna make this pitch. And you might give them some bonuses, some fast sass facts action bonuses. So that's an option to kind of, you know, encourage them to take action. And you're also you're still gonna give them a set time frame. So it could be that your cart open period for this evergreen sales funnel, maybe it's 5 days. Okay? So let's say for argument, we're selling an $800 product. We might have some payment plans in there.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:07:31]:
We're gonna have some fast action bonuses in there, and we're gonna have a cart open for 5 days. Okay? So they sign up for the webinar. They watch the webinar that triggers that cart open and that cart close period. And, generally, you're gonna use a timer like a deadline funnels for something like this. And that will track that particular email email subscriber and tie in all of their emails into that particular sales funnel and that timer. So they watch the webinar, and let's say they don't purchase. What you're gonna have then, you're gonna have some follow-up emails. Some that might address their objections.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:08:12]:
Some that might, you know, give some testimonials of other students who have completed your program and have had success. So you're gonna have a series of emails that go out. And then possibly on the last day, when the cart is closing, you might have at least 2, maybe even 3 emails that go out that day. And, you know, remind them of the cart closing and the, you know, any bonuses that they might miss out on. So that is an evergreen sales funnel, but that is for a higher priced offer. Now you can combine the 2. Right? You can have somebody come in from a lead magnet, go to Tripwire, you know, even have some of the upsells and downsells there. And then you have some nurture emails that might go out for, you know, a week or so or 2 weeks or however you have set that up.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:09:07]:
And then you invite them to the webinar and that will kick in your evergreen sales funnel where you promote one of your other higher priced offers. So you can combine the 2. You can keep them separate. You know, there's a lot of different ways that you can set this up in your business. So I hope that kind of this is a very, very short episode, but I really wanted to take this opportunity and walk you through the differences between the 2 and when you would use 1 versus the other. Other. If you have any questions whatsoever about setting up these sales funnels, whether it's a tripwire bar sales funnel or evergreen sales funnel in your business, let me know. I do have some free resources that I'm going to put in the show notes.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:09:59]:
I have a workshop that will help you kinda walk you through figuring out what offers to have in your tripwire funnels. So your tripwire, your order bump, your upsells, your downsells, your cross sells. I have a workshop that'll walk you through that. And then for setting up your profitable evergreen sales funnel, I have a planner to help you with that. Also, a Spotify playlist for a ton of different podcast episodes that I have put together for setting up your profitable evergreen sales funnel. And I'll walk you through step by step by step on how to do it. Again, if you have any questions whatsoever, let me know, and I will see you next week. Bye for now.