What Is An Evergreen Sales Funnel? (And How To Set Your First Evergreen Funnel Up)

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What is a sales funnel? 

A sales funnel is a step-by-step process to take someone on a purchase journey that helps them move from a potential lead to a paying customer for your online course, digital product, program or membership.

The idea is that you nurture someone towards the sale so that understand why they want/need your offer, why yours is the right offer for them and feel confident with their purchase decision.  

What is an evergreen sales funnel?

An evergreen sales funnel is essentially a fully automated email funnel that people can move through at any time. 

So an email subscriber who signs up on a Friday morning in January gets the same experience and outcome as someone who joins your funnel on an evening in June! They get the same period of time to make a decision. 

You do the work creating your email funnels up front and your set-and-forget funnel keeps working for you, selling your offers whilst you turn your focus to other areas of your business e.g. recruiting more leads, delivering services or creating new offers!

Because evergreen automated sales funnels free up more time to spend on other areas of your business, they can help you to scale your business much faster by generating passive income. 

If you are interested to learn more about creating your own evergreen sales funnel, check out my course Fearless Funnels.

The 4 stages of awareness for sales

Some sales funnels are longer than others depending on what stage your prospect is at when you first meet them.

Let’s take a look at the 4 stages of awareness which is important to understand when you are constructing your sales funnel.

Unaware

People buy offers because they are solutions to problems or goals that they have. At this stage, the person is unaware of that problem or goal and your job is to educate them.

For example, if you are selling a course about Pinterest, someone that has never heard of the platform is unaware. Your job is to explain how it can benefit their business.

Problem aware

At this stage people become aware of the problem/goal but they aren’t quite sure what options they have to reach the end goal. For example, they now know there’s a platform that can drive traffic to their business but they don’t know how to get started.

Solution aware

They are now aware of a variety of solutions – in this example, a course about Pinterest or a pinning VA! But they don’t know which option is best for them and which is the best course to take. They are ready to make a purchase but they need a little more nurturing!

Product aware and analysis

They are now aware of your course and are comparing it to others on the market. It’s now your job to show them why yours is the best for them by showcasing the features, benefits as well as sharing testimonials for social proof. 

How to use the 4 stages of awareness

Ideally you will be reaching leads who are already a fair way into this awareness funnel – perhaps at problem aware or the solution aware phase. It will be much easier to convert these people who are ready to purchase a solution.

But your sales funnel is also an opportunity to take them on this journey through each stage in your warm up sequence and educate them about their options and the pro’s and con’s of each. They will then be much closer to being ready to purchase a solution

How does an evergreen funnel work?

 There are a variety of types of evergreen sales funnel that we will cover in this article but a simple evergreen funnel will usually start with an incentive to get a potential customer onto your email list. 

Your free gift or lead magnet entices them to sign up to your list and at this point you will start to educate them, nurture them and showcase your expertise in your niche. You may opt to deliver an evergreen sales webinar or a challenge as part of this process. 

You are building the know, like and trust factor so that they are ready to consider your offer. 

Once you have nurtured your new subscriber and they are problem and solution aware, they are primed for your offer. 

At this point, they will pass through a sequence of sales emails designed to showcase the features and benefits of your offer as well as address any objections or questions your potential customer may have. 

Most evergreen sales funnels will also include an element of urgency at this point – usually a time sensitive discount or expiring bonus that they can only access if they purchase before the end of the sales funnel. This helps to focus your potential customers on making a decision and will help you to drive higher sales conversions. 

Using special evergreen funnel tools, you can ensure you give everyone the same period of time to make this decision. 

This whole process is automated so all you have to do is focus on attracting leads into your funnel via traffic sources such as SEO optimised blog posts, paid ads, social media and via word of mouth referrals. 

Why build an evergreen sales funnel?

Launching and re-launching courses over and over again gets exhausting. Especially when you are running live events like challenges or live webinars as part of your pre-launch material. 

And the other alternative is that your offers start to gather dust and don’t get promoted as often as they deserve. 

However if you put your offers into an evergreen sales funnel, you can turn your attention to creating new content/ offers or offering services and scale your business whilst making passive income and earning consistent sales. 

All you need to do to keep it running effectively is to keep attracting leads into your funnel via various traffic sources e.g. blog posts and social media. 

If you are not using evergreen sales funnels, you would be amazed by how many people on your email list are completely unaware of what courses, services and products you offer!

And even if they don’t purchase your offer during the evergreen email sequence you have planted the seed. They now know it exists. You’ve nurtured your new subscribers, built trust with your audience and established your credibility as an expert. Next time you host a flash sale or they have the finances, you may land that sale! 

For that reason evergreen funnels not only result in consistent sales they also 

• build relationships with our audience 
• establish your credibility 
• boost product awareness
• provide a lucrative source of passive income 

Who should use an evergreen funnel?

Evergreen funnels can work for anyone who has an email list and sells offers. That includes online course creators, digital product creators, service providers, coaches, bloggers and physical product sellers! 

Evergreen funnels do work best for online business owners selling self directed online courses, memberships and digital products because there is generally no limit for how many people can join. Therefore if a funnel performs especially well, they will not be overwhelmed by work. 

Service providers, coaches and physical product sellers can still use evergreen funnels but need to be cautious that they do not take on more work than they can deliver! 

I also don’t recommend creating your evergreen funnel until you have successfully launched your first offer. 

You can test your lead magnets, sales emails and sales page first and make sure they are converting well. 

If you have sales emails with low engagement then you can make tweaks and improvements. 

Basically your first launch is a way of testing your offer out so that when you turn it into an evergreen sales funnel, your sales page and emails are the best they can be and the offer converts well! 

Evergreen sales funnels vs live launches & flash sales

There are several ways to sell products. Yes you can create a shop page on your website and occasionally mention your products inside email newsletters and social media posts. However, this usually yields few sales.

People usually need a reason to buy now e.g. a discount, open-close cart period or an expiring bonus. Without this, it’s too easy to think ‘I’ll consider this later’ then forget it even exists!

And there are 3 ways to deliver that reason to buy now. 

1. Live launches 

2. Flash sales 

3. Evergreen funnels

Flash sales are similar to live launches but for products that have already been launched previously. They tend to be less time consuming with less effort going into the pre-launch event. But of course, as a result, usually yield fewer sales.

Live launches perform well because you can build a lot of buzz and excitement around the product or online course you are launching. When people are hearing about a product launch on social media and via email plus they are seeing other people join and get excited, it drives more sales conversions. 

But those conversions come at a price! Live launches are big events and they are exhausting. I personally don’t think I could manage more than one large scale launch a year. So I tend to reserve them for brand new courses only and instead sell my existing offers vis evergreen sales funnels. 

Now you might think that an evergreen sales funnel will convert much lower because there isn’t that sense of FOMO or buzz on social media but actually in my experience, they can do pretty well! 

The secret sauce  for a successful evergreen funnel is in the timing.  

In an evergreen funnel, you are delivering your sales pitch when your audience are at their warmest! 

You’ve given them exactly enough time and value to ensure that they know, like and trust you as well as see you as an expert. 

When someone has been on your email list a while, their email interaction may tail off after time. So often newer subscribers (but not brand new subscribers) are the people who sit up and pay the most attention to your offers. You just need to find that sweet spot!

You can see here from this 30 day snapshot that this funnel converted at a rate of X

This was for a product I didn’t mention once all month. The people who joined this funnel found it via SEO optimised blog posts. So even though there aren’t huge numbers of people passing through this funnel, it is still very lucrative!

Over $2000 generated without any additional work during those 30 days!

Benefits of Using an Evergreen Sales Funnel

• Evergreen funnels are set and forget meaning the work you do now will continue to reward you in passive income sales on a long term basis.
• Evergreen funnels give you the space and time to work on other areas of your business e.g. customer service, offer creation or service provision!
• Evergreen funnels boost product awareness – leading to more sales in the future e.g. when you next launch a flash sale. 
• Evergreen funnels ensure that your audience are nurtured from new visitors to super fans. Even if they don’t buy the offer in your funnel, they are far more likely to purchase something from you when they know, like and trust you. 
• Once your funnel is converting well, you can scale with Facebook ads in the knowledge that your successful funnel will pay for itself!
• Did I mention passive income sales on a regular basis…

Disadvantages for using an Evergreen Sales Funnel

•  If you put your offer into an evergreen sales funnel too early, you might have missed opportunities to tweak and optimise your sales emails/sales page. Live launches and flash sales can help you to identify what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t.
• Evergreen funnels won’t have the same level of buzz that you can generate during a live launch but I haven’t found this to have much impact on conversion rates. 
• Not everyone likes using a sense of urgency in their marketing. That said, urgency can be a good thing by creating a safe space and clear boundaries for decisions making. Countdown timers are especially helpful for audiences where you have a lot of nuerodivergent customers with ADHD! I rarely buy anything without a countdown timer and they help me to avoid long drawn out stressful periods of indecision!

Types of evergreen sales funnel

Tripwire funnels

These are short funnels where the special offer is delivered on a thank you page once someone has opted into the freebie. They work best for low cost, heavily discounted offers as your new lead is new to you and hasn’t built up that trust relationship with you yet! 

They can help to offset any paid ad costs as well as give your new subscriber a chance to sample working with you without the risk because the offer is low cost. 

Read next: Reasons why you need a tripwire funnel.

Challenge evergreen funnels

Whilst many challenges are run live with pop up Facebook communities etc, you can also run evergreen challenge funnels. 

Usually the lead magnet is a multi day challenge delivered via a series of daily emails. There may also be pre-recorded video content or an accompanying workbook. 

Once the challenge is finished, the sales pitch starts. At this point the challenger is engaged with the topic and you have grown that trust with your subscribers by helping them to gain a quick win via the challenge. 

Ideally the challenge topic/content will 

• attract perfect fit potential customers 
• challenge a common sales objection 
• build buzz around the topic
• showcase your expertise 
• help your challengers achieve a quick win – so they want to continue getting wins by opting in for your next offer!

Webinar evergreen funnels

Webinars are traditionally live events with audience engagement and a Q&A session. However they don’t have to be. 

The downside to live webinars is that people have to turn up live to get the most from them which might be tricky based on their time zone and/or commitments. 

Evergreen webinars are usually available on demand which makes them more convenient. 

You deliver a training which helps to 

a) teach your subscriber something new 

b) build their interest in the topic 

c) challenge potential objections 

At the end of the training, you then deliver a pitch for your offer. 

You then follow up this offer with a series of emails promoting your special offer. 

You can buy fancy webinar software that helps you to recreate the ‘live webinar’ experience. But personally I prefer to keep things simple with a pre-recorded video embedded directly onto a sales page!

Private podcast evergreen funnels

These are a newer form of evergreen funnel that are becoming more popular lately. 

Using tools like Hello Audio, you can drip feed a training over several days via a private podcast feed. 

The podcast feed is the lead magnet that people sign up for. 

You can pitch your offer at the end of the podcast episodes or follow up with an email sequence. 

Simple evergreen sales funnels

These are similar to the webinar and challenge emails listed above but the lead magnet can be anything of your choosing from a free template to a PDF guide. 

Generally a longer warm up sequence is required to build the know, like and trust factor!

Affiliate evergreen funnels

Evergreen funnels don’t have to be used exclusively to promote your own offers. You can also use them to promote other people’s offers where you earn a commission for every sale you refer. 

You would still create a related lead magnet and deliver a warm up sequence. The only difference with this type of email sales funnel is that you are promoting someone else’s offer during your sales pitch rather than your own!

Want to learn more about affiliate marketing funnels? Check out Affiliate Marketing Superstars!

Trigger evergreen funnels

Most evergreen sales funnels start with a lead magnet. However you can also trigger a funnel based on your subscribers behaviour. 

For example, you could trigger sending someone into a funnel based on what links they click on in your newsletter! 

They’ve been on your list a while so you won’t need to do such a long warm up sequence but you can still educate them on the topic before delivering a sales sequence. 

Open-close cart funnels 

These are funnels where there is only a short window to access the offer. Rather than a discount, the limited time available is what drives the urgency. This works well for group programs. You can set these up as evergreen funnels if you are using the correct software e.g. Deadline Funnel.

Variations on the evergreen sales funnel

I have seen evergreen sales funnels done in so many ways and there isn’t a right or a wrong way! You just need to find out what works for you, your offers and your audience!

Things you can experiment with for evergreen funnels

• Experiment with the length of your warm up sequence and the type of content you deliver 
• Experiment with the type of lead magnet. Does a challenge convert better than your webinar? Is your current lead magnet attracting your ideal customers?
• Experiment with tripwire offers and different durations. You could even deliver the tripwire offer in the first few days of someone joining your list instead of at the point of sign up!
• Experiment with the length of your sales funnel
• Automate sending a link to a ‘post-launch’ survey to find out what worked and what didn’t. (Need a template for this? Check out Surveys for Success.)

Advanced strategies – fancy extras for your evergreen sales funnel

• Offer an upsell to people who do buy. For example if you have just sold them a self directed online course, you could upsell a coaching package to help them work through the course with additional support.
• Offer a downsell to people who don’t buy. Maybe they don’t have the budget for this offer at the moment but do you have something else they might be interested in e.g. some templates?!
• Create a multi level evergreen funnel. As long as all of your offers will appeal to the same type of person, there’s no reason why you couldn’t put them through another sales funnel for a different product. Just make sure there is a gap between your sales sequences so they don’t feel ‘oversold’ to. I like to sandwich evergreen sales funnels with value sequences. I teach these advanced strategies inside Fearless Funnels.

What You Need to Build a Simple, Successful Evergreen Sales Funnel

Components of an evergreen sales funnel

For most evergreen sales funnels, you will need the following 

1. An incentive to get someone onto your email list e.g. a free download, lead magnet, free challenge, free private podcast series, free webinar etc. 

2. A landing page. 

3. A welcome email. 

4. A warm up sequence. 

5. A sales page with built in urgency. 

6.  A sequence of sales emails

Essential tools for building an evergreen sales funnel

A landing page builder 

You need to create an enticing landing page for your freebie and a sales page for your offer. 

I build my sales pages on Thrivecart and my landing pages on WordPress using Elementor as the page builder. 

A way to take payment 

I use and recommend Thrivecart as an all-in-one solution for creating sales pages, cart checkouts, hosting my courses and my affiliate program. 

Interested in Thrivecart? Check out my Thrivecart bonus when you get it via my affiliate link!

An email service provider to deliver automated emails

For this I recommend Convertkit. It’s very user friendly, has great deliverability and is brilliant for segmenting your audience. It also integrates with a lot of 3rd party tools. 

But mostly I recommend Convertkit as it is so easy to use for creating automations which you will need to make your evergreen sales funnel!

Thinking of getting Convertkit? Check out my Convertkit bonus first!

A tool for creating inbuilt and automated urgency 

You will need a tool capable of creating true and authentic  urgency  inside your evergreen sales funnel. 

You will also need this to sync reliably across your emails, sales page and cart checkout. 

You need it to give ever subscriber the exact same amount of time to access their discount/bonuses.

For this reason, using a simple countdown timer built with Thrivecart, Elementor or Hurry Timer, is not going to cut it.

They are only triggered via a page visit from that device. So if someone doesn’t open the 1st email and clicks on the 2nd, the countdown timer will be out of sync. Or if they click on the 1st email from their phone and the next day from their desktop, they will see 2 different countdown timers.  

For this reason you need a tool designed specifically for creating evergreen sales funnels with inbuilt urgency. 

The tool I use and recommend for this purpose is Deadline Funnel. 

It works effectively and reliably and I have never ran into issues using it – unlike when I used Thrive Ultimatum! It has also helped to deliver much better results as demonstrated by these 30 day stats I showed you before: 

If you are interested in getting Deadline Funnel, first check out the Deadline Funnel bonuses I offer when you use my affiliate link

How to Build an Evergreen Sales Funnel

Follow these simple steps to build your first evergreen sales funnel. 

For more information, demos and tech assistance then you may also want to consider joining my course Fearless Funnels!

Step one: create a free offer or lead magnet

This needs to attract and appeal to your ideal customers.

Usually it would solve a very small problem or help them to achieve a small goal that they have. If you can help them to achieve a small win, then they will be more interested in your paid offers. 

If it can also challenge potential objections they may have for your paid offers then even better!

For example my 5 day newsletter content challenge helped to prove that my audience could generate lots of ideas for their newsletter if they had the right prompts. Therefore email marketing could be viable for them. They were then more open to the idea of email marketing when I promoted my email course Email Marketing Superstars!

Step 2: Create a high-converting landing page

Think of this like a mini sales page where you convince somebody why they should opt in to your email list to get your lead magnet.

Focus on the benefits and transformation your free gift provides. You can also use inline sign up forms and pop ups alongside a landing page to recruit leads.

For lead generation pop ups, I recommend Convertbox.

I also offer a Convertbox bonus when you grab it via my link!

Step 3: Create a welcome email

This is where I usually like to deliver my free gift to encourage click throughs and boost my email deliverability!

It’s also an important email for capturing your audience’s attention and showing them who you are, what you stand for and how you can help them.

Most importantly you need to give them a reason to keep opening your emails!

Step 4: Create your warm up email series

This is designed to warm your new lead up to you as a person/leader/expert as well as the topic related to your offer.

You need to establish yourself as a trustworthy and credible expert.

Ideally you would also give your readers some unexpected quick wins to keep them coming back for more. 

Step 5: Write your sales email sequence

If you have successfully launched your product then you can probably repurpose your original sales emails. 

Keep an eye out for which emails performed particularly well e.g. those with great open rates and click through rates. 

For those that didn’t perform so well, ask yourself why and see if you can make tweaks and improvements or ask a business friend for feedback. 

Also look at what times you sent your sales emails. Did that affect open rates? 

What can you learn from your launch emails to make your evergreen funnel more effective?!

Throughout your sales emails, showcase the features, benefits and tackle objections and FAQs. Ideally your emails will also contain countdown timers that sync with your sales page!

You can also include social proof e.g. testimonials on your sales page where possible. (Need more testimonials? Check out the Testimonial toolkit!)

Make sure when repurposing emails that you remove any non-evergreen language e.g. ‘you have until Tuesday’ or ‘it’ll make the perfect Christmas gift.’

Instead replace it with evergreen alternatives e.g. ‘you have 3 days’ or ‘it’ll make the perfect gift for many occasions.’ 

Step 6: Create your sales page

Usually I duplicate my original sales page and adapt it with details about the evergreen special offer.

You’ll need to add information about what the special offer is and how long they have to access it. Make sure you include this is a few places so it is easy to see.

Again remove any non-evergreen content or references. 

Step 7: Add some authentic urgency

Countdown timers help to show someone how long they have to access a special offer. 

Ideally you would include a banner at the top or bottom of the sales page that shows them how long they have left to make a decision. 

Deadline Funnel will help you to create this urgency in an authentic way. 

You set the page you want to be visible during the offer and which page you want it to divert to after the countdown timer elapses. 

You also choose what sort of timer you want e.g. a sticky banner on the page or a countdown timer underneath the price. 

You’ll set some integrations with your email service provider so that when a certain tag is added to them, it triggers the funnel to start working. You’ll also want to add a tag that shows if someone has purchased the offer and how much money you make from each sale. This way it can track your conversion rates. 

You then add a little HTML code to your sales page and use the link provided in your emails and now everything will sync perfectly across all of your emails, sales pages and cart checkouts like magic!

Step 8: Add links and countdown timers to your emails

If you are using Deadline Funnel, you will need to use the new link they provide you inside all your emails during the sales sequence. 

This helps to keep everything perfectly in sync. 

So if they sign up for your lead magnet via their desktop, click from email 1 from their desktop but email 2 from their phone, they will still see the correct page and countdown timer. This is because this link tracks their subscriber email address each time they click to make sure they are shown the right thing at the right time. 

You will also be provided with some html code that you can add to your emails which will insert a countdown timer directly into your emails driving higher conversion rates!

Step 9: Create your email automation to deliver your evergreen sales

Now you just need to set up an automation that triggers the sales sequence by adding the tag linked to Deadline Funnel just before you deliver the email sequence. 

I also like to add then later remove a ‘do not disturb tag’ and when someone finished the funnel I add a tag to let me know they’ve been through the funnel ‘has had X promo.’ 

Learn more about the process of building an evergreen funnel including walkthrough videos inside Fearless Funnels!

Evergreen Funnels FAQ

Below are some frequently asked questions about building evergreen funnels…

How can I continue learning about building an evergreen sales funnel?

Check out my online course Fearless Funnels which will help you navigate both the strategy and tech behind evergreen sales funnels. There are even some automation templates included as a bonus. 

Check out Fearless Funnels here.