An evergreen offer or evergreen course launch is, in theory, designed to allow you to sell your offer at any point, without live launching. It’s positioned as the alternative to the never-ending live launch cycle.
Here’s the bad news: Neither evergreen or live launching are effective. But there’s good news, too: iI’s not an either-or situation.
What Is an Evergreen Offer?
First, let’s make sure we’re on the same page when it comes to “evergreen.”
Some people define “evergreen” as just always making your offer available for purchase. Others define it as live launching once, and then setting everything to run automatically in the background.
Either way, the process is effectively the same whether you include a live launch at the beginning or simply put it up on your site and drive traffic to it. You’re throwing it up on your website and letting people buy whenever.
And then there are people who define evergreen as getting people to opt into an automated email funnel and then trying to sell the offer there.
Why Evergreen Offers Don’t Work
No matter which of the definitions above you’re using for evergreen, there’s the same problem with all of them: they simply don’t work.
Evergreen Doesn’t Compel People to Buy
When your prospective customers can just get something “whenever,” they’re not compelled to buy. There’s zero urgency. Why purchase right now when I can purchase two days, two weeks, two months from now?
People are spurred to action when they have a deadline—there’s a very clear strategic reason why sales and promotions have end dates. People don’t bother to make a decision until they have to.
And that’s a good thing! People who need to take action, to make an important decision in their lives, will still wait indefinitely if they have all the time in the world. By giving customers a deadline, we’re doing them a favor by making them make a decision.
Evergreen Funnels Are Boring
No kidding that people say evergreen has low conversion rates. It’s because evergreen funnels are boring.
Plus, you give these people one automated chance to buy and then … nothing more? You’ve got these people on your list that you just hope will someday, somehow buy something else?
Are you seeing how absurd all of this is?
There’s one crucial thing to note: If your evergreen automation isn’t working, it’s not the fact that the emails are automated. It’s the fact that the messaging isn’t what it needs to be.
How to Create an Evergreen Sales Funnel that Actually Sells
If you were thinking, “well, I don’t want to live launch, so I’m stuck selling evergreen,” have no fear.
As we’ve talked about before, live launching is incredibly risky for your revenue (and your salary, and your team’s salaries).
But it is very much possible to capture all the excitement of live launching, without the high stress and revenue risk—while still gaining the consistency of evergreen, without the low conversions, low urgency, and low energy.
Intrigued about how you can get the best of both of these worlds? Learn more about how to do it in our free video training >>
Your Turn!
How do you define evergreen and how is it working for your business? Share in the comments below!