This Evergreen Launch Funnel Generated $211,000 in 20 Weeks for David Siteman Garland

Tim:Welcome to ConversionCast, the only podcast that gets to the heart of the metrics. Now here’s another data driven case study.

What is up fellow marketer? Thanks for joining me for this new episode of ConversionCast. We’re about to discuss and incredibly simple ever green launch funnel that was responsible for generating over $211,000 in revenue in just 20 weeks. But at first, I want to invite you to join me for this Thursday’s free live webinar called The Three Most Important Pages in your business and how to tweak them to quadruple your email list in the next six months. If you’ve ever wanted the opportunity to ask me your most burning questions about how to get better results from your website, now is your chance. I answer questions live throughout the entire training as well as during the Q&A I do at the end and I would love to see a ton of ConversionCast listeners there. To join us, just grab your phone, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, okay and text LeadPages that’s all one word LeadPages to 238470. One more time, to join me on this free live webinar this Thursday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, text the word LeadPages to 38470 and your spot will be reserved.

 

Just a quick note though, GoToWebinar only allows a thousand people to join a webinar at one time and we use GoToWebinar so I’d really encourage you to reserve your spot now and join up just a little bit early to make sure you actually get to join the webinar. With that said, I’m really stoked for today’s episode because I get to chat with my good buddy David Siteman Garland from Rise, the Top and Create Awesome Online Courses.

 

If you don’t know David, he is a rock star product creator. He’s made an absolutely killing in online courses and information products and now he spends the majority of his time teaching others how to do what he’s already done and preparing for his new baby so be sure to congratulate him on that. Anyway today he’s going to share the exact funnel he’s been using on his newest product , which has been responsible for the $211,000 in revenue he’s generated in just the past 20 weeks. The best part is that this is super simple and it works for your around the clock. You know how I feel about evergreen and this combines the power of event based marketing with the consistency of evergreen marketing to create a funnel that works all of the time. If you’ve got an online course, this is a no brainer and if not this could still absolutely work for you. You just need to make a few tweaks to the pieces that we’re going to talk about. I’m Tim Page, the conversion educator here at LeadPages. This is ConversionCast and here is David Siteman Garland from the Rise to the Top and Create Awesome Online Courses.

 

Hey what’s up man? How is it going today?

 

David:Fantastic. You know, I’m talking to you Tim, I’m shaking off a little bit of a cold and besides that and a pregnant wife and playing hockey late last night, everything is pretty good my man.

 

Tim:That’s the way to go. I think you know, we are just saying this, I think the way to go is you get sick and well that’s not the way to go but once you’re sick you’re there and then you just do what you got to do go out and like get in a bar fight or something and you’ll just feel better.

 

David: That’s right. That’s what I did. I just had to do like a 48-hour rehab of going crazy and playing sports and doing things like that just to be ready for this interview. So I’m glad that I made it, excited to be here.

 

Tim:[Laughs] I’m glad to have you here man and so I think you know, a good kind of pretext for this is going to be if you can tell us kind of what kind of results that you’ve been able to get using this kind of strategy we’re going to talk about today.

 

David:Yeah. So we’re going to be talking about is this evergreen strategy for selling really what I sell and teach people to sell is online courses, create and sell online courses. Now if you don’t do online courses or there’s definitely some things you can learn from this as well, but that’s really my kind of special niche is creating and selling and teaching how to create and sell online courses. So what we’re going to be talking about today is an evergreen marketing funnel that we came up with my team here and so far to date and I was looking at updated numbers right before we did this, over about 20 weeks this funnel has done $211,000 —

 

Tim:Nice.

 

David:–in revenue for us.

 

Tim:It’s awesome.

 

David: And actually that continues to go up and what’s cool is I’ve taught this to a fair amount of my students and they’re using it as well with great results. So it’s not anything that’s you know, special, super unique to me per se so it’s definitely something that other people can implement and rock with it for sure. It’s not a hundred percent on autopilot because there’s about five to ten minutes of work a week. So if you do this –[Laughs]

 

Tim:  [Laughs]

 

David:– [Laughs] that’s the big, the big number there if you can slip in 5 to ten minutes.

 

Tim:Yeah. This is – I mean this is we talked about this. You and I did a webinar a little while back. I’m not telling you that but I’m telling everybody listening that —

 

[0:05:08]

David:We did?

 

Tim:Yeah we did a webinar and that’s one of the things we talked about is like you know you can go out there and do launches in one time promotions and all these deals and discounts and savings and all this kind of stuff and that’s great but the problem is if you want to have a business where you can do what you just did was you know, you took a whole bunch of time off. If you want to have a business where you can go and have this baby that you’re going to be having in the very near future and be able to just spend time doing that but not see all your income go away, you need to have something that’s evergreen and that’s what we’re going to talk about. So I think the way to go would be just walk us through it.

 

David:Yeah for sure and by the way I’m a huge believer in having a mix. I love evergreen probably more than anything in the history of the world but I also think that having live launches throughout the year is also critical. That’s a whole another topic. Okay. So let’s talk about exactly how this works and you know you’ve talked numerous times Tim on webinars and on the show about sort of the evergreen and how it works with LeadPages and this isn’t too different, there’s just a couple of changes.

 

So the first thing is that people opt in obviously for something free to get started. For us, our highest converting free thing that we’ve done, we’ve tested several of them has been a cheat sheet, a cheat sheet.

 

Tim:Well interesting.

 

David:So a cheat sheet is just a PDF one page. For me it’s seven steps to creating, promoting and profiting from online courses, right?

 

Tim:Okay so it’s a simple —

 

David:Very simple.

 

Tim:–kind of overview.

 

David:Exactly. Simple overview, very you know, like kind of what you teach with the resource guide where it’s very easy if you will.

 

Tim:Love it.

 

David:It’s not too much a problem. Now the cool thing about this model is you can really have that opt-in point be anything you want. It can be a free video, it can be cheat sheet, it can be whatever you want. We just happen to use a cheat sheet that works extremely well, okay.

 

Tim:Perfect.

 

David:So on any given day someone opts in from that cheat sheet and that cheat sheet you know is promoted in various different ways. Number one it’s all over my site so for example if you go to RiseToTop.com you will see shameless plugs to cheat sheet in many different places, right?

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:So you have that organic reach. Number 2 is that we give affiliates this cheat sheet to go out and promote because you know it’s a lot easier to promote something free as it is to something that is sending people directly to a sales page right?

 

Tim:Right, yeah.

 

David:And number three is we’ve had massive success running Facebook ads to this cheat sheet as well okay?

 

Tim:Well interesting okay.

 

David:So bottom line though is it doesn’t necessarily have to be a cheat sheet but bottom line is step 1 is you have this great opt-in offer. Okay.

 

Tim:Yeah really quickly, what’s a typical Facebook ad like what’s the copy on a typical Facebook ad that’s driving people to something simple like the cheat sheet?

 

David:Yeah it’s a static image ad you know, with me in it basically that we run in newsfeeds and it essentially just says hey you know, want to learn how to create, promote and profit from your own online course? Download the free cheat sheet seven steps to a successful course whatever it says. This is the same cheat sheet I’ve used to generate blank and you know, whatever. And it’s just a simple copy —

 

Tim:Perfect.

 

David:–that we end up using and it just works really well. Now again, the cool thing about ads right is you can test that heck out of them. So that’s the neat thing about that. But that one works very well.

 

Tim:Right. So it’s not like this doesn’t have to be some wizard copy. It’s just tell people what they’re going to get, you tell them how to get it and tell them to go do it. Okay, got it perfect.

 

David:Exactly and then they click on that and shameless plug of course for LeadPages. Hey go to my LeadPages shocking right?

 

Tim:Woo-hoo.

 

David:And then they enter their email, they get the cheat sheet. I also send them a nice reminder email to say hey I think it’s always good to get in people’s inboxes, you know, besides allowing them to download it right away.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:So I always send them a quick reminder and just say hey, I know, I say you got the download when you opted in but here’s another link in case you lost the website and blah, blah, blah and that’s where we’re at. So this is the cool thing because this is evergreen no matter when you opt in on week 1 let’s just call this week 1 for the case of argument there right? No matter when you opt in. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, any time on week 1 that’s the only thing you’re going to get for that week.

 

Tim:Okay.

 

David:That’s it.

 

Tim:Interesting.

 

David:Okay?

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:That’s it. Move to week 2, now this is where it gets super interesting. And this is where the big five to ten minutes of work comes in that my virtual assistant does. Obviously you could do it yourself all we do and there’s other ways of automating this but I’m just telling you what we do is we just move them from the cheat sheet sequence into what we call a timed sales sequence. Okay.

 

Tim:Uh-hum.

 

David:The timed sales sequence is a two-week multi-email sequence that includes a free video series that goes out on the same days do you know what I mean? Like so for example go out on let’s say Monday, Wednesday, Saturday or something like that right?

 

Tim:Okay. Yup.

 

David:And it has a couple of other value added emails, I always like people replying to emails so I send an email out that actually ask people about their biggest fear in creating an online course and tell me about it and I tell about some of my fears when I was getting started because I was freaking scared to death way back in the day.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:So I have that kind of like sort of interactive email in there as well but they get a three part video series that goes over about a week and a day okay.

 

Tim:Yup.

 

David:And then they move into a sales sequence where they go through their own personal launch of my create awesome online courses course right? So that means that they’re going to through just like a live launch but it’s just for people that opted in let’s say two weeks ago. Right? The difference and this is the key thing Tim and this is different depending on what industry you’re in and at the end of the day you always want to test right?

 

[0:10:33]

Tim:Right.

 

David:But this is the difference between software like you guys and in my opinion information products like mine right? There is a massive reason to use scarcity with information products and courses.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:I can sit here, I can talk about the reasons why scarcity works and all the different things and why but the end of the day we tested this until the cows come home and I can’t even tell you the percentage. I could just make up a percentage and they will probably low.

 

Tim:Right, right.

 

David:I feel like ten thousand million percent that you know, —

 

Tim:[Laughs]

 

David:That might be low. But I can tell you right now because we used to do this sequence right without a timer, without a timer.

 

Tim:Are you talking about a car closing or just the timer [0:11:15] [Indiscernible]

 

David:Our closing.

 

Tim:Yeah, okay.

 

David:So here’s what happens is if you opt in two weeks ago, you’re going to get let’s say a sales opening email on a Tuesday and it’s going to close that Friday.

 

Tim:Interesting, okay.

 

David:Okay? And there’s a timer. You know there’s a timer that goes away and again it –you know, what you’re doing at the end of the day is you’re having people make a decision and that’s a good thing.

 

Tim:yup.

 

David:Right?

 

Tim:For sure.

 

David:And they’re either in or out and I don’t care either way, I prefer that you’re in right?

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:But you’re having them make a decision. Contrast that with the way we used to do it. We sort of said hey it’s open and then a few days later I’ll kind of be like and that’s the last time I can tell you about it. It was still open. There wasn’t a forcing of a decision to be made right?

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:It’s a little bit different with software and it’s a little bit different from some other industries but I’m telling you for online courses it makes a huge, huge, huge difference.

 

Tim:So

 

David:And —

 

Tim:Yeah go ahead.

 

David:I have to butt in. This is like —

 

Tim:Go ahead butt away.

 

David:Butt away that’s a good one. This is like I think the best sales pitch for testing ever. So listen, if you listen to ConversionCast you heard a few weeks ago may be even two months ago Danny Inny my buddy Danny Inny from Firepole marketing and I talk about how on his webinars, he stopped using scarcity tactics. He stated talking about oh you got you know – you got as long as you need two weeks or a month or whatever he did for people to buy at his discounted bonus and that kind of stuff. He saw over time that a much better conversion rate doing that. Now we did that just a few times but I think we’ve done it twice now where we didn’t put the scarcity on the webinar and our conversion rate plummeted..

 

Tim:Yeah not shocking.

 

David:–to nearly nothing and over the course of time it didn’t get much better. So it’s really interesting you need to be testing this stuff because every industry is going to respond differently. Now Danny’s whole you know, thing is like you know, nonsalesy marketing and that kind of thing and so his audience is looking for that kind of stuff and it would be inconsistent with his messaging and he’s branding to go out and give you all the scarcity when he’s telling you you know we’re trying to not do salesy and pushing this and that kind of stuff. But you know, with us, we want people to get in there and you want people to jump into your courses and get that stuff done because you know, it’s going to make a difference. We want people to get in there because once they use our software they’re good to go.

 

So that kind of —

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:–scarcity stuff works in those industries but again whatever you’re doing right now if you’re going to try this try both and see what works with —

 

Tim: With anything.

 

David:Right, right, exactly because you’re on ConversionCast here right? We’re not on you know, don’t test cast.

 

Tim:[Laughs]

 

David:You know I have an interview with them later it’s going to be weird.

 

Tim:Yeah that is weird.

 

David:But I’m saying that you know, yeah it’s an easy decision, I mean it’s an easy thing you can say. You can set up one that doesn’t have it and one that does you know?

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:And a really cool tool I want to share Tim , which is a great tool so obviously with LeadPages you guys have great countdown templates and things like that right?

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:But instead of having to reset every single week and like create a new page, what we do is we use something called time relay , which is this really cool tool that requires no programming and what you do is you go in and we just set a timer that just is overlaid over our sales page. Right?

 

Tim:Interesting, okay.

 

David:So and it just goes right on there and it just like you change it every week. That’s my five minutes of work, my VA does , she moves people into a sequence and then she simply basically resets the timer and creates a new timer link for that week.

 

Tim:Great.

 

David:That’s it every week.

 

Tim:So if you are using a LeadPages template, you could still do this, you would just —

 

David:True.

 

Tim:–put the HTML in like the header somewhere or something since it’s an overlay?

 

David:Totally. What you could do is LeadPages – yeah because the thing is the reason I’m not mentioning LeadPages here is just because our sales page happens to not be on LeadPages. It was done actually before LeadPages even had sales pages.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:So it probably would be on there. But it’s exactly the same idea. You could obviously reset it and then make a slightly different link every week you know?

 

[0:15:03]

Tim:Right.

 

David:That would do the exact same thing.

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:So you know, the interesting thing about it though is exactly what you mentioned is that it really does create that decision making zone of where people are like okay am I in or am I out. This is also a great reason. I mention remember earlier Tim where you can mix in sort of live in evergreen launches right?

 

Tim:Yes.

 

David:Because there’s also going to be a fair amount of people that went through your evergreen launch and was like you know what not right now.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:You know not right now.

 

Tim:Yeah absolutely.

 

David:But I’m going to in the future. Not the people that are never going to buy ever forget that right?

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:But let’s talk about the people that are just like yeah, you know, may be six months from now or whatever like that. And that’s why I like doing sort of quarterly live launches because not only does it bring in new people but it also sort of remarkets to people that may be went through an evergreen launch and didn’t buy but now they’re ready.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:And so I think you have that mix is something that works really successful with us and a lot of my students and you know, again it’s kind of doubling the details. The really big change we made from this sequence that’s it. At the end of the day , which mean when we use to have like mild success until through the roof with this, was the scarcity factor.

 

Tim:Got it.

 

David:And you know, this is the thing and I have to say this and you know people listening to this are really looking for something to go and implement in their business but at the same time I speak to marketers all day. I know you know, you speak to people trying to start a business and one big concern that I’m always here and I know you’ve got to be hearing this too is people going I don’t want to be salesy. I don’t want to be salesy, I don’t want to be pushy blah, blah, blah. But here’s the problem is that if you have a product that is going to help somebody do something, if you don’t you should probably stop.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:But you know if you have a problem that is going to help somebody solve something in their lives whether it’s eat better or even something as simple like as to you know, be able to learn a new school, whatever it is that you’re teaching them is something that’s going to help them. If you believe in your product you have a responsibility to get people to get you product because you know it’s going to help them. So really if you’re not marketing to the best of your ability whether it’s using scarcity tactics, whether it’s putting a countdown timer, whether it’s writing great copy if you’re not doing a great job of that then you’re not holding up your responsibility as a business person or a marketer or whatever.

 

Tim:So really like the – if you wanted to think of it this way, if you feel like selling and being pushy is a little immoral I would challenge you to may be flip that around and say that if you’re not doing a good job of marketing you’re being a little immoral with your products and services, does that make sense?

 

David:Yeah. You’re doing a disservice if you’re not excited about it and you’re not marketing it hard. I mean you know there’s a difference between scammy, you know, eew sketchy marketing.

 

Tim:Yes.

 

David:Right? That  we never want to do.

 

Tim: Yes.

 

David:Versus just you know, having some concrete rules and kind of deadlines and things like that you know what I mean?

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:I think people confuse those a lot of times. We’re not doing –you know, the one that I used to see sometimes like kind of back in the 1.0 days of sketchy land was that there used to be the one like there’s one remaining at this price.

 

Tim:Yes.

 

David:You know what I mean? I’m pretty sure it’s not true. Do you know what I mean? Like you don’t want to do that because at the end of the day though when you’re doing these evergreen launches, types of things the link goes away.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:On Friday at midnight in our case. It doesn’t matter when right?

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:The link actually goes away.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:So it’s not like they come back and like oh it was a big trickosaurus do you want I mean?

 

Tim:This was a rouse.

 

David:Like he got us good again. You know it’s not —

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:–that kind of thing and by the way if someone’s thinking that, they’re not going to be a good customer anyway so it doesn’t really matter.

 

Tim:Right, right.

 

David:But at the end of the day yeah there’s a lot of reasons for it but just it works and that’s what’s cool about it.

 

Tim:Yeah. I love it. So let’s just quickly sum this up and I’ll see if I’ve got it. So —

 

David:Yeah.

 

Tim:– you’re sending them to a landing page to get them to opt in for whatever your lead magnet is going to be.

 

David:Sure.

 

Tim:In our case it’s a cheat sheet. Right?

 

David:Yup.

 

Tim:But it can be anything that’s related to what they’re trying to do. They get on to your list. They get a reminder email at some point within the week that says hey I know you got sent to that lead magnet but here it is again so you can download it. Then it’s radio silence for a week.

 

David:Yeah and by the way those happen simultaneously so as soon as they subscribed —

 

Tim:Okay, got you.

 

David:–they get that like welcome email if you will.

 

Tim:Got it. So the welcome email delivers the lead magnet again perfect. Okay.

 

David: Yup.

 

Tim:So then radio silence for a week then they get put into a funnel where they’re getting it’s a series of three videos that are kind of lessons right?

 

David:Yup. And so sort of like and by the way that that one week of radio silence varies depending on when they opted in right?

 

Tim:Okay. Right.

 

David:So meaning the next series always starts on let’s say a Monday. Right?

 

Tim:Okay, right.

 

David:So if they opted in on Sunday they’re going to get it Monday. If they opted on a Wednesday they’re going to get it Monday. If they opted in on Tuesday they’re going to get the next Monday. So it doesn’t matter as long as they opted in somewhere on “week 1” than they go into the specific days after that. So like video 1 always comes out on a Monday let’s say and video 2 always comes out on a Thursday or whatever it might be.

 

[0:20:00]

Tim:Right.

 

David:But exactly they get it then a three-part video series and —

 

Tim:For you —

 

David:Plus the value add email in there too.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:You get a little bonus one.

 

Tim:And for you that’s automated through entreport is that right?

 

David:Yup.

 

Tim:Okay and you could do that in any, I mean even you know, if you have something that’s basic like AWeber, MailChimp, you can still do that you just set it to start on you know, the Monday following that. Okay.

 

David:Exactly.

 

Tim:All right. So you get those and they may be the value add emails depending on kind of where they’re at and then after those three videos then they go into the launch where the cart is going to close?

 

David:Correct.

 

Tim:Is that another three videos or what is that?

 

David:Nope. So basically you know, my third video I start telling them that there’s going to be – that we’re going to be opening create awesome online courses, right?

 

Tim:Okay.

 

David:Then on – we open it on Tuesday right now just it doesn’t matter what day of the week but in this case it’s Tuesday.

 

Tim:Yup.

 

David:Monday night we send an email too and just say hey cart is opening for you tomorrow morning, nine a.m.

 

Tim:Got you.

 

David:You know central time. Then they get sales emails between that Tuesday and Friday. So they get a series of it’s four or five emails between Tuesday and Friday and the biggest and then it closes Friday like midnight. And the biggest sales you’ll always see on anything like that is going to be at the beginning and the end.

 

Tim:Interesting.

 

David:With the most being on Friday. We call it Friday fun day. Because it’s just that’s the way it is. You know, people they don’t want to miss out. So that’s the way it works.

 

Tim:Interesting. Okay, great and then kind of the follow-up to that is they go into your regular sequence where you’re doing your regular email marketing and then down the road at some point there is going to be a live kind of one time launch.

 

David:Yeah exactly. So then you know I kind of do, I kind of call them evergreen and then public launches.

 

Tim:Right.

 

David:I’m putting that on air quotes if you can see me here right? Public launches. A public launch is like it’s all over my site, it’s all over Facebook it’s all over email list to everyone and those happen you know, we do about I don’t know once a quarter give or take you know, —

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:And the only – there’s no real challenge at all with it doing that at all. I mean the only weird thing that can occasionally come up is like hey someone just went through the evergreen sequence now they’re going to the live one you know?

 

Tim:Right yeah.

 

David:But you know what we’ve never heard any issues, do you know what I mean? So that’s like one of those things like it’s in our head as sort of entrepreneurs and marketers you know. You’re like oh my god they’re going to be –they just saw a close last week, now it’s going to be it’s very confusing. You know, —

 

Tim:Yeah.

 

David:It’s never happened. So but yeah that’s exactly what  we do. We got four live launches each a year and then it’s the evergreen, the entire rest of the year and then the only other we really do is we do some joint venture webinars and things like that as well with some top people. That’s really in the end of the day all we do.

 

Tim:That’s awesome, I love it. So if you want to see this funnel in action I mean you know you’ve listened to this, you’ve heard this song. If you want to see what it actually looks like what’s the best URL for somebody to go to to get a chance to opt in and see how that funnel works?

 

David:Yeah actually here’s a great one you can go to. Just go to createawesomeonlinecourses.com. So it’s createawesomeonlinecourses.com it will be self-explanatory which oh my god it’s going to be a leadpage. So you go there and you’ll see and you’ll be able to opt in and get the cheat sheet from there.

 

Tim:Perfect and then you can watch that funnel and you know if you’re looking to create an online course there you go now you can kind of join David and just have a lot of fun. So dude, this has been a blast as it always is. Too much energy for one podcast —

 

David:Sure.

 

Tim:– and thanks a lot for coming on. Man I appreciate it.

 

David:Well thanks Tim always a blast. You know they can their popcorn, go through the sequence, have a field day. And keep up the good work over there my man. It’s great stuff and it’s great to see LeadPages rocking and I do not say it lightly, that’ why I recommend it to everyone because it’s just something that just continues to evolve and get better and better every day so keep it up.

 

Tim:Yeah I really appreciate that man and thanks for all the kudos and compliments.

 

If you want to learn how to quickly build your list by only focusing on three pages in your business, you can join me on a free live webinar this Thursday at 3 p.m. eastern time. To reserve your spot all you need to do is text LeadPages to 38470, again just text LeadPages that’s all one word LeadPages all one word to 38470 and you’ll be ready to go. I’ll see you Thursday and we’ll see you next week on ConversionCast.

 

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