In Part 2 of this 3 part tutorial you’re going to learn how to build your own Evergreen Launch.

This is the step by step walkthrough that’s the shortest bridge between “launching to survive” to an automated system for attracting high quality clients.

You’re going to see how to take your proven launch and automate it so you can put your focus into new products, supporting your clients, and building up a team to support your vision.

In Part One of this tutorial series you met Nick Stephenson, online course creator and reformed “launch addict”.

He had a successful launch process but running his launch over and over was taking up his time and focus.

Nick wanted his life back and he also knew that making fresh new prospects wait for the next launch was costing him sales as their attention drifted to other ways to solve their problems.

Some of Nick’s leads got tired of waiting and bought other courses and books.

Which is why Nick saw an immediate jump in sales when he built out his Evergreen Launch.

How much?

Instantly he saw 38% more sales.

And that’s pure profit.

No extra advertising. No extra team members.

That’s the power of putting your launch into evergreen mode.

And that’s what you’re going to learn now.

Ready?

Let’s go.

Make Sure You Have the Blueprint

Here’s an example of the automated Evergreen Launch funnel you’re going to build.

I’m going to walk you through the steps.

I’m going to walk you through the steps.

If you’d like a print ready PDF of the Evergreen Launch blueprint shown above you can download it for free here.

Step 1: Make Sure You’re Using the Correct Tools

The emails systems we recommend the most are (in no particular order):

– Drip

– ConvertKit

– ActiveCampaign

– InfusionSoft (aka Keap)

– Ontraport

But this will work with many different email software platforms.

If yours isn’t on the list above you can see if it’s on our integrations page or contact us through chat on the Deadline Funnel site.

It’s very likely your email software will work with Deadline Funnel to do what I’m going to show you.

For the sake of showing you every detail I’m going to use ConvertKit and WordPress in this step by step tutorial.

But as a reminder, you can use almost any email software and any web page builder with Deadline Funnel.

Check our integrations page or chat with us from our site if you have any questions about compatibility with your existing tools.

Step 2: Duplicate your launch pages and sales page

In most circumstances you won’t want to reuse your exact launch URLs for your Evergreen Launch.

But assuming your launch was a success there’s no need to change any of your videos or your pages.

Just create a copy of the URLs for:

• Your “pre-launch content” pages
• Your sales page (or special offer page)
• Your checkout page (and any upsells you might have)
• Your “Sorry you missed it” page

You only need to do this once.

To do this with WordPress, you can install a plugin like Duplicate Post.

In your WordPress admin, go to Pages and then find the pages you want to clone.

Then click Clone and your page(s) will be cloned automatically.

Your new pages will be automatically assigned a new URL and you probably want to be more intentional.

You probably already know how to change the URL of your page in WordPress but just in case you can do it by editing the page and clicking on the URL like so.

Step 3: Create a New Campaign in Deadline Funnel

You can sign up for a 14 day free test drive of Deadline Funnel here.

Choose “Email sequence + special offer” as shown below

Change the default number of days in your evergreen campaign to match the number of days in your funnel. Don’t count the first day they start in your funnel.

Finally, add in the URLs of your “pre launch content” pages, your salespage, and your checkout page.

Step 4: Add the Deadline Funnel code to your pages

When you think back to your last live launch… do you remember how you shut down all of your pages after the deadline?

Well Deadline Funnel will do this for you automatically.

And it’s personalized for each subscriber.

(And you don’t have to stay up until the dead of night to wait for the deadline to pass.)

To make this work you first need to add the Deadline Funnel code to your pages.

Navigate to ‘My Account’ >> Code Snippets. Click the link to download the WordPress plugin and then copy your Deadline Funnel API key:

In the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard, click Add New > Upload Plugin and click Install to select the plugin from your download location. When the installation is complete, click ‘Activate’.

Next, Click to add Your Deadline Funnel Key:

Paste your Deadline Funnel API Key into the box and click ‘Save Settings’:

While your Deadline Funnel Tracking code will be automatically added to every page on your WordPress site, the countdown timer will not appear until you add your page(s) to the Funnel Steps and tell Deadline Funnel what kind of countdown to show.

Using our free plugin is a handy way to add the Deadline Funnel code to your WordPress pages but it’s not the only way. If your WordPress theme has a setting for header or footer code then you can copy and paste the code from our admin and save it in either the header or footer (but not both).

Step 5: Copy your launch emails into an automated sequence

It’s very likely that you sent out your launch emails as “broadcasts” during the live launch.

All you need to do is create a new “sequence” in your email software and duplicate those emails.

When you’re finished you should have a sequence that is the same number of days as your original launch.

And once a subscriber starts in the sequence they’ll automatically receive the same emails (at the same pace) you sent out during your launch.

By the way, if you used an automated email sequence during your live launch, then just duplicate it and give it a new name.

Step 6: Set up the API integration between Deadline Funnel and your email software

Deadline Funnel matches the exact pace of your Evergreen Launch email sequence.

When your subscribers see an email from your email software announcing the deadline, the timing will match their tracking in Deadline Funnel.

This process is called “API Integration”.

Once this quick setup is complete, your email software will automatically send a signal to Deadline Funnel to start the tracking for the subscriber at the exact same time they start in your email sequence.

When both start at the same time and they’re the same number of days, they’ll also end at the same time.

And it all happens automatically.

The “Quick Start Guide” in the Deadline Funnel admin will guide you through the exact process for your email software.

But the bottom line is that when a subscriber starts in your Evergreen Launch email sequence they’ll get assigned a tracking record in Deadline Funnel.

Let’s walk through the steps to setup the API integration with ConvertKit for this example.

From the Deadline Funnel admin, click on API Integrations in the left menu.

To complete the integration, you will need your 1) API Key and 2) API Secret from your ConvertKit account. Navigate in ConvertKit to Account Settings:

Copy and paste the corresponding keys into Deadline Funnel, then click ‘Connect ConvertKit’:

On the next screen you’ll need to select an existing tag in your ConvertKit account, or create a new tag by simply typing into the drop-down field we have provided. This tag will be used to trigger the deadline:

Then you will select the custom field that stores each lead’s unique deadline. You can select a custom field you already have or create a new field by typing directly into the box. Go ahead and name it “deadlinetext” if you’re not sure what to call it, you can always change it later.

Then click ‘Create New Webhook’:

Now if you click ‘View Rule in ConvertKit’ you will see your new rule in ConvertKit that will trigger your deadline when the tag you selected is applied:

This will create a rule in ConvertKit that will trigger the webhook when the tag is applied to a subscriber. Now you just need to set up a rule in ConvertKit that will add the tag to a subscriber based on various actions (ie. they enter a sequence, submit a form, etc.)

Now it’s time to create a “Rule” in your ConvertKit account to trigger the tag and automatically kick off your Evergreen Launch.

Inside your ConvertKit admin, navigate to Automations and select ‘Rules’:

Click ‘+ Add Rule’:

In this example, we selected ‘Subscribes to a form’ as the trigger, selecting the correct form, and selected ‘Add tag’ as the action, selecting the tag that will trigger Deadline Funnel and clicked ‘Save Rule’:

You have a few options for how to trigger the tag, including triggering when someone is added to a sequence or when another tag is added, but in this example we used “Subscribes to a form”. So now once someone subscribes to that form, ConvertKit will apply the tag, and the tag will tell Deadline Funnel to start the countdown.

Step 7: Use the Deadline Funnel email links in your email sequence

Deadline Funnel gives you special links you need to use in your emails.

These special links keep your Evergreen Launch funnel accurate across all the devices where your subscribers could be reading them.

How accurate is the tracking?

I did an experiment (which I video recorded) where I purchased a brand new iPad in Australia a few days after arriving from the United States. 

I loaded up my Gmail account in the store after unwrapping the ipad and Deadline Funnel showed the correct countdown!

Here’s how to add the Deadline Funnel links to your Evergreen Launch emails that ConvertKit will send out automatically. 

From inside the Deadline Funnel admin, navigate to ‘Edit your campaign’ and click on the Email Setup tab:

Select the correct funnel step URL and click on the Email Link to copy it so you can use it in your ConvertKit broadcast email and automatically include the subscriber’s email address in your link for tracking purposes.

In your ConvertKit email, add a link by clicking the link icon in the editor bar:

Paste your Deadline Funnel Email Link URL into the link box shown, add your Text and click ‘Insert’:

Your email link now appears in your broadcast and will track your subscribers who click that link:

I want to be clear that using our links is absolutely required for the API integration with Deadline Funnel to work. 

So make sure you repeat this for any and all links in your emails that link to your salespage.

Step 8: Add the email countdown to at least one of your last day emails

Adding the animated email countdown to one or more of your last day emails is a proven way to get more sales.

It jumps out, doesn’t it?

As soon as your subscriber opens the email you’re going to have their attention thanks to the email countdown.

Attention is the rarest commodity.

Without attention you can’t make the sale.

Not only does the animated countdown quickly grab attention it also communicates “it’s decision time”.

Here’s how to add the animated image to a ConvertKit email.

In the Deadline Funnel admin, navigate to Edit your campaign > Email Setup and click the HTML Code to copy it:

In your ConvertKit editor, click the ‘source’ icon to view the HTML code for your email, move the cursor to the spot where you want your countdown to appear and paste the HTML Code into the email:

When you click the ‘source’ icon again, you will see a preview of your countdown timer:

Save your work and you’ve successfully setup an animated countdown timer your subscribers will see, personalized to their deadline and perfectly timed to their Evergreen Launch deadline.

Step 9: Test and Go Live!

It’s almost time to turn on your automated Evergreen Launch.

First you should test your funnel.

Just add a subscriber with one of your emails to the automated email sequence.

Just like a string of dominos falling over in a chain reaction, your email software will tell Deadline Funnel to start the tracking record for the subscriber.

You can see it in the admin that the subscriber details have come through.

Double check that you’re using the special Deadline Funnel email links in your emails and your email countdown image looks correct.

Once you’ve checked it out you’re ready to send prospects through and start making sales automatically!

5 Simple Tips to Squeeze Even More Sales From Your Evergreen Launch

In the next section I’m going to share some great tips for getting every last sale you possibly can.

They’re all 100% automated and work within your Evergreen Launch. 

And not only are they “set it and forget it” automated, some of them you can turn on with the flip of a switch.

Click here for 5 tips to boost your Evergreen Launch sales even higher.