How to Convert More Leads into Sales with Authentic Evergreen Marketing

Foreign welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase the revenue with digital products and automated sales funnels. In this podcast, we tell the stories of ordinary business owners just like you. We talk about their story and how they got started, the challenges they've experienced and how they overcame them. And these are discussions with real people who understand what it's like to own an online course or membership business. Before we begin our show today, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by our flagship Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is available on AppSumo at a special deal and you can learn more about Course in a Box by visiting the link in the show notes. Let's jump right into our show and today my special guest is Jack Bourne. Jack creates software that helps entrepreneurs maximize their sales through marketing automation. He is the technical founder of deadlinefunnel.com and Jack, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to chat with you today.

Oh, I'm really glad to be here. I'm excited too.

Now, you had mentioned in the information that you sent over to me that you are addicted to tennis. So you have to tell me about that because everybody that knows me, I am addicted to tennis. I'm playing on three or four tennis teams this winter. So I am super addicted to tennis too.

Yeah, so I started. My dad probably put a racket in my hand when I was five years old. It was, I don't know, tiny, little, tiny little racket that he kind of sawed off the handle and, you know, reapplied the grip anyways, you know, just kind of batting the ball around. And then we moved to Miami, Florida. That's where I grew up. And you know, there's lots of tennis being played in Florida as, as is, you know, same, same in Georgia. Southeast is really big for tennis as, you know. And yeah, I went to lots of tennis camps and I was, I was pretty big into it. Um, I didn't really get my competitive edge in time for me to, to, to compete or anything like that. It wasn't as focused as I wanted to be, but I certainly groove my strokes. Um, I lost interest in tennis around the time that I started discovering dating. Um, so around like 14, 15, 16, tennis took a backseat. Um, and I picked it back up again many years later when, when my wife started getting into tennis, she, she said, I think I'm going to pick up Some tennis. I said, well, I'll, I'll get back into it too. And I, and I really dove into it. I probably became as good as I've ever been about three or four years ago. Just took a lot of lessons and just played a lot of high level tennis with. By high level tennis, I don't mean I was high level. I played with some very elite college tennis players who happened to hang out at the club that we were at. So it was just an opportunity for me to really get in shape and just really get super fanatical about tennis.

So in Australia, do they have tennis leagues like they do here in Atlanta? And I know they have them in Florida too.

Yeah, they do. One of the crazy things about Australia, it's about the same landmass as the US A little bit smaller, but about the same. And it's got almost the same number of people as live in the state of Florida. So just, you know, there's just less population here. And so, you know, you don't, you don't have quite as many, quite as many people now. Everyone is kind of spread out or I should say concentrated on the, on the coastline. So it doesn't, doesn't feel like, you know, there aren't a whole bunch of people living in the middle of Australia. Some people do, but not a whole lot. Most people are on the coast. So anyways, to your question, you know, one of the things that was a big adaptation was that the courts here are, are really different. They've got this weird surface that's like part astroturf with sand sprinkled on it. It's a really bizarre surface. But it's super popular over here. So, you know, when I was getting really into tennis in Florida, a lot of it was clay courts, like some of the best clay courts I've ever played on. So it was just a very, very different surface over here.

Yeah, that's interesting. I don't think I've ever played on those type of court. So clay. I love hard court. I love some. So anyway, so thanks for taking that little tangent with me. I do want to let you take a second and just tell the audience a little bit more about you. And then we're going to jump into our topic today and we're going to be talking all about Evergreen sales funnels.

Yeah. So I'll shape my backstory. I'll keep it short, but I'll shape it in terms of how it relates to entrepreneurs and evergreen marketing. So my last corporate job, I left in 2000 and ever since then I've been on my own in one degree or another. There was a short period of time where I worked, I worked on Perry Marshall's team. So anyone who hasn't heard of Perry Marshall, I would highly recommend that you look him up. He's got some great books on Amazon. I would recommend the 8020 sales and marketing book. So I was on his team for about six years, but I was an entrepreneur before that. I was really, I still had my entrepreneurial side hustles while I was working on his team. And then I dove headfirst into software about halfway through my six years working with him. And as that software business grew, eventually we got to the point where he and I both decided that he needed someone fully focused on his biz and I needed to put 100% of my focus into my software company and see where this could go. And the software that I was working on at the time was called AW Pro Tools. I no longer own it, but it, it took aweber, which is a. One of the email marketing platforms that some people may know about. It was one of the originals but it had really fallen behind in terms of marketing automation features. And so I used my coding knowledge to, to develop an add on to aweber that would make it a little bit more sophisticated, make it more like infusionsoft or something like that. I sold that off to that software as a service, off to an investor several years later. And around that same time I had started building Deadline Funnel which is the main business that I have now that is also a software as a service type of product. And what we do is that we help creators, especially course creators, but also other people as well. We help creators to maximize their sales and to have time, freedom to be able to do the things they love with the people that they love. So to use marketing automation and maximize their sales. And we do that through deadlines in a way that gives people the ability to put a deadline on an evergreen offer, no matter what type of offer it is, no matter whether it's a webinar or an evergreen launch or you know, something like that, no matter what your funnel looks like, no matter what your marketing stack looks like that the deadline is true and authentic. So that when your email says it's the last day, it is in fact the last day. And but everything is automated and everything, you know, has integrity. So that. Because before I built this, the challenge that I had and really the reason why I got into this was because I didn't want to sacrifice my integrity to use What I came to understand as one of the most consistent and powerful, you know, triggers of persuasion, which is having a deadline. You know, someone can be leaning into your offer, really enjoying your message, and really, as my daughter would say, vibing with it, but, you know, not pulling the trigger yet. Because as human beings, we just tend to procrastinate. Let's just kind of wire it into our system and so whatever. If you don't have a deadline, you don't really have a special offer. And in order to maximize your sales, you know, you want to put a special offer in front of someone with a deadline because that's going to motivate someone to take action. The thing that you don't want to do is you don't want to signal that you have a deadline when in fact that you don't, you know, you don't want to tell someone, hey, see this clock? When it reaches zero, you no longer can get this. And then for them to find out later, oh, wait a second. I actually could. That was, that was a lie. So you don't want to be, you don't want to be disingenuous, you don't want to lie for a lot of reasons. But if we put ethics aside just for a second, everything that I believe that everything that we are doing in our business, every email we send, out, every article that we write, every video that we put out is either adding to our. The trust that we have with our audience or it's taking away trust. And so you really want to think long term and build up trust with your. With your audience. Want to play the long game. So that was. That's the story of what I do and who I serve.

And thank you for that. And you are definitely in the right place because everybody listening here either has an online course or some type of digital product or membership and they love to sell it on ever in evergreen sales funnels versus live launching. So I definitely want to dig in more with this with you. And you know, one of the things that people, when they come to me and they're, we're, you know, talking about their evergreen sales funnels and going back to that deadline that you speak of. They're all, they're always. Well, it's all, you know, my offers open all the time. How, why do I need a deadline or what? You know, am I being authentic when I say there is a true deadline? So what would you say to someone who feels like either using a deadline is too pushy or it's just, they don't feel like, it's authentic.

Yeah. So several things. So first of all, I think back to. I'll tell a quick story and again, I'll make this brief, but one of the other addictions that I have that I'm very happy to be addicted to is kite surfing. And for years and years and years when I was growing up in Florida, I moved from Miami to St. Augustine and, and I would watch people every now and then kiting on the beach and it looked like tons of fun. Like, man, that looks like so much fun. I'll, you know, one day I'm going to do that. I kept every year after year, one day I'm going to do that. One day I'm going to do that. So fast forward. I moved to Australia and a friend of mine happens to be telling me that there is. He's going on this amazing trip in two weeks to a, an island in Fiji, a private island in Fiji. And, and all these cool people are going to be there. But the kicker is that there's going to be all these world renowned coaches who are going to be teaching you how to kite surf. It's one of the best places in the world to do kite surfing. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm in. And it was, you know, there was, the spot was available, there was only two spots left. And I said, contact the guy. Is it available? Yes, it's available if you can arrange for the air flight. So I mean, I didn't say, okay, I'll add that to my calendar and I'll see about it. I was looking on my phone that minute, checking things like, okay, great, I put down, I paid for the flight. Where do I pay the deposit? What forms do I need to fill out? All of a sudden, like all of that delay crystallized into, okay, I'm going to make this happen. Why? Because there was a deadline. It wasn't like, hey, two weeks from now isn't convenient for me. Can you guys do it two months from now? No, it was, if you want to be on this trip, there's a spot for you. But it's in two weeks, the plane leaves and you're either on the island or you're not. And it's going to be amazing. And it was, it was a life changing experience. And that's really, I think that experience really encapsulates what a deadline can do. Like, it's not that he had to convince me, hey, by the way, you should enjoy, you should really be interested in kite surfing. He didn't tell me That I was interested for a long time. It wasn't until there was that deadline that I said, yeah, I'm taking action on this. So how many people are, you know, reading your emails, visiting your, you know, your blog articles, attending your webinars? But they're just not pulling the trigger. And so what a deadline does is it gives someone the reason to take action. Now, it's not going to. One of the things that I'm always clear about when I'm telling people about what our software does and what a deadline can do for them is that it's not going to resurrect a dead offer. In other words, if you've put your offer out there and no one is interested, it's just, you know, the wrong, the wrong offer to the wrong audience is just a product that no one really wants or needs. Adding a deadline to it, it's not going to be some sort of magical silver bullet. But if you have something that's working, having a special offer with a real authentic deadline is going to really maximize what you're, what you're doing. Because right now you're only getting a small portion of those sales. Now that's sort of the why behind a deadline. Because it's going to, if you're especially for course creators and coaches and consultants, if what you provide, it has a life transforming effect for clients, then getting those people across the line is going to impact more lives. It's also going to impact your life because you're going to generate more revenue for your business, which means that you're going to be able to pay more for advertising. It means that you're going to be able to reinvest in building a team into your business. And when you automate it using Deadline Funnel, it gives you the ability to have more predictable revenue because as you mentioned, you know, launches have their place. But in terms of having a predictable revenue stream that grows month after month, you can't build that on the back of just launching all the time. It just doesn't work. You need some sort of automated way to bring in clients all the time. So all of these things build up to giving you the ability to expand your reach and also to expand your time horizon to be thinking beyond just a week or two weeks to be able to think, okay, what am I going to be doing this, this quarter, the next two quarters, et cetera. And when you have a longer term vision, you can make more strategic moves rather than just reacting. You can be proactive instead of reactive. So that kind of speaks to the why in terms of concerns that people sometimes have about well, how can it be automated? How can a deadline be automated and authentic? So my answer to that is quite simple. And my fundamental belief that I am proud to share all the time is that if your, you know, authenticity comes down to is your are your emails and is whether it's emails or webinars or whatever you're using, is your messaging, is what you're saying, what people are actually experiencing. So in other words, if, you know, when I first created Deadline Funnel, I assumed that someone else had figured out how to do this. I went searching for I just need to do enough Google searches and I'll find the software that someone has done this to figure out how do I, how do I connect the deadline to the actual subscriber in my autoresponder so that it's actually connected to them so that when they subscribe there's a deadline given to them and it's enforced. Someone's figured this out, right? Well, it turns out no one had and so I decided to create it. But the, but the, but again, coming back to what makes a deadline automated but also authentic at the same time is as that subscriber is going through your email sequence, what our system does is that it uses a lot of very complicated technology behind the scenes to make sure that the tracking for that person is 100% accurate so that no matter what device they go to, no matter where they go in the world, and I have an interesting story around that, that they're going to open up the email and if it says hey, today's the last day when they click through, they're going to see today is in fact the last day for them. Doesn't matter if they go and do what is it incognito, doesn't matter if they switch, switch browsers, it's going to accurately track that person. Now all of that is automated for you. So you can have an evergreen sequence that begins with an opt in and you develop know like trust and authority and then ends with a great offer and a deadline say for seven days just to pick a number. And every time someone comes through that sequence, they're given their own personalized unique deadline that is, you know, specific to them and our system enforces that. And so that's how it could be both automated and authentic. So does that, did that answer both sides of that question?

Yeah, and I think that was great. And as you were going through that, I was thinking about it for the audience here. One of the ways that they could even make it clear, very clear to the person opening up that email. They could give them like $100 off by this date. And if they come back and somehow they click on that offer after that deadline and it'll be redirected to a different page where that hundred dollar off offer is gone. And that makes it very true for that customer and very authentic for that customer.

Yeah, if I can expand on that. So, you know, one of the great things about our platform is that a lot of people use it in very different ways. So some people will have an automated system where there's a specific enrollment period and if you miss the deadline, you're going to have to wait until there's the next enrollment period. But a lot of our clients will use the software in the way that you just described, which is that the offer, the product itself is available at any time. But the offer, which is the combination of the pricing, the bonuses, the guarantee, even the way the payments are structured like that's, those are some of the key components that make up an offer that is a unique offer. So one of the things that can be really effective, say for example, you're on a webinar, you can say, look, I want to let you know that you can, you know, a week from now, a month from now, this is available. This product, this course, let's say, is available anytime. However, the reason why I want you to buy right now is because you're on this webinar. I have a special offer for you and let me share that with you and tell you what it is. And so you explain what the special offer is and they can go and take a look on your website. In fact, I would encourage you to, you know, it's, it's usually very powerful to say, look, go, go to our main, main website and click on, you know, the product or the pricing and you'll see that normally these five bonuses that you're getting tonight on this webinar are not included. And the special discount, because, you know, destiny is, you know, normally isn't, isn't included. And so these are the things that make this a special offer. But like all good things, like all special offers, there is a deadline. And so the deadline is, you know, tonight at midnight or whatever. So having your product available all the time actually works in your favor. It's the special offer of the pricing and the bonuses in particular, but other components that you can tweak in the offer that makes it a special offer. But if you don't have a deadline, you don't have a special offer because if. If I can get it at any time, what's so special about it? There's nothing. There's nothing unique or special that indicates that I need to take action right now.

Now, Jack, as you were going through some of that a few minutes ago, and you were talking about if somebody clicks on that link, no matter where they were in the world or in mode or on another browser, you mentioned that they would still get that offer. I'm just curious, how is your team handling those browser changes and all the iOS updates? You know, I'm a former Facebook and Instagram ads consultant, so when you were saying that, I'm like, how in the world are they doing that?

Yeah, it's through a common. There are a lot of browser changes coming and the iOS changes, but my team is really, really sharp. And one of the things that we do differently than a lot of other people out there, regardless of what the software platform is, we continually reinvest in our team and changing and improving the user interface and adding in new features. One of the things that we're not is we're not one of these marketers who says, I know I'm going to create the software, dual launch, and then I'll move on to the next thing. Right? We are. Year after year after year, this is what we focus on. And, and so we stay. By doing that, we can do things like stay ahead of the browser changes in the way, you know, we get very technical, but basically there is at least five key indicators that we use to track, to track someone. And so, yeah, we've made some major infrastructure changes over the past year and a half to stay way ahead of that. Luckily, the browsers announced what the changes are, if you're paying attention, 6:12, sometimes 18 months ahead of schedule to give people time to adjust. If you're paying attention. It's still a painful process and it's a big investment on our part, but. But when accurate tracking is a big part of what we deliver, we need to make sure that we stay on top of that. And we definitely have. So I hope that answers the question. I just didn't want to dive too deep into the technical aspect of it, but there are five things that we key on and just to tell a quick story behind that. So pre Covid, I took a trip from the U.S. actually, we flew back to see family. And so on the way back I decided I'm going to do a demonstration. So I turn on my iPhone and have my daughters record me starting as a prospect in activecampaign as a, in a five day evergreen sequence. And then so this was in Florida. We board the plane, make the long trip over to Australia, recover for about two days. And then my daughter and I drove to the, the Apple store, purchase the iPad, I unwrap it. This is all on film, on video. So I unwrap it, take it out of the box, load it, load it up, load up Gmail. And the, the deadline shows that there's only like five hours left. So completely different new device, so there's no cookies there, completely different part of the world and everything is, is accurate. So when I open up that, that email, it shows me the correct countdown, the correct deadline and when I click through it shows me the correct deadline on the page. So that's just a, you know, that's a testament to the technology that we use to, to keep everything that accurate.

So you definitely have that covered. So I feel comfortable there. So I have to ask you because I'm always interested in people's opinions and their thoughts on this. As a marketer, what do you think is the ideal lease for a follow up email sequence through an evergreen sales funnel? I'm sure you guys have a lot of data on this with your organization or you may have some insight in that. So I'm just curious as to what you say there.

So I'm gonna. We have people coming to us with all sorts of different funnel types and marketing stack. So some people come to us with an email sequence, some of us, you know, and then different price points. So I know that no one likes the answer. It depends. But it truly does depend. However, I'll give you a rule of thumb. So I call it the Dolly Parton principle because you and I are of the age where we can remember the movie 9 to 5. That's my general rule of thumb. If we're talking about an evergreen email sequence to someone who has really just opted in for the first time, then any less than 5 days then typically it's challenging to get your message across. Develop, know like and trust, demonstrate authority, possibly deliver some case studies and then make your offer all within five days. So typically you need at least five days and then anything longer than nine days for that particular sequence. Typically it's just too long for someone to continue to give you their attention. Like they're either in or they're out. So that's my general rule of thumb is 9 to 5. Now other factors that can really influence that would be things. I mentioned this before, but one key would be the Price point. Also, it's really important to consider how the message is being delivered. So let's talk about the price point first. Typically, the lower the price point, the less education is required, the less convincing is required. So as an example, some people will go from a free opt in to what some people call a tripwire, which would be a low price offer. Now what is low price? It's different for different markets. So low price might be seven bucks, it might be 70 bucks. It just depends on the market. But typically in the range of I would say seven to maybe $27, you know, would be if it's really well matched to what they opted in for and if it's really easy to understand, it delivers a lot of high perceived value and real value. And you know, it's what I call like a microwave product. In other words, you know, you're going to get the results quickly. It could be a cheat sheet, it could be like, it could be a whole bunch of things, but basically something that's going to deliver a lot of value in a very short period of time. Then you could have, you can have a very high converting tripwire page on the thank you page after the opt in and that would be a scenario where you're not going for days, you're going for minutes. So you might have a 12 minute video explaining what it is and maybe a 15 minute countdown right there on the page. On the other end of the spectrum, if you're selling something for $2,000 in most markets that would be considered more on the expensive side. And so you would probably need several days to explain that. Now if you're doing a webinar, a lot can be a lot of, a lot of that know like, and trust and developing authority and, and all the other things you want to do in your marketing process can be compressed down into 60 to 90 minutes. And so if you're really, really good at, you know, on a webinar, you know, you could compress that down and, and maybe have the double MB that night or a lot of times it's pretty common to have emails that go out for the replay and so you might have two days after that. So the method in which you are delivering the message also matters. And I'm not saying everyone should switch to webinars. I think it really depends on your personality and what you feel comfortable with. So for some people, emails are by far the best way to turn someone from a cold lead into a new client. For other people, webinars are a lot better and you just need to experiment. But those are some of the things that will determine the, you know, the overall length of an email sequence.

So thank you for that. And I love the kind of the baseline that you gave us, anywhere from like five days to, you know, getting up there to like maybe eight or so, but not more than nine. So I like that and I like what you said about the webinar and generally what I tell folks, if you're trying to sell a higher price, course I generally say, you know, definitely 499 up to 2,000. I generally recommend that you have a webinar with it for a lot of different audiences.

Yeah, I would agree. It just makes. There's a lot that you can do, including, you know, just the fact that you're on video and someone is seeing you and hearing you. They get a sense of whether they just have a connection with you. You know, they get this sort of subconscious sense of, do I trust this person? Is this something that I want to move forward with? A lot of that is challenging to deliver through email. You can, but I think through webinar, if someone is really, really good at, at delivering a webinar and being authentic and letting their true self shine through, then a lot can be communicated very quickly in a webinar.

So, Jack, before we close up here, any last minute comments for the audience about deadlines and Evergreen sales funnels?

Yeah, there's. There's a tip that I usually like to make sure that I include every single time that I'm teaching or sharing, sharing this. And by the way, thank you again for the opportunity, opportunity to be on your show. So the tip is, again, this kind of goes hand in hand with my main theme, which is you need to have a deadline. If you don't have a deadline, you're leaving money on the table. But assuming that you take that advice and that you have a deadline, here's the next big tip that I'd like to share, which is to send out three emails on that last day. Now, the cool thing about Evergreen is that you only have to be brave once you set it up and then you let the automation do its work. Now, these three emails that you send out on the last day are some of the easiest emails that you'll ever have to write. And basically it's just making sure that people know. It's a reminder, hey, just want to make sure that you know today's the last day and you got to vary it a little bit, but they're typically your shorter emails, like, especially like your last one. Is, hey, just final call. Just making sure that if you're interested, you know, the deadline's closing at XYZ time. So these are really, really simple emails. But a lot of people feel uncomfortable sending more than one email per day. And as a general rule, I would say, yeah, you typically don't want to send more than one email except in unique circumstances. This is one of those unique circumstances. I have never ever, ever, ever, ever had anyone come back to me and say, you know, Jack, that three email thing, I tried it and I'm never going to do it again. It didn't work for me. Every single time people say, I don't, I can't believe how many more sales I made. And again, I want to also bring this back to. It isn't just about how much money you can make. Yes, that's wonderful. We're all in this to make money and provide for our families. But it's also about hopefully the lives that you're transforming. These are people that you're bringing across the line from someone who's on the fence to actually pulling the trigger and becoming a client and getting the value of the services and the products and the courses that you deliver. So you're changing lives as well you should be. So, so send three emails on, on the last day because what happens is people will, number one, they'll procrastinate. That's what the Dublin is for. But you should not assume that people are reading every single email that you send out that hits their inbox. And it's very, very common for them to either overlook the first email or to see it, but go, oh yeah, I'm going to do that. But then they get distracted. Instagram, Facebook, et cetera, or just the doorbell R that get that distract people and they don't actually go through and pull the trigger. And so sending those three emails on the last day, I guarantee you, is going to help you make more sales and bring more people across the line from thinking about it to finally taking action.

So I love that first of all, have the deadline and then send out three emails on the last day of the deadline.

That's it.

Jack, thank you so much for joining me today. I will make sure that the link for deadline funnels is in the show notes so everybody can click on it and check it out.

Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. And show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.