You’ve just finished the hard work on your online course. Everything is ready — from the recorded lessons to the learning platform to the offering website. But what’s next? The first thing you think of is selling during the webinar — and you’re right, but… I have to worry you. That’s not enough. You still need a strategic process to guide potential customers from the first contact with your offer to the final purchase. In this guide, I’ll tell you how to develop an effective sales funnel to sell online courses and use MailerLite Classic and Apresly to do it.
What Does Sales Funnel to Sell Online Courses Have in Common with Coca-Cola
An effective sales funnel to sell online courses is a process that consists of several key steps:
- Awareness: attracting the attention of potential customers through marketing activities such as advertising, educational content, or social media.
- Interest: provide valuable information that generates interest in your course, such as through webinars.
- Consideration: building trust and demonstrating the unique benefits of your course, such as through case studies, customer feedback, or DEMO lessons.
- Decision: making the purchase decision easier through special offers, satisfaction guarantees, or a simplified purchase process.
- Action: finalize the purchase and ensure a positive customer experience, which can lead to recommendations and repeat purchases.
Why is this significant?
Imagine that you just set up a Coca-Cola stand in the middle of the desert, where no one will ever find it. It may be very hot outside, and your Coca-Cola may be chilled and simply delicious. But if you don’t announce to thirsty people where your stand is and show them the way: they will never reach it.
In the story above, Coca-Cola is your latest online course, and the road is a sales funnel. Do you understand it yet?
An effective sales funnel helps convert interest into sales by guiding customers through the steps and providing them with the right information at each step. All this doesn’t seem complicated, right? I’m about to tell you how to put this knowledge into practice.
Case Study: Evergreen sales funnel with MailerLite Classic and Apresly
I’m sure you’ve considered selling your course via webinars. Or maybe you are already doing it. If so: great! If not, after reading this article, you definitely will.
Preparing an effective evergreen sales funnel to sell your online courses using webinars can significantly increase conversions, automating the sales process and reaching a wide audience.
Below, I’ll show you a case study that illustrates how you can effectively implement such a solution using MailerLite Classic and Apresly tools.
What You Need Before You Start Working on Evergreen Sales Funnel
Start by preparing your evergreen webinar. You can use platforms such as EasyWebinar or EverWebinar for this.
I’m assuming you have an active account with MailerLite Classic — create a dedicated group on the platform to which the participants of your evergreen webinar will go. With MailerLite Classic, you will create an email sequence that will be part of your sales funnel.
You require one more tool to help you create an email sequence with a countdown timer and a unique deadline for each subscriber.
This is where Apresly shines. With Apresly, you can set up a sequence in MailerLite Classic with a countdown timer that starts when someone joins your mailing list. You can’t set it up using the built-in countdown timer in MailerLite Classic.
Create a countdown timer that starts when someone joins a mailing list.
With these tools, you can easily configure the following sales funnel:
Automate Course Sales with MailerLite Classic and Apresly Step-by-Step
Step 1.
Integrate your email platform with Apresly. Choose “Integrations” from the side menu on the left, and then select your email provider.
Fill in the API code, which you will find directly in MailerLite Classic settings, and click integrate.
Step 2.
Go to “Campaigns” and create a new campaign.
Step 3.
Decide one of the campaign types depending on the campaign’s goals. For setting up sales based on Autowebinar, an evergreen campaign will be the best choice.
Step 4
Go to the campaign configuration to the “Deadlines”, name the campaign, and select a category for it, so it will be easier for you to navigate between the created and already running campaigns. Set the countdown time and time zone.
For example: if a subscriber starts their deadline tracking on Friday, December 13 at 10:59 a.m. CET, then the Subscriber’s deadline will be on Monday, December 16 at 9 p.m. CET.
Step 5.
Choose the right trigger, that is, the moment when the countdown timer starts counting down This is a very important element, especially if you want to use the countdown timer in the email sequence.
If you have correctly integrated MailerLite Classic with Apresly, from the expandable list, select the group after joining which the countdown timer starts counting down.
If you want to synchronize your countdown timers, point to the site where you want to display the countdown and then to another site that you want to redirect to when the countdown timer expires.
Step 6.
Customize the look of the countdown timer in the email. Pick your favorite template and colors. You can easily and intuitively customize both the look of the timer itself and the signatures.
You can also customize the look of the countdown timer banner and CTA that you place on your offer page.
Synchronize countdown timers in your emails and on landing pages.
Step 7.
Once your countdown timer is ready, familiarize yourself with the Email Countdown Timer Code. Remember to copy and paste it into the body of the message every time you want to display the countdown timer.
Also note the Email links. Apresly has automatically generated links for all campaign pages. Use these links in your emails instead of the actual URLs to your offer pages.
Step 8.
Finally, under the “Overview” tab you will find the tracking code for the Apresly system. Be sure to copy it into the Head section of each site where you want to deploy Apresly solutions. This code is identical to the one in the “Tracking code” tab and is independent of your website address.
If the code copied from the “Tracking code” tab has already been placed on your site, you don’t need to do anything else.
Remember that for the evergreen funnel to work properly, you need MailerLite Classic integration with the webinar platform and Apresly with the webinar platform. This allows you to send emails before the webinar – registration links, and reminders.
Step 9.
Open MailerLite Classic and go to the “Automation” tab, then click “Create Workflow”.
Now you can create an email sequence with an individual sales window for each lead.
Step 10.
Start with a trigger, that is when the sequence triggers an action. As you remember, when setting up the campaign in Apresly, we chose to start the countdown when a lead joins the email list. So set the trigger to “When a subscriber joins a group” and select the group created for your webinar.
This way, the countdown will start for each lead when it joins the group. It doesn’t matter whether the subscriber opens the message or not – the time will be counted from the moment they join the email list.
Step 11.
Once the trigger is ready, move on to creating your first email thanking people for attending the webinar or sharing a recording of the event. But most importantly, you will present a special offer for your product. This is a good time to display an Apresly countdown timer to your subscriber. You can do this by pasting the HTML code in the desired place in the body of the email.
Be sure to use the link to the offer generated by Apresly!
Step 12.
Depending on your starting settings in Apresly, you can configure the rest of the emails. Remember not to send them too often. For a 2-3 day campaign, one email per day is completely sufficient (excluding the last day).
It is also important to set a condition before each email from the sequence so that the emails do not go to people who have already purchased your product.
Tip: Adding a 1-day time delay may not be enough. To make sure that the email is not sent at night, it is also a good idea to add another delay — a specific time during the day and set a time of your choice.
Step 13.
In subsequent emails, you can present the subscriber with DEMO lessons of the offered course or excerpts from the e-book. You can also share feedback from other customers.
It is significant to remember to paste the HTML code from Apresly in each subsequent email. This will ensure that the subscriber will see the authentic time left on the offer in each email.
Step 14.
The last day of the campaign can be an exception in terms of the number of emails. It is worth sending more of them – for example, in the morning and an hour before the end as a last reminder. Once the countdown timer stops counting down, the offer will be lost.
Step 15.
Now you can save the sequence and test it. Done!
Conclusions: Create a Sales Funnel to Sell Online Courses with MailerLite Classic and Apresly
As you can see, having an effective sales funnel is crucial to success in selling online courses. Without it, even the most valuable course can go unnoticed by potential customers, limiting its sales.
A sales funnel systematizes the customer acquisition process, guiding customers from the first contact with an offer to the completion of a purchase. Using tools such as Apresly in conjunction with MailerLite Classic allows you to automate and personalize customer communications at each stage of the funnel.
