An “evergreen urgency” is a call-to-action with an
urgency factor that is not tied to a specific date or
time limit.
The evergreen offer has a time factor that serves to
create a sense of urgency — but that time factor, in
fact, applies to every day in the year.
So you can use it anytime you want, all year round.
This classic evergreen urgency offer revolves around
the recipient’s birthday:
“Enroll before your next birthday”
What makes it an evergreen is that whatever day the
recipient gets your email, it is ALWAYS before their
“next birthday” — right?
Because whenever your birthday is, the next one is
ALWAYS coming up.
Yet, because it incorporates a time element, the copy
conveys a sense of urgency.
A real-life example from a State Farm DM envelope
teaser:
“If you come in prior to your birthday, you may
quality for a $125,000 life insurance policy for $97.23
per month.”
Another example is a mailer selling a home warranty.
The copy that begins:
“This letter is to inform you that your property’s
home warranty may be expiring or may have already
expired.”
Again, it sounds timely.
But when you reason it out, you realize that just about
everything on the planet either may be expiring or is
already expired — including our own lives, right?
Exercise: See if you can find a way to incorporate an
evergreen urgency angle into one of your offers.
Then test it.
If it works, then you now have a valuable marketing
asset in your toolbox you can use and reuse many times:
Evergreen urgency… a simple “hack” to manufacture
urgency where in fact there really is none — only
your reader does not know the trick you are using to
get her to act now instead of later!
Simply beautiful. Beautifully simple.