How to set up your first evergreen webinar with WebinarJam and ActiveCampaign
Updated: Oct 27
You have seen them online: Coaches and experts offering free webinars, every day of the week, at three different times. You might have browsed one of their sign-up pages, maybe even registered. And at some point you probably wondered: how do they offer so many dates? They run webinars on a Sunday? How do they not burn out?
Sorry to burst the bubble. The webinar is pre-recorded and delivered automatically the moment somebody signs up. The expert is not logging in every day to give the same talk again and again. That is what an evergreen webinar is: an automated webinar that runs without the host.
But here is what the sign-up page does not show you: The recording is the easy part. The part that decides whether an evergreen webinar sells is what happens in the hours and days after someone registers, shows up, or doesn't. The follow-up emails, who gets which one, and when.
This article walks through the simplest version of that system that actually works: three automations, a handful of tags, one filter, and a bonus timer. It assumes you use EverWebinar (belongs to WebinarJam) for the webinar and ActiveCampaign for email. The logic transfers to other tools, but the details below are specific to this pairing.
Why most evergreen webinar funnels don't work
A live webinar is forgiving. You see who turned up, you send one follow-up to everyone, done. An automated webinar runs every day, for people you never see, and every mistake repeats itself for every registrant until someone looks.
The three failures we see most often:
1) The automation never starts.
Someone registers, and your email programme (ActiveCampaign, Kit, whichever you use) never picks them up. The problem? You don't get an error message from ActiveCampaign, so you might notice this after days or weeks.
2) The right people get the wrong emails.
Someone who is already a client gets the full sales sequence. Someone who watched the whole webinar gets "sorry you missed it". Both make you look like you are not paying attention, which is the one thing an automated system must never do.
3) You underestimate the work.
Setting up and maintaining an evergreen funnel is not just the webinar and a few emails. It is the deadline timer that has to match the email sequence, the landing pages, the replay page, the bonus that expires, the booking link, and the logic that decides who gets which message. Every piece has to agree with every other piece, and you need to factor in time to update and maintain the sequences.
What you need before you start
Do not open the automation builder until all of this exists:
A WebinarJam / EverWebinar subscription: EverWebinar is the evergreen product, WebinarJam is for live webinars. The tags and integration work the same way.
An offer to sell: A programme, a package, a consultation call.
A clear call to action. One action you want people to take after the webinar: book a call, buy, apply. Every email points at it. What should the lead do next?
The follow-up email copy, written and approved. Three emails per path: one replay email, two sales emails. Write them before you build, it will help you see what is missing and what you need to focus on before going live.
An email programme: This guide uses ActiveCampaign. Kit, MailerLite or similar work too if they support tags, if/else conditions and wait steps.
{OPTIONAL} A bonus for those who act within 48 hours: Give leads an incentive to act now by offering a bonus: This could be a discount, an extra session, a template pack.
{OPTIONAL} A deadline tool like Deadline Funnel: It keeps the bonus deadline honest per person: the 48 hours start when that contact watches, not on a fixed date. Without it, the countdown on your sales page and the deadline in your emails will not match.
Your tagging logic in EverWebinar
When you start setting up your webinar in EverWebinar, you will have the option to connect it to ActiveCampaign under "Integrations":
Once connected, you will set tags depending on user behaviour:
We recommend the following for the beginning:
A tag for when someone registers
A tag for when someone joins live
A tag for when someone misses the webinar they signed up to
That will help you trigger automations in ActiveCampaign based on user behaviour.
On top of that, we recommend you maintaining a client tag in ActiveCampaign - that way, every time somebody buys your product, you can give them the client tag and end any sales automations for this client. Because why send them more e-mails, when you've already convinced them?
Setting up webinar automations in ActiveCampaign
In order for your evergreen webinar to work, you need 3 automations per webinar: one for anybody that registers, one for people who showed up and one for people who didn't. Of course, you can set up automations way more complex than that - but this is a good start.
Disclaimer: The tag names below are placeholders. Use whatever naming fits your account, but keep it consistent and include the webinar name in every tag.
1. Registration automation
Trigger: the registration tag EverWebinar assigns the moment someone signs up for your webinar (the first of the three tags from the "Your tagging logic" section above).
This is what the automation will do:
Remove the registration tag. Yes, immediately. We explain why in a second.
Add a permanent tag that records the registration, for example "Registered: [Webinar]". That way you keep a record of which contacts have registered for your webinar.
{OPTIONAL} Add the contact to a holding list, for example "[Webinar] registrants". Not your newsletter list.
End the automation.
No e-mails. Why?
EverWebinar sends the confirmation, the reminders and the join link itself, timed to the session the contact picked. ActiveCampaign does not know which session that is (without further set-up). Let EverWebinar handle everything up to the webinar. ActiveCampaign takes over afterwards.
Side note: if you absolutely want the confirmation and reminders to go out from ActiveCampaign (same sender, same design as the rest of your e-mails), it is possible. EverWebinar can pass the session date, time and the personal join link into custom fields on the contact, and your e-mails then pull those fields in. It works, but it is more complex to set up and to test, and it is not where we would start. Build version 1 with EverWebinar sending, and move this over later if you still want to.
Why remove the registration tag straight away?
This is the fix for failure number 1 above, "the automation never starts". A tag trigger in ActiveCampaign only fires when the tag is newly added. If the registration tag is still on the contact from the first time they signed up, the second sign-up adds nothing, triggers nothing, and you cannot even see from the contact that it happened. Removing the tag in step 1 means the next registration is a new event again. The permanent "Registered" tag from step 2 keeps the history.
{OPTIONAL} Why a holding list and not the newsletter?
Your registrant is about to go through a sequence of three e-mails over a few days. If they sit on your newsletter list at the same time, your regular newsletter lands between the replay e-mail and sales e-mail 2, and the contact gets four e-mails in two days from the same sender. Keep them on the holding list and let the last step of the viewer or non viewer automation move them to the newsletter. Everyone ends up on the newsletter, just not mid-sequence.
2. Viewer automation
Trigger: the attendee tag EverWebinar assigns the moment (like, immediately!) someone enters the webinar room (as explained here)
This is what the automation will do:
Once your contact has entered the live room, they will receive the "attendee tag" (you can give this any name that makes sense to you)
Add a wait position, because you don't want any e-mails going out while your contact is still watching the webinar. Recommendation: Wait 90 minutes.
{OPTIONAL} Fire the Deadline Funnel webhook. This starts the 48-hour bonus timer for this contact.
Send follow-up email 1: Thanks for showing up, here is the replay, here is the bonus.
Wait a day.
Filter (see below), then send email 2.
Wait 1 day.
Filter, then send email 3.
Wait 2 days, move the contact to your newsletter list, end.
3. Non viewer automation
Trigger: the non-attendee tag, which EverWebinar assigns after the event ends.
Same structure as the viewer automation with two differences: no wait position at the beginning. EverWebinar assigns the non-attendee tag only after the session has ended, so the webinar is over by the time the contact enters.
Plus: The first email says "missed you, here is the replay" instead of "thanks for showing up".
Everything from the webhook onwards is identical. The bonus timer starts when the replay email goes out, and the two sales emails are the same ones. You can even reuse the exact email in both automations.
The filter in front of every sales email
We need to branch contacts in the automation, based on whether or not they have become a client since your last e-mail, because you do not want to send out sales e-mails to people that you have already convinced.
We add an If/Else block directly before each sales email asking: Does the "Client" tag exist?
If Yes: Go to the end of the automation (e.g. add the contact to newsletter and then end the automation)
If No: Continue in the automation, send the next email.
⚠️ One important detail: Use If/Else, not Goals. A Goal in ActiveCampaign pulls a contact to the goal step from anywhere in the automation as soon as the condition is true. With a permanent tag like "Client", that happens the moment they enter. Meaning, if a client of yours wanted to watch your webinar, they wouldn't even get the replay email, because they would be kicked out of the automation immediately. If/Else checks the condition only when the contact arrives at that block, which is what you want.
Growing more frustrated as you read? We build these kind of set-ups for our clients every day and we'd love to help you with yours, so you can focus on converting more leads instead of building automations. Here is how we approach funnels and launches for small businesses.
Getting the bonus timer right (optional!)
Adding a deadline tool to your funnel is very powerful, but not necessary when you are just getting started with your webinar funnel. It is perfectly fine to add it down the line. If you want to add it from scratch, here are our recommendations for getting it right:
The webhook needs to be triggered before the first e-mail in your automation. You want the personalized timer to start when the contact gets the first post-webinar e-mail. For example: If they register on Monday, watch the webinar on Wednesday, and your bonus is valid for 48h - then the 48 hours start Wednesday after the webinar.
The sales emails have to reference a "neutral" deadline: With a personalized deadline you can't write things like "Ends Saturday 22nd at midnight", because the deadline will be individual for every contact. Use phrases like "expires tonight" or "3 days left" to keep it neutral.
The sales page shows the same countdown: You can add Deadline Funnel to your sales page, so that every visitor sees the right timer on the website. Again, refrain from adding time-specific details around your bonus on this landing page. Deadline Funnel also allows you to redirect to another page after the deadline is up.
The main issues with EverWebinar & ActiveCampaign automations
After building our fair share of automations in both these tools, here are the main issues to look out for when building them:
Triggers set to "runs once". At the top of any automation in ActiveCampaign you can select if the trigger should "run once" or "multiple times". You want this set to "multiple times" in an Evergreen funnel, because you want a contact that registers for your webinar again in the future to get sales emails again. If the automation is set to "once", a contact who registers for a second session would not enter the automation again.
Tag names that do not match: Make sure the tags that are added in the ActiveCampaign automation match what you set in EverWebinar. One missing character and the trigger never fires. Copy the tag name from the WebinarJam integration settings, do not type it.
Timer and emails drifting apart: You shorten the wait before sales email 2 to "make it more urgent" and forget that the Deadline Funnel timer still runs 48 hours. Now the email says "tonight" and the landing page timer from Deadline Funnel says "tomorrow".
Test every scenario before you go live
We know - testing sounds incredibly boring and that's why most of our clients skip it initially (or have us do it for them). It is crucial to test your funnel before going live - otherwise you might end up paying a lot for leads that never receive your sales emails.
Run a separate test for Registration, Viewers and for Non Viewers and keep a simple log of what should happen (expected behaviour) vs. what actually happened.
How long to set up your evergreen webinar funnel?
We would love for you to be able to set this up in a day. Unfortunately, there are a lot of moving pieces, a lot of preparation that needs to be done before you can go live.
Here are our honest recommendations so you can plan:
Writing the e-mail copy: 4 hours
Setting up EverWebinar: 3 hours
Filming the webinar: 8 hours
Building the automations: 6 hours
{OPTIONAL} Setting up and connecting Deadline Funnel: 4 hours
Testing: 3 hours
Total: 28 hours = 3,5 full workdays
If you don't want to make that time investment - we're here to help.
The bottom line about evergreen webinar funnels
An evergreen webinar earns its name only if the follow-up runs correctly for every registrant, every day, without you watching. For a first webinar that comes down to three automations, three kinds of tag, one filter in front of every sales email, a bonus timer that agrees with the emails, and a test plan you actually run.
If you would rather spend your time on the webinar itself and not on tag logic in ActiveCampaign: we're here to get you set for your next launch if you don't want to deal with the tech side of things.
