Webinars: What’s email got to do with it?
- Tom Kothman
- Sep 12, 2023
- 2 min read
Email drives 57% of webinar registrations, period.
A webinar takes planning and coordination. Everybody knows that, right? The classic Who/What/Where/When and Why (WWWWW) should guide webinar development.
Your webinar’s success, in addition to good content and planning, rests on a solid email campaign that communicates the WWWWW with the right people at the right time.
For years I’ve tried to promote webinars weeks … and even months… in advance, hoping to generate early registrations. Open rates are good, CTR is not bad, but the early registration needle doesn’t move. However, that’s not to say don’t promote far in advance. According to GoToWebinar, registrations increase by 12% when the webinar is promoted at least 4 weeks in advance.
The optimum number of webinar promotion emails is 4.
Start your webinar promotion about a month before your webinar but expect little in the way of actual sign-ups at this point. Usually, the subject or pre-header is “Mark Your Calendars” at this point and the most you can expect is some level of awareness and interest tickling. And if you do it, an opportunity to do some incremental segmentation based on interest tagging for upcoming emails and webinars..
Promote again about 7-10 days before your webinar.
If there is an early sign-up discount, promote those 2-4 days before it ends.
Then send one more email blast to non-registrations (registrants should have received a confirmation email separately) the day before the webinar. (If the webinar is scheduled in the afternoon, have a last-minute sign-up for non-registrants waiting in their email boxes at 5 a.m.)
Trust me, this pattern works like Baby Bear’s Porridge.
Get the latest, broad-based email benchmark study.
According to Máté Zilahy, Content Partnerships Manager at GetResponse,
“It's interesting to note that 82% of registrants signed up for webinars within a week of the scheduled date, with only 6% signing up more than two weeks in advance. This suggests that the majority of the audience is looking for webinars relevant to their current needs or interests.”
To learn more about email-webinar statistics like Best Day/Time/Promo Email Open Rates, etc. download the 2023 Email Marketing Benchmarks by GetResponse. It’s a good report, one of the best I’ve seen.
The webinar discussion makes a great point about email being a key part of getting people to attend and stay engaged. I noticed the same thing during an online class event where clear email reminders helped everyone stay on track. At that time, I also used mcgraw hill course help online while managing several deadlines, so planning and communication became really important for me. This article shows that even great content needs the right outreach to reach people effectively.
Email and webinars connected more than I thought. As a PhD student who works part-time at Last-Minute Assignments, I used to send boring invites nobody opened. I was so bad at it that I'd think, Just do my psychology assignment so I can learn persuasion. Your post is a masterclass. Thank you for that. Subject lines, timing, value. Grateful for the strategy. Keep teaching digital marketing. Seriously, my open rates thank you. My webinar attendance thanks you more. Here's to emails that actually get read. Thanks for the upgrade. Cheers.
The post makes a strong point about the connection between webinars and email communication. Good messaging can help people stay engaged and informed before and after events. As a student learning about marketing basics, I used pay someone to do my class for me support while balancing coursework and extracurricular activities. Clear communication remains important in every field.