Resources Hub » Blog » How to Segment Emails in a Webinar Sequence

Have you ever attended a webinar or watched a recording of one? It’s not hard to understand the appeal.

You get to increase your knowledge or learn new skills from vetted experts without traveling. Sometimes, you can take part in a webinar from your bedroom, in your pajamas. Webinars are more accessible and entertaining than weekend business conferences or lecture transcriptions.

So what do webinars have to do with email campaigns and segmented subscriber lists? Read on to find out why webinars fit in naturally with email marketing strategies and learn how clever segmentation can grow a webinar’s audience, resulting in effective lead generation for your brand.

How do webinars and email marketing campaigns work together?

Brands can and have hosted webinars without the support of email campaigns. These two aren’t inseparable, by any means.

However, the two are very much compatible. When handled properly, in-house webinars and email marketing arms can boost one another’s success and performance. This near-effortless symbiosis is what makes webinars and email marketing a powerhouse combination.

Let’s explore some key components of the multichannel digital strategy below.

Webinars provide educational value and drive engagement, both of which benefit email marketing strategies.

Every email marketer knows that campaigns must be relevant and useful to stand out in the deluge of messages that crowd people’s inboxes daily.

Now, what’s left to improve upon when you’ve already crafted killer subject lines, overhauled your design for scannability, and then some? The answer lies in giving your subscribers something to really talk about: a webinar.

It’s a great idea to require webinar registrants among your subscribers to volunteer personal information. These can inform segmentation later on. Sometimes, the excitement culminates during registration. Generally, the attendance rate for webinars peaks at about 40 to 50% of all registered participants.

Live webinars provide something the most well-produced videos in email can’t replicate. They’re a chance for direct, unscripted interaction between your brand and your audience.

Did you know that periods with the highest attendance rate of webinars can last for up to 90 minutes? That’s a staggering display of sustained engagement. For some companies, these long webinars are a chance to humanize their brand and foster closer customer relationships.

Email campaigns help webinars reach a wider audience and identify areas of improvement for future events.

Webinars can be successful without the help of email marketing. Brands can simply set up a page on their website containing a registration link. On average, up to 40% of people that go to a webinar’s landing page will sign up to attend.

However, email invitations are responsible for more than 60% of webinar registrations.

Email campaigns can also ask people for feedback and comments after a live webinar. To entice people to reply, you can promise access to a recording of the event upon submission. Input from attendees inspires adjustments that can make succeeding webinars better.

Webinar recordings can turn into evergreen lead magnets for email marketing.

Nearly 75% of marketers believe that holding a live webinar results in more qualified leads. An estimated upper limit of up to 40% of attendees may become customers faster than leads gained through other means.

That’s not the end of the line when it comes to lead generation, though. Over 25% of people will register for a webinar, even when the live event is over. Why? Registration can often be a requirement to access the webinar recording. If anything, this shows that planning and executing live webinars is just the first step out of many you can take, marketing-wise.

 Axosoft email providing a link to a recorded webinar

Source: Really Good Emails

When you consider emails to include in a webinar sequence, don’t stop at your post-event gratitude message. A recorded version of a webinar extends the lifespan of that content almost infinitely. As long as the information isn’t outdated, you can continue to use it in subsequent lead-generating campaigns.

Take the Axosoft email above. It’s an excellent example of using an old webinar recording as a possible lead magnet.

How do you cultivate an audience by segmenting emails to include in a webinar sequence?

First, a segmentation refresher: the concept refers to using personal subscriber information and other details to create smaller email lists. The subscribers in each segmented group share one or more custom characteristics—thus making it easier to target them using personalization, dynamic content, and well-written copy.

Using list segmentation in email marketing campaigns can result in a 760% revenue increase. It’s also a proven way to increase content relevancy and engagement.

The following segmentation-based email marketing efforts can cultivate and grow both your webinar audience and subscriber lists.

1. Personalize live webinar teasers and invitation emails by location or demographic.

When done right, subscribers respond better to localized messages. Reaching out to segments created through grouping by certain geographic locations can be powerful.

It can be as simple as listing the local date and time of the live webinar. If you have the means or skills, you may attempt to incorporate a few words or lines in a different language.

Carrot Fertility webinar registration email

Source: Really Good Emails

The Carrot Fertility email above notes that the promoted webinar focuses on U.S. treatments only. A great follow-up to this would be to announce the promised second webinar through segmented email campaigns. They could target Asia, Europe, and North American residents separately.

2. Use registration behavior to segment live webinar reminder emails.

You can craft several pre-event emails to include in a webinar sequence. A teaser, a save-the-date type, and a signup email are usually sufficient.

Take a look at how your subscribers respond to those messages. Use their behavior to create segmented groups. Send each segment emails crafted to push a higher webinar attendance rate.

What if they opened and responded to your emails, but didn’t register? Ask your subscribers to explain why they failed to sign up. You can include multiple choices and format it like a quiz. Use the responses to create solutions like scheduling an official webinar recording playback. Attached this to a second live Q&A for subscribers in a different time zone.

What if they didn’t open any of your webinar-themed emails but are otherwise active subscribers? Remind them of the value of attending the live webinar and make a real effort to establish a genuine and emotional connection. Let them know that their presence would be very much appreciated.

3. Create segments based on subscriber activity to guide them through a collection of old webinar recordings.

For some brands, webinars aren’t new. As an email marketer, companies may ask you to promote old webinar recordings continuously. You can do this through automated campaigns.

Set up triggers to send subscribers webinar recordings relevant to their customer journey stage. If some webinars happen to interconnect, you may create an email workflow to offer them up to subscribers in chronological order.

Squarespace webinar introduction email

Source: Really Good Emails

The Squarespace email above is likely triggered by activating the brand’s free trial period. An invitation to the brand’s next webinar leads the content, but there are also links to a video series and other webinars below.

4. When converting webinar leads to sales prospects, base segments on registrants’ interaction with the live content.

How engaged were your leads during the webinar? The answer is the key to tailoring the follow-up strategy to increase their chances of a successful conversion.

To start, identify which leads registered but didn’t show up. These people will receive more persuasive emails to include in a webinar sequence. It could be a good idea to exclude them from the usual thank you email containing a link to the recorded webinar. Instead, send them a lengthier, post-event lead nurturing campaign.

Enthusiastic webinar attendees count as qualified or warm leads. They’ll most likely show interest and interact with your future email campaigns. However, it’s important to remember that webinars aren’t typically promotional pushes—they’re educational and informational. These people won’t necessarily want to make a purchase right after the live event, but they’re not opposed to the idea.

Access to the length of time each attendee stayed to watch the live stream, or webinar recording allows you to create more specific segments. People who stayed for more than 50% can sometimes count as qualified leads. It’s important to pinpoint when exactly people stopped watching.

If someone stayed to watch a product demo but left before a discussion of product specifications, you should include the latter info in their post-event messages. You can craft a shorter lead nurturing email sequence for them, too.

On the other hand, if someone only stayed for a few minutes or was rude during the Q&A, count them as an uninterested party. You can send them a short and polite thank you email and move on.

Wrap up

When it comes to a multichannel digital strategy, webinars can contribute educational value and the promise of sustained engagement. Email marketing, on the other hand, can provide relatively low-cost promotions to help webinars reach a wider and bigger audience.

Carrying out creative list segmentation can increase the chances of growing and successfully cultivating webinar audience numbers and qualified marketing leads. Here are a few examples of said efforts:

  • Personalize live webinar teasers and invitation emails by location or demographic.
  • Use registration behavior to segment live webinar reminder emails.
  • Create segments based on subscriber activity to guide them through a collection of old webinar recordings.
  • When converting webinar leads to sales prospects, base segments on registrants’ interaction with the live content.

Webinar producing and email marketing complement each other and boost one another’s performance. The enduring popularity of both makes investing in this combination a winning move.

Interested in producing a webinar and in need of inspiration? You can check out Campaign Monitor’s webinar recordings.

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This blog provides general information and discussion about email marketing and related subjects. The content provided in this blog ("Content”), should not be construed as and is not intended to constitute financial, legal or tax advice. You should seek the advice of professionals prior to acting upon any information contained in the Content. All Content is provided strictly “as is” and we make no warranty or representation of any kind regarding the Content.
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