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8 Emails to Include In Your Webinar Sequence
Webinars are a popular way to connect with potential customers, especially right now. They make it easy to share news about your business, while adding a face to your brand.
Getting people to attend a webinar can be tough, though. Most people are only willing to commit to one live event a week, so you have to fight for that real estate by staying in front of them.
Review this guide to the six emails you need to include in your webinar sequence that not only boosts your registration rates, but improves your attendance rates as well.
What is a webinar and how does it grow a business?
A webinar—or a web-based seminar—is a live event where you share a presentation. This can be anything from a simple screen share to a complex PowerPoint with video. You can even include videos, audio files, and documents your audience might need.
Webinars are practical for sharing information both internally and with your customers. Common reasons businesses run webinars include:
- Content marketing
- Deep dive into a guide or published article
- Customer service
- Employee training
- Product demonstration
- Technical support
You can make a webinar as engaging as you like. For example, if you’re holding an employee training webinar, you might have more interaction than during a product demo webinar where many potential customers remain silent.
But why do you want to use webinars? How do they help businesses grow?
Webinars make it easy for you to connect with potential customers without investing in local events. A successful event has surprising results for your business, like:
- Customer engagement: In general, webinars can last from 60 to 90 minutes for the highest attendance rate, which is an incredible amount of time to be in front of potential customers.
- Qualified leads: Almost three-quarters of B2B marketers feel that their webinars lead to more qualified leads, potentially 20% to 40% of the attendees.
- Higher ROI: Depending on the technology you use, you can create a webinar for free (or spend some money on it for a premium experience), which means you have a lot of control over the ROI.
Creating a webinar is just the first step in a marketing strategy that includes live events. Your next step is to generate hype and get people to register for your online event.
What are the benefits of a webinar email sequence?
There are a few different ways you can approach marketing your webinar. You can create a landing page on your website—and you should, if you want the best performance metrics—or you can spread the word on social media.
And, as email marketing is still the most effective marketing strategy, that includes marketing your webinar. Here’s how a webinar email series can impact your event:
- Email signups: Over half of webinar registrations come from people who heard about your event through email, then decided to register.
- Attendance rates: For most webinars, the attendance rate is between 40% and 50% of people who registered for the event ahead of time.
- Webinar registrations: In general, webinars will receive 260 registrations, which means an email has the potential to boost those numbers by reaching more people.
By incorporating a webinar email series, you can potentially reach more people, increase your registrations, and improve your attendance rates.
Emails to include in your webinar sequence for maximum impact
To make the most of your investment in webinar technology, you want to boost attendance before the event, and increase conversions after the event. So let’s look at emails to send around each part of that funnel.
1. Prelaunch and introduction email
If you want to generate hype around your webinar, a prelaunch email is an effective solution. You can build a landing page with key highlights about your event and include an email signup form for “future information” about the webinar (more info on landing page strategy here).
You can also use a prelaunch email to introduce your webinar options as TIAA did in their webinar email sequence. They include a broad CTA with a bold “view all webinars” button, and they include links to specific webinars they think you’ll like.
Source: Really Good Emails
This is a good opportunity to get people excited about your event. Your goal with this email is just information.
2. Signup and registration email
Your registration email is one of the most important parts of a webinar email sequence. This is where you formally invite people to your event. If you’re hosting a free webinar, this email can be as simple as pointing people in the right direction.
The key thing to remember about your signup email is that it needs to highlight the value. Why do people want to spend 30 minutes—or more—of their day listening to you talk about your company? BigCommerce packs a ton of information in their webinar signup email.
Source: Really Good Emails
Be sure to include the four main components of an invitation: who, what, where, and when. Link to the webinar landing page so they can see more detailed information and sign up.
3. Webinar invitation reminder
Depending on when you sent the registration email and when your event is, you might send more than one reminder email. You can send one within a week or a few days of the event, then follow up with a reminder email the day before the webinar.
Reminder emails don’t just go to people who registered for the event. Take advantage of list segmentation by creating reminder invitations for people who haven’t signed up yet. This can be a chance to convert them as Mavenlink did in their webinar reminder email.
Source: Really Good Emails
As the date of your event nears, you’ll want to maximize those registration numbers. Add credibility to your emails by including bios about the presenters.
4. Webinar signup autoresponder
For registrants of the webinar, make sure you have an autoresponder or transactional email set up to let them know they’ve successfully registered. If you have them register using your ESP’s signup form, then this can be automatically triggered when a custom field is updated, like “Webinar registration = Yes.”
5. Webinar reminder email
This email should only go to registrants, and is only necessary if you’re using a webinar platform that doesn’t handle reminder emails. For example, GoToWebinar has an option to turn registrant reminders on or off, so you can choose whether you want the platform or your own ESP to send the email.
The webinar reminder email needs to reiterate the date, time, and instructions for access the webinar when it’s live.
6. Recording and follow-up email
Recording your webinar is an effective way to get it in front of more people. Remember that landing page you created for the webinar? Upload the recording of your webinar there to drive traffic after the event.
Over 25% of people register for a webinar after it’s over. There’s no reason not to capitalize on the content you already created. UserTesting provides its webinar recording for free, along with an option to download the presentation slides.
Source: Daniel Waas
Another takeaway from UserTesting is that they encourage you to share their recording with colleagues. You can improve your webinar’s ROI by getting it in front of more people.
7. Post-webinar survey email
After your webinar, especially if you plan to host more of them, you may want to send a survey to your attendees. This survey can help you narrow down better ways to approach webinars for your audience, a critical skill for any digital marketer.
Not everyone is going to jump at the chance to take a survey, though. So you can include an incentive like Splash did with their survey. They offer a gift card to participants who complete the post-webinar survey, plus a CTA for the next event.
Source: Splash
Some webinar platforms make it simple for you to create a post-webinar survey. However, you can create one using other marketing tools, as well.
8. “Webinars you might like” email
The last email you want to send in your webinar email sequence is the recommendation email. This is where you let your attendees know about other webinars they might be interested in. It’s also a chance to create a schedule for your customers, like Peloton does with their webinar courses.
Source: Really Good Emails
If you routinely host webinars, you can make this email part of a bigger marketing campaign. Start with your post-webinar recommendations, then add those subscribers to your webinar rotation.
Simple tips for optimizing the emails you include in a webinar email sequence
Creating a webinar email series is one part of the marketing process. To boost those registration and attendance numbers, you’ll need to optimize your email campaigns.
Before you plan your webinar email sequence, review these simple tips you can easily incorporate for email optimization:
- Email personalization: A personalized email can lead to a 20% increase in sales, plus yield transaction rates that are six times higher than non-personalized emails. Leverage your customer data to add elements of personalization.
- List segmentation: Nearly 60% of all revenue comes from email campaigns that feature list segmentation, and it can potentially increase yours by 760%. Segmenting your lists can make your webinar email sequence more dynamic.
- Marketing automation: Email automation can lead to higher open and click rates, plus potentially give your business conversion rates as high as 50%. An email marketing automation platform can simplify this strategy.
Email optimization is critical to your marketing success. You’ll have higher engagement rates, which means you’ll have higher registration and attendance rates for your webinar.
Wrap up
Whatever your reason for creating a webinar, you know that a webinar email sequence can make or break attendance records. Before you plan your next live event, consider these key takeaways about marketing your webinar:
- Emails contribute to most webinar registration, so a solid sequence is critical.
- Look for opportunities to send webinar reminders and follow-up emails.
- Include relevant information and highlight the foundation of the event.
The more effort you put into your webinar email sequence, the better your registration and attendance rates will be.
Ready to employ email marketing automation for your webinar series? Campaign Monitor has the right tools for segmenting, personalizing, and automating your campaigns.
