Actionable Strategies Proven to Increase Webinar Registrations

Webinars are a great way to generate leads and drive revenue. However, they only succeed if they garner a relevant audience, and that requires driving people to register. That doesn’t mean you have to be devious or aggressively push a sales pitch; you can draw in a crowd without the oily personality, and we’ll show you how with this guide full of tips.

Plan a Great Webinar

To boost your registration rate, you need to prepare adequately — and well in advance.

Set goals based on business objectives

As with any business process or strategy, it’s essential to have clear goals to guide you on the path to success. By creating goals, you can more easily establish actionable steps and track your progress as the date of the webinar approaches. This will give you time to regroup if you’re falling behind, as well provide an estimate on the number of leads and customers you might generate as a result of the webinar.

To define your goals, consider your overall business objectives. Are you trying to:

• Create more brand awareness?
• Generate or convert leads?
• Increase ROI?
• Boost customer retention?
• Improve customer support?

By establishing your goals and objectives from the get-go, you can more easily stay on track and create a webinar that will resonate with your chosen audience.

Create a webinar topic

The webinar topic must appeal to your target audience at a specific stage in the buying cycle. All the promotion in the world is useless if there’s nothing that interests them or solves their pain points at a particular stage in their journey.

Make sure the webinar topic is specific to attract a relevant audience. For example, imagine you are marketing a business communications platform, which is launching a new cloud phone system. In this case, your upcoming webinar might target customers in the “Engage” stage. These are people who are already aware of your brand and existing products or services, so are likely to engage with content around new offers.

Select the best day

Consider your audience when choosing the live date. If it’s a B2B webinar, Mondays are no good because it’s a busy day of meetings and catching up after the weekend. Fridays should be avoided, too, as that’s when office workers finish tasks before the weekend. Therefore, midweek is your best option.  

As the image above shows, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to schedule a webinar, with Tuesdays not far behind for attracting attendees. People are unlikely to register if they don’t think they’ll be able to attend to begin with.

Think about the best time of day

This is especially crucial when holding a B2B webinar. In 2022, the most popular time to host a webinar was 12pm EST. That might mean it's a great time to try, or it may mean you're competing with a ton of other events at that time. We suggest trying it out to see if it works for your audience.

Provide registrants with something to look forward to

To increase webinar registrations you need something to stoke your registrants’ interest. That can then feature prominently in your promotional materials to secure more registrants (and, in turn, more attendees). Consider the following attention-grabbing elements:

• A special guest speaker
• Competitions and prize draws
• An interactive segment
• Exclusive tips and tricks
• An appearance by an influencer or celebrity

Use your imagination (and information about your relevant audience) to pick something that makes sense.

Give registrants a freebie

B2B marketing teams often employ a lead magnet, which is a giveaway designed to tempt people to register for a webinar. This may be easy on the budget, but it must be valuable to attendees in order to entice registration.

Consider something like an ebook on the webinar’s topic. Alternatively, you could produce an introductory video that acts as a primer for exploring the webinar’s topic. If you’re trying to push registrations further, you could offer exclusive discounts for your products or services, or for a partner organization’s offerings.

Book engaging speakers

Registrants are looking for more than a sales pitch from your webinar; they want to be engaged and learn something. A great way to achieve this is through a prominent speaker.

Some prerequisite features of a good speaker are:

• Experts in their field
• Well-known amongst their peers
• Adept at public speaking
• Able to entertain as well as educate
• An influencer in their industry
• Has an online presence

A speaker can increase registrations if they’re well known. They can also boost attendance by promoting your webinar through their own marketing channels.

Be sure to agree with the speaker on their responsibilities, including their participation in promoting the webinar. They can leverage their online audience and promote the event through their social media, blogs, and website.

How to use email strategies to increase webinar registrations

Build your email list

Email is a powerful tool to increase webinar registrations. There are a number of strategies you can employ to grow your email list, such as:

• Giveaways and competitions
• Surveys
• Requests for feedback
• Product registrations
• Newsletters
• Social media content guiding viewers to sign up through email

Send personalized invites

You should already have valuable data on your audience that you can use to craft a personalized email inviting them to register for your session. Information like company name, location, industry, or job title is useful, as you can weave that into the message content for a personal touch.

Be sure to provide reasons why they’ll benefit from attending your webinar as well. For example, say your company provides remote desktop solutions. A prospect previously enquired with you about changing the way their offices operate but didn’t go through with a purchase on that occasion. You then hold a webinar on the topic of setting up a hybrid office. So, in your promotional email to that prospect, you could mention their previous inquiries and recommend the webinar as a useful investment.

Be sure to not only mention the webinar details in your email, but also include a direct link to register. This direct call-to-action can further streamline the registration process for your high-priority prospects.

Automate your email campaign

For those that may need a personalized touch, consider using marketing automation software to set up an automatic email campaigns and adjust it to target those most likely to register for your webinar. You can design your workflow so once they sign up, it’ll automatically stop seeking their registration.

Marketing automation software also allows you to set up an email schedule. You’ll want to get the message across but don’t overwhelm the inboxes of those you’re targeting. Begin slowly but ramp up the frequency of emails as the date of your webinar approaches.

The content of the emails should reflect the topic of the webinar, and you could share other kinds of related content such as videos or blog posts. Remember to include a link to the event’s landing page, as well as other contact information such as social media or your business phone number.

Keep emails brief and relevant. Craft an eye-catching subject line and avoid spammy language and tactics.

“Thank you” goes a long way

When someone registers for your webinar, send them a thank you email. This makes registrants feel valued and more likely to attend. It may also help spread interest in your webinar through word of mouth; a registrant who feels appreciated might bring up your webinar with their peers.

Additionally, you can automate this process with email software. It’s also a good idea to include an “add to calendar” button in the communication that’ll automatically add your event to the registrant’s calendar.

Send email reminders

Reminder emails ensure registrants keep their calendars clear. Send them as a series using a structure similar to the one below:

1. Four weeks out: A reminder to registrants to save the date
2. Two weeks out: Another reminder including any updates
3. One week out: A detailed itinerary of how the webinar will run
4. The day before: A brief reminder highlighting what’s not to be missed
5. One or two hours before: A quick reminder to say the webinar will begin imminently

You can follow a similar route to increase webinar registrations:

1. Four weeks out: An announcement that registrations are open
2. Two weeks out: A reminder that registrations are open and a description of what to expect
3. One week out: A more detailed itinerary mentioning that slots are filling up fast
4. The day before: A brief reminder to register, highlighting that time’s running out

Increase webinar registrations online

Build a landing page for your webinar

You need a central hub where interested parties can learn about your webinar, which is why a stellar landing page is vital; it’s where potential registrants can learn all the important details.

You’ve probably used landing pages to market products and services. Think of your webinar as another product — you need to write compelling copy, feature enticing images, and provide significant value an effective landing page.

On your landing page, describe what people can expect from the event, and how it benefits them. Outline who will be speaking, and how long the event will last. The only call to action on this page should be to register for the event. Finally, display a countdown timer for the webinar to encourage viewers to act quickly.

Promote the webinar on your website

Make sure visitors to your main website are aware of the upcoming event. It’s helpful to feature the webinar in your news and upcoming events sections, accompanied by a link to the registration page.

Look for opportunities to include the webinar in other parts of the website. For example, let’s say the topic is about a new product. In this case, you should link to the webinar landing page on the product page.

Leverage your social media channels

Social media is a must to increase webinar registrations. On social platforms, you can reach a wide audience or target specific groups. If you have a following, you have a built-in audience to pursue.

Engaging content is the key to success on social media channels. It’s a tried-and-true audience engagement tactic proven to grab your audience’s attention with something interesting, then deliver the main message. (In this case, the message is to register for your webinar.)

Content can include memes, video, surveys, or any other engagement feature. It should also be shareable so it encourages people to spread the news to others.

Write a blog about an upcoming webinar

When used correctly, blogs are an effective marketing device to increase webinar registrations. The secret to success here is search engine optimization (SEO).

The focus of SEO is inserting popular and relevant keywords, phrases, and questions into your blog content. When people search the web for these keywords, your blog then appears in their search results. This method drives traffic to your website, where they’ll learn more about the webinar and may be convinced to register.

Grow Your Business With Savvy Webinar Promotion

Webinars offer many benefits for marketers, particularly engaging with leads and customers.

It starts with creating an event that’s worthy of attention. You can contract influencers to co-host it, which gives you access to their following.

Drive registrations across your own social accounts with well-crafted content and pair that with a comprehensive email marketing strategy. Armed with these aspects, you’ll be equipped to increase webinar registrations for each event you host.

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