Statistical studies on webinar participation show that, across a variety of markets and industries, about 30 to 35% of registrants will actually attend the live webinar. (If you’re able to up that rate to 40% or more, by the way, you’re really doing something.)
The good news is, about 1/3 of invitees don’t even register for a webinar until the live session is over. This third article of our 3-part Webinar Success Essentials series looks at some best practices used by experts, during the followup period after a webinar, to leverage the power of the material they’ve painstakingly created.
Follow up right after the webinar ends.
The best time to start the post-webinar nurturing process is immediately after. Whether attendees stayed with you the whole way, came in late, had to sign off early — or didn’t make there at all — your thank-you email will likely hang around in their inboxes for a while. Which can bring back memories of what they learned, serve as a reminder to return to your now on-demand webinar, or both.
Make your followup emails as personal as possible.
As in any form of direct marketing, it pays to do your homework before engaging. Look at job titles for registrants and attendees to determine whether they’re bona fide decision-makers or next-level influencers who’ve been to assigned explore and assess your content. The followups you send, in terms of focus and depth, should be geared toward the role that person plays.
Let prospects engage on their own terms.
An assistant on assignment may be looking for a volume of information to present to the boss or a group. A decision-maker, however, may be looking for distinct points of difference that typically appear deeper in the conversion journey. Consider each person’s needs and perspective when composing your followup messages. And don’t hesitate to blend different delivery strategies in a single message. Some recipients may be more prone to watch a brief video. Some would rather scan a list of key points. Others may be ready to dive into a whitepaper.
Think beyond the replay.
In addition to making your entire webinar available on demand after the live event, see how you can repurpose segments of the content in different ways. Convert particularly interesting segments into posts for LinkedIn, YouTube and/or your company’s blog — especially if you found audience reaction/engagement to be high for those segments.
Don’t discount non-attendees.
There are a number of reasons why an individual registrant doesn’t login for your live event, came late and/or left early. The fact is, that person was once genuinely interested enough to sign up. One “testing the waters” idea is to send an email with excerpts from several featured segments. This enables the recipient to self-select what to watch based on his/her individual interests and priorities. Which tells a bit more about that prospect.
Use highlights as bait for your next webinar.
As you develop more and more webinars, the best segments and bytes from previous ones make great promotional material for upcoming webinars. These not only demonstrate your level of thought, substance and production quality as an enticement to register — they also serve as opportunities to cross-sell other facets of your product and/or service offerings.