Webinars have been around for years, and continue to be a favorable growth and marketing strategy for businesses. Their reach beyond geographical barriers and targeted approach provides opportunities to grow a brand’s value and consumer base.
However, the success of a webinar is determined by the registration, attendance rate, audience participation, and engagement rates. One of the best ways to boost these KPIs is through email marketing.
A webinar email marketing campaign can help you spread the word about your webinar to more people. It can also increase your webinar attendance rate tremendously when you introduce reminder emails.
This article will share six webinar email marketing tips that’ll take your webinars to the next level. Let’s jump right in.
The success of your webinar email marketing strategy is reliant on the webinar registrations and the attendance rate. To maximize both, you need to start by identifying your webinar’s target audience.
Identifying your target audience first ensures that you’re promoting your webinar to the right people. Second, it allows you to craft your emails better. Basically, it helps you personalize your webinar email to appeal to the recipient’s specific needs or interests. You can even track your email opens to analyze your campaigns to see what works best for them.
It is not easy for companies to develop a clear target audience outline, but you can use the following strategies to help you narrow down your target audience.
The first is to conduct audience or consumer research. This can be done through such methods as surveys and focus groups. It will help you understand your audience’s needs, allowing you to customize your webinar email to satisfy their expectations.
You can also leverage the information you already have on current customers on your webinar email list. Understanding their specific needs, interests, and challenges and how your company has helped them in the past should give you ideas on what’s likely to make your audience tick.
Thinking like your audience will also help you develop a webinar email marketing strategy that will appeal to your audience. It will also allow you to put your audience’s satisfaction first, which will help you achieve your webinar’s goals and objectives.
Ask yourself this, if you were the target audience, what would make you want to attend the webinar? What issues or goals do you have that the webinar can help you with?
Your signup process plays an integral role in determining how many people sign up to attend a webinar. A simple sign-up process encourages more willing attendees to register.
Also, in an era where people are keen on data security, a simple sign-up process helps lessen any privacy concerns. The most important fields required to register for a webinar are name and email address. Sometimes just an email address will suffice. There’s no need to ask for more data unless you absolutely have to.
Here is an example of a simple pop-up signup form:
If you do want to collect more information, you should have a maximum of five must-fill fields on your signup forms. You can also use a webinar registration tracking system to identify and remove fields that discourage willing applicants from completing the sign-up process.
The other vital factor is ensuring that your sign-up form and the landing page use a responsive design that works well for mobile and desktop versions. This makes the sign-up form easy to see and fill-in on any screen size.
One of the most effective ways brands use to make more sales is the utilization of social proof. Companies can even use cold email software solutions to target an otherwise cold audience, but with the inclusion of testimonials, most of the audience warms to the brand. Why? Because the modern consumer is heavily influenced by other consumers. That’s also why most people check reviews before purchasing a product.
Therefore, one easy way to boost your webinar’s attendance rate is to add social proof to your campaign. Use authentic testimonials from people who have attended your webinars before. This builds credibility and trust, enticing more people to attend the event. The testimonials will help you demonstrate the value of your webinar with real views from real people.
Here are a few tips to guide you on how to use social proof appropriately in your webinar email marketing strategy:
Use a maximum of two testimonials in your email campaign
Insert the testimonials at the end of your email. You can add more testimonials on the signup page.
Use people instead of businesses, preferably people known by your audience
Include photos of people
Include a direct quote from the person
If you have a hard time sourcing testimonial, you can adopt the practice of providing an open opportunity for participants to share feedback after every webinar. You can collect this feedback with a follow-up email post-webinar. You can then compile the feedback and use it for your future webinar promotions.
However, if this is your first webinar, you can use testimonials from your email subscribers or people you have worked with before. Ensure their testimonials fit the context and subject of the webinar you are marketing.
People attend your webinar to listen to the speakers. Hence, including relevant speaker information will boost attendance rates.
You need to create a buzz by including their names, photo, and professional backgrounds in your webinar email marketing text.
Here is an excellent example of a webinar email invitation that emphasizes the speakers:
In the example above, the guest speakers’ descriptions take up most of the space. The email invitation shows the guest speakers’ credentials, including their current experience and market experience. It even mentions major companies like Google, where the speaker worked.
This invitation would encourage signups since it is clear the guest speakers are well informed on the webinar topic.
You need to convince the audience that they are missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There are various ways to do that.
You can start by writing powerful email copy that expresses a sense of urgency. Here is a good example of a webinar email doing just that:
Many who see this text will be tempted to register to avoid missing out.
You can also create urgency through the webinar email subject line. Most people only open emails after reading the subject. So ensure yours is catchy to gain attention and convincing to emphasize the urgency to respond.
For example, you can start the subject line with a phrase like “Don’t miss out!” or “Save a seat today!”, then add the additional webinar details. If you have an offer like an X% discount for early-bird attendees, you can also open with it. The subject line in your email invitations should be medium-sized, not too long or too short.
You also need to avoid using the passive voice when writing your email copy. Pick an engaging voice and tone to capture the reader’s attention and drive them to your CTA.
Send a webinar reminder email or two to your email list subscribers in the run-up to going live. Your attendee invitation reminder email can help to ensure most of the people who signed up show up for the event.
A Call To Action (CTA) is instrumental in guiding your readers on what to do next. Use powerful CTAs in your webinar emails to help the recipients complete the desired actions. Here are some pointers to help you create compelling CTAs:
Avoid overusing CTAs in your email
Use a clickable Call To Action button
The button should stand out from the rest of the email, especially in color
Use a straightforward command (action words) in the CTA
Link your CTA to the webinar landing page
Here is an example of a compelling CTA button used in a webinar invitation email:
This CTA works because it has a clickable button design, contrasting color, and different size text. The words in the CTA button are also direct, which makes it easy for those interested to follow.
Webinars are a growth and marketing tool that every brand should embrace. However, to ensure you benefit from hosting webinars, you need to market and promote them strategically. Webinar email marketing is one of the most effective channels that can help boost your webinars’ performance.
To ensure the success of your webinar email marketing campaign, you need to follow the six strategies discussed above. Identify and target the right audience, have a simple sign-up process, and add social proof. You should also highlight and give the speaker’s details, incite urgency through email content, and use compelling CTAs.
Follow these tips and your webinar email marketing campaign will be sure to yield the results you’re looking for.
About the author:
Sam is part of the marketing team at Mailshake. Sam’s goal is to inspire people to not just “hang in there” but to thrive. When Sam's not publishing or promoting new content you can find him playing sports and cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
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