Webinar have all the hype - and that’s because it works.
It works, if it’s executed perfectly, as people are more and more used to attend webinars.
If you’ve decided to host a webinar, you already know its benefits. It’s the perfect way to:
- Webinars help you establish topical authority.
- Authority leads to trust.
- Trust leads to sales, which leads to revenue and profits
As long-form content, webinars allow for more engagement opportunities, content repurposing opportunities, brand awareness, lead generation, education, demos, and more.
It’s no wonder then that webinars are one of the most effective and favored marketing methods.
And if you’re not fully convinced, consider these statistics:
- More than 99 percent of markets believe that webinars are an essential part of their overall marketing plan.
- At least 92 percent of professionals believe webinars are purpose-built for engaging large remote audiences.
Once you’ve decided to host a webinar, next comes execution.
In theory, promoting your webinars is simple.
The hard part is about execution. Consistently.
Over and over again.
(and again)
Regardless of the path you choose for promoting webinars, email marketing plays an essential role in how you manage promotions, webinar attendance, engagement, and more.
Here’s how you can deploy the best email marketing campaigns for promoting a webinar, along with some examples.
Webinar Sign-up Email
Before anything else, you need to send a webinar invitation email.
The exception is if you are directly targeting webinar sign-ups through direct traffic sources such as ads (LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads, Meta Ads, and so on) directly leading to landing pages built for webinar sign-ups.
The webinar sign-up invite email is usually meant to target your email subscribers. It’s a captive audience familiar with your brand, signed up for something in the past, or a present set of existing and/or potential customers.
Hence, your email won’t seem random to them, and they’ll likely find value in it.
Webinar invites sent to subscribers will have the best engagement, open rates, and click-through rates. Ultimately, it will increase webinar sign-ups.
All this is to say–if you have an existing email list, sending out email invites is a no-brainer.
Lead Nurturing Email
Aside from subscribers who sign up through your first email invite, you can also do the following to maximize attendance:
- Initiate pop-ups, slide-ins, and callout site-wide bars with calls-to-action (for website traffic sources)
- Share details and an invite to a webinar landing page on social media channels
- Run ads on various platforms (such as Reddit, LinkedIn, Google, and Meta) directly linking to dedicated landing pages.
The result: more webinar sign-ups.
Webinar invites sent to subscribers will have the best engagement, open rates, and click-through rates.
What’s next? Lead nurturing.
Send them an acknowledgment or a thank you email with specific instructions on how to attend your webinar (time, date, attendance instructions, call-in instructions, and more)
No one wants to feel like they just hit a wall after signing up for your webinar. Lead nurturing emails are mandatory immediately after someone signs up.
Reminders and Follow-ups with Resources
What do you do in the time leading up to the webinar and the lead sign-up date? Lead nurturing continues.
Consider sending:
- Emails with more updates
- Information about the hosts of the webinar itself
- Helpful blog posts
- Resources, tutorials, and other resources
Priming up your expected webinar attendees with more resources helps with active and thoughtful nurturing.
Beyond that, your attendees can make informed decisions, evaluate the importance of attending the webinar, and help you (and your attendees) set the right expectations.
Post-Webinar Email with Recording
More than 63 percent of webinar views are replays, on-demand, or recordings.
Sending a simple email with a recorded version of the live webinar is the single best thing you’d do to ensure engagement.
The fun doesn’t end there.
Marketers, on average, get at least 6 new pieces of new content from each webinar they create (Talk about extended benefits!).
Repurposing alone saves marketers an average of 4 to 10 hours per webinar, allowing them to create 2 percent more content than without a webinar as the starting point.
This is not even counting the several unique pieces of content derived from a single webinar in the form of standalone videos, Instagram reels, and other videos you can share on social media or emails.
Emails Promoting Extended (& Exclusive) Offers
If you have exclusive offers to make, roll out offers in the middle or at the end of the webinar.
Making offers should not be the whole reason why you did an entire series of webinars, but making offers is pertinent and expected.
The effort you take to research, promote, build up an audience, and host the webinar should have something in it for you, too (as a marketer or as a business).
Give the best offers to your webinar audiences as gratitude for taking the time to attend your event.
They are a high-quality, captive audience deeply interested in the problem your products or services solve.
Make an exclusive offer for them that you won’t roll out again (and cannot be found in your ads, social channels, and elsewhere).
If you’d like to see how your competitors and other brands run their email marketing campaigns and custom-design their landing pages for webinars, take a look at Panoramata.
You also get access to an always-updated library of creative campaigns such as ads and SMS marketing messages (along with website changes).
Sort by industry, use exclusive filters to find what you need and create lists to help inspire you and your marketing team.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the key emails I should use when hosting a webinar?
The key emails include the initial invitation, a reminder email, a lead nurturing email, a follow-up email after the webinar, and an email with an exclusive offer. These help keep your audience engaged and informed at every stage of the promotion.
2. How do I write a compelling webinar invitation email?
In your invitation, clearly explain the value of attending, include a strong call-to-action to register, and use engaging subject lines. Focus on the benefits your audience will get from the webinar.
3. When should I send my webinar follow-up email?
You should send the follow-up email within 24 hours after the webinar ends. It’s a great opportunity to share the recording, provide additional resources, and engage with attendees further.
