Have you used webinars lately to nurture your audience? They’re a great tool to engage an audience with your content and your brand – if you can get people to register and attend. It can be difficult to get very busy people to open an email and commit themselves to an hour-long webinar. At Vistage International, I manage the Fridays with Vistage webinar program, whose target audience is CEOs. If I think I’m busy (and I hardly ever open emails trying to get me to register for webinars), then I know that CEOs are 100 times as busy as I am. Vistage has done more than 60 webinars since 2008, and in the past year, average registration has grown nearly 60% and attendance has grown 40%. Here are the top ten things  we’ve implemented to boost registration and attendance, and to bring value to webinar attendees.

  1. Know your audience. First, you should only be emailing people who have signed up for your newsletter and are interested in your content and your brand. If you are emailing a cold list, getting them to open your email will be virtually impossible.
  2. Be consistent with marketing and branding. The Fridays with Vistage webinar series is a member-exclusive program with webinars twice a month, always on Fridays. I send two emails to our members per webinar. About half of the registrants sign up after the first email and about half sign up after the second. I send the emails one week apart, with the second email arriving just days before the webinar to increase urgency. Over the past three years Vistage has been doing these webinars, we’ve tested everything: more and fewer emails, on different days and in different styles. With our audience, this format works best. The feedback I hear from Vistage members is that our consistency with marketing, branding, and quality of content is the most important feature in getting them to pay attention and sign up. They know when the webinar emails will come, when the webinars are and what to expect.
  3. Simplify your messaging. Use a provocative headline that will grab your audience and get them to open the email. The time, date and “Register Now” button should be the most predominant features in the email. Give brief information (a sentence and a few bullets) about the webinar topic and a short biography about the speaker. Have the “Register Now” button click straight to the registration page. Don’t make the user fill out a lot of required fields on the registration page (I find just name and email works best. I also like to give registrants an opportunity to submit questions to the speaker when they register and have found that many people take advantage of that feature).
  4. Get them to show up. I send out an email an hour before the webinar reminding registrants to attend the webinar. Our invitation has a feature that allows members to add the meeting to their calendar. I’ve recently started asking for phone numbers to send text message reminders shortly before the webinar begins. Sometimes I will give out a piece of content from the speaker, such as a book chapter or worksheet that can only be received during the live webinar, as an incentive to those who attend the live webinar.
  5. Make sure your technology works. If the technology isn’t working, it’s really hard to get people to give you a second chance. I’ve tried lots of technology platforms and been a guest on webinars in even more. I like to have a technical professional on the line to help those who are struggling with technology, so the speaker doesn’t have to worry about that while they present content. If that isn’t an option, sending out the system requirements to everyone before they join is a great way to avoid technical difficulty. For those who aren’t able to join due to technical problems, send them the webinar archive immediately afterward.
  6. Bring in the expert. Have a speaker that can discuss diverse and engaging topics of interest to your audience for an hour. Make sure the speakers have experience speaking LIVE and know the difference between an interactive in-person session and a webinar (webinars make interaction with the audience much more difficult). Place the speaker’s bio on the first slide of the webinar to establish them as an expert and the speaker’s contact information on the final slide so the attendees can reach out to him or her if they are interested in more information.
  7. Keep attendees engaged during the webinar. Attendees zone out and start checking their email unless they are consistently entertained by the presentation. Try to stay on each slide for less than one minute. Keep the PowerPoint image-heavy, with little text. Use polls during the webinar to get participants to actively contribute. Encourage questions in the Q&A chat panel (I have found it works best if participants type questions into a Q&A panel rather than ask questions verbally). Answer questions throughout the presentation rather than holding them until the end. I also have a moderator sift through the submitted questions so the speaker isn’t distracted from their content. If you won’t have a moderator, the speaker can always discuss questions submitted ahead of time.
  8. Add value, never sell. No one is going to hang around for an hour-long sales pitch. Give attendees specific content that adds value and key takeaways that they can act on immediately.
  9. End with a strong call to action. What do you want them to do after the webinar? Visit a website? Sign up for something? Continue the conversation on your Facebook page? Be clear on your messaging and give instructions on the last slide.
  10. Maintain the relationship. I like to provide attendees a few content pieces from the expert speaker, either ahead of time as preparation for the webinar or after the webinar as a thank you. Our members really like to have PDF downloads of the PowerPoint presentation to write notes on during the webinar. Vistage members can count on receiving the webinar archive after the webinar. Have the speakers answer the unanswered questions later on in a blog post and link to it in the archive email, so those whose questions were missed are still addressed.

 

What did I miss? Please reply to this post with your strategies for growing your webinar attendance and registration.

 

 

 

 

About the Author:  Katie Reynolds is the Marketing Manager of Webinars and Public Relations at Vistage, an executive coaching organization that helps CEO members build better companies through unique business coaching opportunities.