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You’ve spent weeks planning and creating content, designing slides, and setting up the technical backend for your webinar.
It’s a lot of work, and there’s no guarantee anyone shows up.
In fact, 78% of webinars have 50 or fewer attendees.
But if you can pull it off and have a full house, webinars can drive real results for your brand.
36% of marketers say webinars are their most effective type of content for building relationships with leads.
That’s because a good webinar is:
Personalized
Packed with value
More interactive than other content types
You’ll get a chance to build a real relationship with your audience, answer their burning questions, and prove why they should trust you.
Luckily, there are simple strategies you can take to boost your webinar attendance.
One of the most effective is to use a carefully crafted webinar email sequence.
Email is the most effective way to drive webinar signups, driving 57% of registrations. Social media comes in a distant second place, driving only 14% of sign-ups.
In this guide, I’m going to show you the exact steps you need to take. From finding out what exact topics you should cover, to following up after your webinar with your participants to gather feedback and improve conversions, we’ll cover it all.
Let’s dive in.
Why You Need a Well-Thought Out Email Sequence
If you wanted to schedule a get-together with 50+ people in person, you’d need weeks of planning to find a suitable date.
Approach your webinar in the same way.
Your audience needs advance warning. You’ll be able to get a spot on their calendar before it’s booked up with other commitments.
According to ON24’s Webinar Benchmarks report, most attendees (54%) sign up at least eight days before the webinar, with 28% signing up more than 15 days in advance.
A well-crafted email sequence allows you to have multiple steps, ensuring you have people signing up at every step.
In your email sequence, you’ll:
Show your audience what they’ll gain by attending (knowledge, network, industry secrets...)
Build FOMO by mentioning post-webinar offers
Turn a cold audience into sales-ready leads
The best part about using email to promote your webinar is that once you’ve created your sequence, it’ll run on autopilot.
If people reply, you’ll still need to respond manually.
But, that’s a perfect way to show you’re a real person behind the scenes and dedicated to helping your audience succeed.
Next, I’m going to show you the exact steps you should include in your webinar sequence.
We’ll cover:
Pre-webinar: what you need to be doing to boost attendance and collect early feedback
Post-webinar: how to gather feedback and encourage your attendees to take action
Let’s take a look.
Key Steps in Your Webinar Email Sequence
1. The Announcement Email
The webinar announcement email is a big moment. You’re releasing your webinar to the world.
There are a few ingredients you need to include in this introduction email.
1. Webinar topic: You need to show people what you’re going to be talking about during the session. If the topic resonates with someone, they’ll be happy to sign-up instantly.
2. Who: To build trust and social proof, show who will be presenting. That could be you, or it could be a guest. If your audience knows they’ll be learning from a real expert, they’ll want to make sure they don’t miss out on the insights.
3. Date: The date and time need to be obvious. Tell them when it’s happening so they can add it to their calendar immediately.
4. Location details: Where is the webinar going to be hosted? Add your event URL to the email. As well as that, create a one-click calendar invite for Google Calendar and Outlook so your recipients can create an event on their calendar, containing all of the details they need to know.
5. A Question: If you want to ensure the webinar is worth attending, include a question as a final call-to-action. For example: “What can I do to make this webinar a home run for you?”. You’ll get instant feedback from potential attendees. You can make sure your webinar covers the topics your audience wants to hear about and create a personalized session.
Finally, aim to make your email personal.
In QuickMail, you can populate your webinar using the information you already have on your email list.
For example, using the {{prospect.first_name}} attribute will make every email you send personally addressed to the recipient.
It's a simple step but will help your email look more authentic.
2. The Post-Registration Email
Assuming your webinar invite email resonates with your recipients, people will have started signing up. A post-registration email will be you confirming that they’re booked on, re-iterating the value they’ll get by attending, and sending another calendar invite.
Most webinar platforms will send an automatic email confirmation to registered attendees. But, if you’re hosting your webinar on a standalone video conference platform, don’t worry - it’ll still be easy to set up. You’ll just need a new campaign that people are added to when they confirm their attendance.
In your post-registration confirmation email, you’ll need to:
1. Confirm their attendance: Make sure they know they’re registered. It sounds obvious, but if not, you’ll get emails from people asking if they’re booked in.
2. Re-send the calendar invite: If someone registered for the event but forgot to add it to their calendar, this will save them a lot of hassle.
3. Brief them on the next steps: Tell them exactly what to expect next. For example: “You’ll hear from us 1 day before the webinar, and we’ll send you a reminder 30 minutes before we go live”.
4. Build expectations: Now, just because someone signed up, doesn’t mean they’ll show up. Build expectations for your webinar by highlighting a takeaway they’ll get, and make it something they’ll be genuinely interested in. For example: “I’ll share the exact process I used to generate $50k in the pipeline with a simple email campaign”.
Remember, the person receiving this email has already trusted you with their time and attention, so make sure your webinar confirmation email shows you’re genuinely appreciative of their time.
3. The 1-Week To Go Reminder Email
At this stage, you should already have a list of people who will be attending your webinar.
But, you’ll also have a list of people who haven’t signed up. It’s time to send them a friendly webinar reminder email. It’s a simple way to ensure they didn’t miss your first email, and boost your attendance rates.
As well as that, you’ll help encourage existing registrants to attend. On average, only 56% of registrants end up attending live, so it’s important to reiterate the benefits of being there.
Here are some key things to include in your reminder email:
1. Recap: Reiterate what the webinar will be on and the benefits of attending. Your recipient may have missed your initial emails or been too busy to look into it. A friendly reminder won’t hurt anyone.
2. Acknowledge their objections: Some of your audience may not be attending due to prior commitments, time zone issues, or, they simply don’t want to commit 30-60 minutes without knowing what they’ll get from it. An effective way to boost signups is to tell people that they’ll receive the webinar recording. Even if they can’t attend live, they’ll be happy to sign up to receive the recording. After all, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain - if your content is as good as you say it is.
3. Highlight extra benefits: To boost attendance, you should highlight the additional benefits of attending. For example, do webinar attendees get access to free resources? Is there a live Q&A session at the end? Will attendees get a special discount for another course or product?
4. Ask for feedback: Your prospect might be skeptical. If they show up, are you just going to spend 30 minutes pitching them on your products or services? In your reminder email, ask your audience what it will take to get them to attend. You’ll receive feedback on topics to cover, objections, and you’ll build a relationship with your audience.
4. The Big Day Email [To Non-Registered Audience]
It’s finally here. It’s the day of your long-awaited webinar.
Naturally, there are a few nerves. A simple way to alleviate those is to have confidence that your webinar registrants will show up. You can ensure they do with a well-timed reminder email.
There are going to be two emails you send on the day of your webinar:
The email you send to people who still haven’t registered (this one)
The email you send to registered attendees
Here are a few key points to mention in the email to people who haven’t registered.
1. They don’t need to attend live: Remind your list that you’ll send them the recording after the webinar. This is a great way to boost sign-ups and ensures you can provide value to everyone, even if they’re not available at the time of your event.
2. Table of contents: Tell your audience exactly what you’re going to cover. This can be as simple as a bulleted list with the main topics. If someone is interested in any of the topics you’re covering, they’ll attend. Make it quick and straightforward to read, even if someone is on mobile.
3. Time and location: Your email’s goal is to make it easy for people to sign-up for your webinar. Remind them what time it’s happening (add your time in the most common timezones your audience is based in), and the location. You can paste the event link in full, so it’s easy to save or for someone to copy-paste into their browser to attend.
Don’t forget to send this reminder email. 17% of registrations occur on the day of the webinar, so there’s still a significant opportunity to boost your attendance rate.
Keep it simple, and prove that you’re going to be offering massive value to your attendees.
5. The Big Day Email [To Registrants]
Next, you need an email to remind everyone who signed up that today is the big day.
You know they’re already interested in the topic, so you don’t need to make your email too pushy.
But, you still need to make a case for showing up. If your audience is:
Business owners
Busy managers
Anyone with a busy schedule
They will have other meetings, tasks, and deadlines. If they don’t see your event as a priority, they won’t show up.
So, with that in mind, what should you include?
1. Benefits of attending live: Highlight why they show up and not merely wait for the recording to land in their inbox. Mention things like a live Q&A session with you or your guest speakers, a secret announcement, access to templates they can use.
2. Webinar start time: Remind them what time it starts, and make sure to add the time in multiple time zones. As well as that, make it more personal by saying: “That’s 2 hours from now”. This will help you avoid losing attendees simply because they misremembered the start time.
3. Final logistics: Do your participants need to install a Chrome extension or download an app to join your call? Do you have a workbook that attendees can use to follow along? Now’s the time to make sure they know about it and have everything they need to get the most value out of your webinar.
This segment of your email list has already signed up and proven they’re interested. Now, it’s on you to get them over the finish line and ensure your participants show up.
6. The Post-Webinar Thank You Email
Your webinar has just wrapped up. Your post-webinar email is a big opportunity. You can send this to your entire list, even if people didn’t attend your webinar.
Here are a few key things to mention in this email.
1. Thank your attendees: Make your attendees feel appreciated. They didn’t have to show up, but they committed an hour of their day to join you. Make it known that you truly appreciate their time.
2. A recap: Recap the main points. For those who attended, it’s an excellent way to reinforce the value they took from it. For those who didn’t attend, it’s another chance to encourage them to watch the replay.
3. Resources mentioned in the webinar: If you referred to resources such as books, templates, or tools, make sure to link to them. It’ll help people take action if they didn’t have time during the webinar itself.
4. Upsell: If you’re using your webinar as part of a strategy to boost sales, now is the time to add a CTA. For example, if your free webinar was about sales strategies, now is the moment to add a unique discount code to your offer. Depending on your business model, that could be a discount for the first month using your product, a discount to your course, or access to a private community.
How to Boost Your Email Sequence Success
1. Don’t Rely on HTML Templates
It’s tempting to create beautifully designed HTML email templates. Years ago, it was a good way to stand out, but today, HTML emails aren’t as effective.
HubSpot ran A/B tests on plain-text vs. HTML templates and discovered the plain-text version had a 21% higher clickthrough rate.
Why? Well, people know that a templated HTML email isn’t a personal email. On the other hand, a plain-text email makes it feel like they’re receiving a personal email from a friend or colleague.
As well as that, you’ll be more likely to land in the promotions folder if your email is a colorful HTML template, which will result in fewer opens, and ultimately, fewer webinar registrations.
2. Send from a Personal Email Address
To make people feel like you’re personally inviting them, don’t send from a no-reply email address or a generic one like no-reply@company.com or marketing@company.com.
Send emails from your own email address.
There are a few benefits to this:
First, people are more likely to reply to you with feedback.
No one wants to reply to a generic marketing@company.com email address. But if the email comes from you, they know who will be receiving their reply and will be happy to send you an email with feedback or topics they want to see in your webinar.
As well as that, you’ll build trust.
You’re proving you’re a real person, and the webinar isn’t just another generic marketing tactic. You’re investing your time and energy into promoting it, so your recipients will trust that it’s worth the time to attend.
Suppose you don’t want to send emails from your email account, but prefer to use a separate email to manage your marketing campaigns. In that case, you can easily manage your replies using QuickMail with our multiple inbox feature.
Simply head to your account settings, and add the email address you want your campaign to send from.
You’ll get notified when your attendees reply, and you’ll be able to keep your primary inbox clear.
3. Don’t Forget The Webinar Follow-Ups
Just because your webinar ran smoothly, you can’t stop there.
A follow-up email sequence is a perfect way to turn your webinar leads into customers.
Remind them of the value your session provided. Whether it was expert tips, industry secrets, or processes to improve their life or work in some way, the most effective webinars relate to your business in some way.
Then, nurture them towards a sale.
You can also use your webinar follow-ups to announce any upcoming webinars you have in the pipeline and start building your attendee list and validating your webinar topics.
Using QuickMail to Create Your Webinar Email Sequence
Assuming you don’t want to send your webinar email sequence manually, you’ll need email automation software, like QuickMail.
Using QuickMail, you can quickly build complex sequences with pre-set delays and triggers to move people in or out of your campaigns.
We also integrate with your favorite tools, including Zapier. No matter where you’re hosting your webinar, you can automatically add your registrants to the right campaigns with a simple Zap.
After your webinar, you can automatically follow up with everyone who attended without lifting a finger.
You can grab a free trial to test it out, and our team is always happy to help you get set up.
Wrapping Up
Webinars are a significant time investment, but if you can pull it off, they’re a fantastic way to generate leads for your business.
Creating an email sequence is the perfect way to show your audience why they should attend and boost your attendance rate.
You’ll also be able to gather valuable feedback, both before and after the vent. You’ll know what content to include to make your webinar a must-attend event and be able to learn from your attendees about their favorite parts.
You can easily create a webinar email sequence using QuickMail, and you can get started with a free trial here.
