The Best Email Sequence to Boost Webinar Attendance

When planning a webinar you need a strong email strategy. Unless your webinar topic is compelling enough to drag in an audience off the street, you’re going to have to put in some effort beforehand to, you know, actually tell people about it. In this post, we use Livestorms's updated emailing system to show you a tried and true email sequence (trust us- we’ve used it ourselves!).

Two weeks before your webinar

Two weeks before the start of your webinar, you should send an invite to your mailing list that presents your topic. Add any logistical information including the date, time, and duration of your webinar. It's the first time your audience will be hearing about your webinar, so lay out a clear value proposition. If you are hosting a co-webinar, your email will reach a bigger audience which will let your brand make new contacts.

You can send this webinar promotion email through your own emailing system, or use the built-in email invite feature in Livestorm. If you use Livestorm, simply add your mailing list to the “invite new contacts” box. They will receive an invitation email asking to register on your landing page. You can send up to 2000 email invites per webinar, so you can invite all of your friends AND their pets.

Sometimes you may want to send follow-up emails to webinar invitations. Tools like rightinbox will automatically schedule follow-up emails and cancel them once prospects have responded.

After sign up

For those in your audience who have signed up for your webinar, you should follow a 7 step contact system.

Confirm registration

Immediately after your audience member signs up for your webinar, send a message to confirm that they registered. Try to keep this basic, now is not the time for information overload.

Mention the date and time of the event, as well as the hosts and topic. You can add a widget to prompt them to share the event or add it to their calendar, but that's all you should be doing at the moment.

One week before your webinar

Your webinar is coming up, and it's time to send a reminder to your attendees! You can tease your topic and hosts, or simply just reinforce your value proposition. Include a way for them to add the event to their calendar.

In this webinar promotion example, we changed up our text by adding a statistic, reinforcing the importance of our topic.

One hour before your webinar

It's almost go-time, and now is a good opportunity to send a final reminder to your attendees. Giving them a heads up is a nice thing to do, and chances are that some people on your list wouldn't have remembered to attend otherwise. Make sure you include the link to access your webinar in this email!

As your webinar is starting

Automate an email to be sent as soon as the event goes live. Any last-minute attendees will be able to jump onboard with ease for your presentation. Think of this email as a notification to let your attendees know that your webinar is going live. You should include the link to the webinar room and a sentence explaining that it is now live.

Immediately after your webinar

So you’ve hosted your webinar and it was dreamy. The attendance was high, and you felt great about your delivery. Time to pack everything up and skip off into the sunset, right?

No way. You gotta follow up!

People who attended your webinar

Your attendees want to get two things from you: the recording of your presentation and your slides. Send them a follow-up email linking to these treasures. If you want to reinforce the connection you could add a gift, or make them feel special with an option to reply back. Don’t be afraid to personalize, fellow human.

You could also include a CTA in this email depending on your specific needs. For example, if you are hosting a sales webinar, it would be appropriate to add in a signup button with a discount code.

Contacting the no-shows

As for your no-shows? Cut them some slack (maybe they had to, um, mow their lawn?). Seriously though, sometimes people sign up for the webinars just so that they can access the replay later. Send the no-shows a nice follow-up email with the same content that you used for the attendees. Include the link to a direct replay, so they can catch up on what they missed.

One week after your webinar

One week after your webinar is over, send an email to gather feedback, and keep your audience engaged. You can even drop in a teaser for any upcoming webinars that you may have in the works. This will be the last point of contact that you have with them until your next webinar!

Takeaways

You can use this plan, or customize one of your own based on your needs. In any case, your communication flow is the best resource you have to increase webinar attendance.