13 Webinar Engagement Strategies to Keep Audiences Invested

Lengthy presentations, monotonous delivery, and a one-way stream of information. We’ve all been in an uninspiring webinar or online event like this.

But no matter the topic, no virtual event has to be boring. With the right tech and creative engagement ideas, you can make your webinar memorable.

In this article, we explore 13 webinar engagement strategies designed to create a dynamic webinar experience that engages your audience before the event even starts and keeps them interested long after it ends.

Engaging webinar attendees is the key to profitability

Increasing webinar engagement before, during, and after the event is the ticket to maximizing lead generation and conversion opportunities.

Before the event you need pre-webinar engagement strategies like email sequences and branded registration pages. They're critical to getting sign-ups and shares, warming up your audience, and increasing familiarity with your brand.

Keeping attendees focused and participating throughout the webinar makes them much more likely to talk about your company positively and take action afterward.

For example, by offering an exclusive free trial or consultation to webinar participants, you could encourage more people to take immediate action on your product/service and get more insights about their specific challenges.

By capturing information from engaged attendees during the event, you can also tailor your follow-up marketing toward them. For example, if you find out what challenges your audience are facing, by using a live poll or inviting people to turn on their mics and share, you can provide solutions later in the webinar.

13 Webinar engagement activities that turn a boring event into a wild success

Ready to transform your team's virtual events? Use our creative tips and webinar best practices to increase engagement and host more dynamic events.

Before the webinar

To truly engage attendees, you need to start generating anticipation and establishing a connection before your webinar begins.

Luckily, webinar software like Livestorm can help you connect with your target audience more efficiently.

Here's what to do before your next webinar:

1. Build attractive registration pages
2. Research your audience’s interests
3. Create an email marketing campaign

1. Build attractive registration pages

To create a consistent brand experience and capture leads, you need a great webinar registration page. It should include information like:

• The agenda with webinar topics and highlights
• Date, time, and duration with slots for fun activities
• A list of speakers with a short bio for each

With a video engagement platform like Livestorm, you can customize these pages with your branding to create a great first impression. Plus, you can create custom forms to capture key data.

Pro tip: Turn every website visitor into a potential lead by creating a call-out banner that links to your webinar registration page. Use tools like Canva or Piktochart to quickly design eye-catching graphics.

2. Research your audience’s interests

You can make your webinars more engaging by understanding what attendees want from the event—and using this feedback to inform your agenda.

To gather this data, ask some targeted questions in your registration form.

These can include:

• What specific questions or challenges do you hope the webinar will address?
• How would you describe your level of experience or familiarity with (topic/industry)?
• What are your current goals or objectives related to (topic/industry)?

3. Create an email marketing campaign

By creating an email marketing campaign, you make sure that registrants get excited about (and don’t forget!) your webinar.

Here’s an example of an automated sequence you can set up through Livestorm’s MailChimp or Mailjet integrations:

1. A post-registration email that lets people know which presenters they can look forward to hearing from
2. A one-week reminder that outlines the agenda for the webinar
3. A concise reminder the day before the webinar

During the webinar

A successful webinar makes every participant feel seen and involved. This requires a carefully designed structure with room for attendee input and connection.

Here's how to prioritize interactivity during the webinar:

4. Build an engaging live experience
5. Encourage connection with breakout rooms
6. Use polls to promote interaction
7. Include a Q&A session
8. Guide attendees through a stretching session
9. Use virtual whiteboards
10. Include a call-to-action

4. Build an immersive live experience

If your webinar room looks like everyone else's, you’re missing an opportunity to capture your attendees’ attention.

By creating a custom experience with software like Livestorm, you can include features such as graphics, branding, and virtual backgrounds to kick your event off in a more engaging way.

5. Encourage connection with breakout rooms

Webinar attendees can be much more than just viewers. Keep them engaged by helping them make connections and have interesting conversations.

Breakout rooms are a great way to do this because you can:

• Run ice breakers that make people feel part of a group. Try asking participants to introduce themselves in three emojis, for example.
• Set up problem-solving workshops. Give groups case studies or real-life examples to analyze. This is a particularly effective idea as part of a training webinar.
• Create space for reflection. Give attendees 5 minutes to discuss what they've learned and reflect on how it impacts their work. Then, ask them to give feedback in the main room so you can learn more about their challenges.

6. Use polls to promote interaction

By using polls and surveys, you can create a dynamic atmosphere that keeps people engaged with your presentation.

At the beginning, try out a few ice breaker polls such as “Which continent/region/city are you tuning in from?” Then, midway through, check in to see whether people are following along with your content by asking “Do you need more explanation on (X topics)?”

At the end, check which topics or aspects of your service your attendees want to find out more about. Then, use this to create a segmented follow-up strategy.

Pro tip: Use Livestorm’s webinar chat to allow your attendees to send more in-depth thoughts while they watch. You can set up a moderator to oversee the chat box and learn more about what audience members want to know.

7. Include a Q&A session

A Q&A session is the perfect interactive element to lighten the mood mid-webinar.

For example, you could ask people to respond quickly to a knowledge quiz or to react with emojis to a question.

You can also use these sessions to centralize attendee questions and find out which direction they want the rest of the webinar to go in. With Livestorm, people can upvote the questions they’d most like to be answered.

8. Guide attendees through a stretching session

Webinars often involve sitting still for long periods, and this can hurt engagement rates.

To combat restlessness, you can involve attendees in a mid-presentation stretching session.

This could include gentle, side-to-side neck movements, slow shoulder rolls, and deep breaths.

9. Use virtual whiteboards

When attendees are responsible for sharing ideas, they’re more likely to stay engaged.

And a virtual whiteboard is the perfect way to bring a group of people together for brainstorming.

Use Miro and Mural alongside Livestorm to encourage attendees to collaborate during your webinar.

10. Include a call-to-action at the end

To guide attendees further along your sales funnel and collect data to analyze the success of your webinar, be sure to include a call-to-action (CTA) at the end.

Here are some examples of pages you can link out to using Livestorm’s clickable CTAs:

• A registration form for a future session
• A web page about your product or services
• A feedback form for them to rate the session

After the webinar

Maximize the impact of your webinar by following up with attendees while they’re still engaged. This will keep your brand top of mind and encourage them to take next steps.

Here' are a few ideas for boosting engagement after a webinar:

11. Send automated emails
12. Share an on-demand webinar recording
13. Review webinar analytics

11. Send automated emails

With a webinar platform like Livestorm, you can easily set up automated email flows to send after the webinar is over.

These emails should share key learnings, inform attendees about upcoming virtual events, and include a link for them to reach out to your sales team.

You can also use the segmented information you collected pre and during the webinar to address their specific concerns and goals.

For example, if a group shared beforehand that they wanted to learn how to create more engaging seminars and then asked how they could implement networking, you could link them to a blog about breakout rooms and encourage them to reach out with any questions.

12. Share an on-demand webinar recording

Sharing webinar recordings encourages attendees to rewatch, reflect, and reach out with any questions. It also allows you to capture new leads.

For example, you could upload the recording to YouTube so it can be reshared or gate the on-demand content on your website to capture email addresses every time it gets downloaded.

With Livestorm, you can view traffic data to understand where people are watching your webinar from and analyze attendee figures and in-webinar audience engagement.

13. Review webinar analytics

One of the most effective ways to design engaging webinars is to analyze how your previous events performed—and then use the data to make the next event even better and more interactive.

As a video engagement platform, Livestorm offers advanced analytics that help you evaluate event performance. After each event, review the analytics to assess how your audience engaged.

Use Livestorm's Video Engagement Score to identify your most engaging online events and measure the success of your webinars. Then, use a similar engagement strategy to keep attendees invested in your next virtual event.

Livestorm for interactive, productive, and engaging webinars

Done right, webinar engagement activities will boost conversions and leads before, during, and after your event.

First, you can captivate your audience with a branded web page and keep them interested in your webinar via email. Then, during the event, engagement tools contribute to a fun, dynamic atmosphere that creates a sense of community.

Finally, after the event, you can use the data you collected throughout to follow up with a tailored marketing strategy for attendees and to continue to optimize your webinars for engagement success.

A video engagement platform like Livestorm makes it easy to do all of this and more with dynamic features like polls, Q&As, and breakout rooms.

Frequently asked questions about webinar engagement activities

How do I make my webinar more engaging?

To keep attendees focused, inspired, and engaged, you should make sure they’re active participants in your webinar.

This means including features such as Q&As, polls, virtual whiteboards, and breakout rooms.

You can find all of this plus engagement data inside a webinar platform such as Livestorm.

How do you engage an audience after a webinar?

To keep an audience engaged with your brand after a webinar, follow up with an on-demand download of the content and a series of emails including helpful content.

You can use these messages to answer questions that came up during the webinar and to present your product/service as a solution to their problems.