For a webinar to be successful it is necessary to promote it in advance, but there is more! Here you find some tips
All of us during the lockdown due to Coronavirus are experiencing a forced and long period of isolation. The web is helping us fill our days. Among the many services offered online, one of the most popular is undoubtedly the webinar, which is an online training tool. More specifically, it consists of a video-conference that usually takes place live (often it is also recorded and published in the following days), during which one or more speakers propose a training lesson on a specific topic.
Today webinars conducted by experts in web marketing are very popular. Usually they are organized by training schools, that include these seminars within a course or master, or choose to make free lessons both to demonstrate their professional skills and promote their school.
If you want to be sure that the event is followed by a wide audience, it is very important to publicize it in advance, using all the tools that the Network offers. E-mail marketing is certainly one of them.
In particular, in relation to the webinar, e-mails could have different purposes. Here are the main ones.
To inform the public.
Whenever you want to publicize an event, the first step is certainly to communicate it to as many people as possible. Our advice is to send a newsletter in advance (at least three weeks before) to your contacts, in which, above all, you explain which is the topic of the webinar. It is not necessary to dwell on in-depth explanations, you will do it during the lesson, but it is useful to anticipate what it will be discussed, also to avoid that the event does not meet the expectations of the participant. Try to ask yourself and answer these questions: how is my webinar structured? Do I have a list of subjects and which are they? And more importantly: why should the user take part in it? What are the educational benefits for him/her?
Keep in mind that the first e-mail is the most important one because it is a "business card" and offers you an unmissable opportunity to stimulate and increase the user's interest in your reality. So choose a catchy subject and a good pre-header and formulate a short but well-structured text in terms of content. And the image? This should also be chosen with care, paying attention to both quality and relevance to the subject matter.
Of course, in addition to offering a brief summary on the topic addressed, it will be necessary to report other useful information so that the person you contact can attend to the event (i.e. date, time and infos on how to connect).
In order to lead the user to make the action we want, that is registering for the event, do not forget to enter the button with a call to action that refers to the registration form.
We remind you that on Mail Marketing you can find many templates to choose from for the realization of your newsletter; if you already have a custom template, you can upload it and use yours.
Reminder.
It may happen that people who have registered forget about the event when the time comes. For this reason it is advisable to send a reminder email one week before the lesson and another half an hour or an hour before. Sending the reminder on the day of the event could significantly contribute to increase the attendance rate.
Registration confirmation.
Here we go: the recipient of the email found your presentation on the webinar really interesting and decided to register. Great, all you have to do is confirm the registration with an automatic e-mail, in which you can also include the link to the Facebook event and have the participant share it on his/her profile, involving his/her virtual friends.
You could then add the link to the calendar (so that the user can include the event in his personal agenda) and remember what you said in the first message, in relation to the topics of the seminar and the information about day and time.
Thank you e-mail.
As soon as you have finished your lesson, the first thing we advise you to do is to send a thank you e-mail to those who participated. Choose the right words: write a sincere and - as much as possible - personalized message in which you express your happiness in knowing that this person has chosen to spend time listening to what you had to say.
If you have made the recording of the webinar available to the subscribers, it would be useful to also mention the link to the video.
Moreover, if at the end of the seminar you realize that some of those who had registered did not actually connect, try to contact them again and investigate their motivation, to see if they simply forgot about it, if they had problems with the link, or if he was not so much interested in your lesson and/or the topic. In order to obtain this information, the most intuitive tool is the survey: therefore, prepare a short questionnaire in which you ask the users quick information about why they did not participate. This will help you to get an idea abot their actual level of involvement in your reality.
The questionnaire could also help you to get feedback from those who participated: they will tell you if and how much the lesson was useful and interesting, and even if they would be willing to recommend it to others. Finally, you could ask to these participants to leave a review on the socials or other review platforms in which you are active.
"And that's not all!"
The webinar is over, but not your email marketing activities.
You have succeeded in capturing the curiosity of the people that received the informative newsletter and this means that you are doing a great job. Keep it up!
The fact that the user took part in the lesson, in fact, is the most evident demonstration of his interest in what you had to say/to offer, otherwise he would not have spent time on the webinar.
If he liked the topic, he will probably also be willing to buy an online in-depth course or a master's degree organized by you. Once the event is over, through e-mails you will be able to pursue your goal: to inform the user about the courses you are running at the moment, in order to take him/her to perform a further action, that is the purchase.
If you currently do not have an interesting commercial offer, you can always do it later, and in the meantime keep in touch with the user in other ways. Such as inviting them to read your blog articles or watch your training videos. All these actions will contribute to the growth of your brand awareness.
We hope that after reading this article you understood the main reasons why e-mail marketing is a formidable conversion tool, if used in the right way and with the right timing. Now all you have to do is review all the suggestions and put them into practice. Make good use of them, especially at events and one-shot proposals!
