The Most Effective Webinar Follow Up Strategies In One Place
Hosting a webinar is a great way to increase sales, move potential customers further into the sales funnel, and build brand awareness.
It is common to feel exhilarated upon the completion of your webinar, then dive right into the analytics, but you have to finish the life cycle of the event delivery.
One of the most critical factors in delivering a successful webinar is also one of the most overlooked tasks on the webinar timeline. It’s a huge mistake to overlook the follow-up after your webinar has concluded.
It’s frustrating to put your time into organizing a well-attended webinar, only to be disappointed with your conversion results.
Not all your attendees will convert, but you can do things after the webinar to increase conversions.
Why Does Follow Up Matter?
Technology is a fantastic thing. It allows us to connect from miles away and meet new people we may otherwise encounter. However, there is one key factor that technology cannot do for us: the commonly forgotten follow-up.
Your webinar follow-up is just as necessary as your event landing page and webinar content. The follow-up allows you to maintain contact with potential customers, clients, and investors. It helps you get more people to convert and believe in your brand. It’s what builds important relationships that help grow your business.
The best time to follow up is 24 hours after your webinar. This gives your client time to digest the virtual event and start forming an opinion about your business.
Never wait more than 42 hours to follow up with your webinar attendees. Anything beyond 42 hours means loss of clients as participants mentally move on from your event.
Let’s look at three ways you can follow up with webinar attendees to increase your event ROI.
3 Ways To Follow-Up With Webinar Attendees
Here are three parts of the webinar follow-up process: you need to check off your to-do list before counting your event as a success.
1. Q&A SESSIONS
In general, it is best to address questions from attendees during a Q&A session following the webinar presentation. However, there will be times when a question is off-topic or far too complex to answer as part of your webinar.
When you run across a question that you will need to answer offline, the first step is to acknowledge the person who asked the question. Let them know you will answer the question via email/social media/phone call and provide a brief reason you will be doing so.
This process serves a two-fold purpose. First, you let the questioner know you are not ignoring them, but an answer will not come later.
Second, you create an opportunity for other people who have similar questions to speak up and ask for a response as well.
When you respond to a question from a webinar post-event, remember to reference both the webinar topic and the exact question asked by the attendee. This helps contextualize your answer if the person forgets exactly what they had requested.
Responding to questions after a webinar is an opportunity to have a positive interaction with your webinar attendee, and you should treat them as an extension of the webinar itself.
Respond as quickly as possible – if you wait too long, the questioner can feel disregarded or forgotten. Also, be sure to invest the effort to create a detailed and accurate response.
2. Post Webinar Survey
It is common to request that your attendee complete a post-event survey to evaluate the presenter’s effectiveness or the content in the presentation.
Include a variety of question types to collect the best data:
Post-Webinar Survey Question Type |
Example |
Multiple Choice |
“Would You Recommend This Event To A Colleague?” |
Ranking Scales |
“On A Scale Of 1-5, How Would You Rank The Presenter’s Knowledge On The Webinar Topic? |
Open-Ended Questions |
“What Other Topics Would You Be Interested In Learning About In The Future?” |
As important as analyzing the event analytics, follow-up evaluations provide you with a more detailed look at who your attendees are.
Don't be afraid of bad reviews. Use every opportunity as a learning experience so you can make your next event a success. Don't forget to look at the pre-event analytics and compare the metrics for critical insights.
3. Webinar Follow Up Email
An automated webinar email sequence ensures that registrants who sign up for your webinar show up. Once they attend, they receive valuable information from your event and connect with your brand in a new and personalized way.
Email marketing automation means that you don’t need to put any extra work into sending these emails.
The typical webinar email sequence includes the following steps:
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Webinar Invitation
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Post Webinar Registration Confirmation Email
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First Email Reminder; One Week Before The Upcoming Webinar
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Second Reminder Email; 24 Hours Prior
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Third Webinar Reminder Email; Same Day As Virtual Event
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Thank You Email
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Follow-Up Email
Best Practices show us that sending an email to the registrants 24-48 hours after the live event increases retention of the content you delivered. Make sure your email subject line contains a CTA and references your main message.
In this email, you can provide a link to the OnDemand webinar recording, links to SlideShare, and your LinkedIn page. Attendees can access your webinar content, essential links, and connect with you on social media to stay updated on upcoming webinars.
Customize the follow-up emails for both the people who attended the webinar and the people who registered but were no-shows.
Read: Webinar Metrics to Track & Analyze
Remember that the value of your event content does not end when showtime is over - in fact, that is just the beginning of the lifecycle of creating evergreen content. Make sure to repurpose your event content in an OnDemand content library and by distributing recordings over email and social media.
Master The Art Of The Webinar With BeaconLive
BeaconLive has been an industry-learning webinar platform for over twenty years. Committed to global scalability, high security, and incomparable quality, Beacon Live can scale any event up to over 40,000 attendees.
We offer impeccable customer service for professional quality webinars and media libraries to host your unique content.
Contact BeaconLive today to get started on making your upcoming webinar a success.