The importance of a standout email
Holding an average of two to three webinars per month over the last three years, it’s safe to say that Kate is well versed in the art of webinar promotion.
With an ever increasing number of webinar invites, Kate recognises that “driving engagement to attend webinars has become harder.” To add fuel to the fire, email results are decreasing to an average rate of:
- Open: 18%
- Click through: 2.6%
- Click to open: 14.1%
- Unsubscribe: 0.1%
In other words, if you send 10,00 emails, you’ll get 1,800 opened emails, 260 click throughs, 141 clicks to opens and 10 unsubscribes.
Slow and steady doesn’t win the race when it comes to email. As Kate maintains, you have an average of two to eight seconds to convince recipients that your message is worth taking the time to read. Your content needs to be engaging from the get-go, Kate maintains. So, how do you draw your audience in?
Set your email strategy
As Kate maintains, “when vendors send out a lot of emails without a solid strategy, it ends up that you lose meaning of any email you get from them.” Kate outlines the following emails you should be sending to your audience:
- On the fence email: send a reminder email for anyone who has clicked on the initial webinar promotion email or went onto the landing page but didn’t fill out a form.
- Confirmation email: to ensure you get the most attendance, when sending out your confirmation email make sure to include calendar links to provide an additional reminder. In this email, make sure you link to the webinar as well.
- Reminder email: sending out a reminder email one to two days before the webinar is ‘really key.’ Closer to the webinar itself, Kate recommends sending a reminder half an hour before the event, a time that has proved much more successful than one hour before.
- Follow up email: as Kate maintains, your work doesn’t stop after the live event. Provide attendees with an on demand version to share with colleagues.
- No-show email: for those who have signed up but didn’t attend on the day, similarly send an email with an on demand version of the webinar.
Variation is the name of the game when it comes to successful email marketing. Simply sending the same email to the same audience at the same time “won’t have the biggest impact, and you won’t get the results you’re looking for.”
Kate advises testing what works for your audience, something often done in Adobe. Success is, as Kate reminds us, fluid: what works one month may not work another. The key is to “keep testing varied. People get bored of the same kind of style emails.” Try different styles and formats whilst tailoring your emails to your audience. Gifs and videos prove particularly popular, especially if your webinar speaker can do an introductory video.
When it comes to promoting one webinar, Kate stresses the importance of alternating your focus in emails:
- Your first email should be a short announcement with the topic and key themes will suffice.
- The second email should contain the reasons to attend with scannable bullets. This email will have a different format, colour and header than the previous followed by a CTA.
- The third email is the “last hook to get people to register,” containing bullet point information around the speakers and once more changing the format, colour and header.
So, what makes a good webinar email invite? As the first thing your audience sees, it goes without saying that your title is crucial. Kate recommends AB testing subject titles. At Adobe, she follows the model of having two titles which are sent out to 10% of invitees. Whatever title proves most successful, this is then sent to the remaining 90%. As Kate states, this method will “help you get better results and be above the 18% average.”
When it comes to formatting the body of your email, Kate recommends a header with a few sentences detailing the event followed by scannable bullets. Time is precious at this stage. Kate cautions against having one call to action at the bottom of the email where your audience “may never get to.” Instead, have two call to actions both higher up in the email.
Check your timings
Now you’ve got your varied email, when do you send them out? Based on ON24 and Adobe experiences, Kate cautions against sending out emails at the start and end of the week. Tuesday proved most successful in sending out nurture emails with an open rate of 23%, followed by Wednesday and Thursday as third most successful with a 19% open rate.
In a similar vein, live attendance to webinars is highest during these three days. Unlike emails, Adobe finds that Thursday attracts the highest number of attendees.
From a more long-term perspective, Kate suggests running one webinar per month. This has achieved significantly better results than over stretching yourself by running multiple per month.
When it comes to running the webinar itself, keep it short and sweet. “People start to drop off after half an hour,” Kate confesses. She recommends running your webinar between 30-45 minutes, ideally having your content sitting at the half an hour mark with 5-10 minutes for questions at the end.
In terms of live attendance rate, Adobe aims for 30%. If this figure drops, this may be a moment to pause and reflect why your webinar hasn’t attracted your desired audience: is your content not crowd-pleasing? Needless to say, the further down the funnel you are, the lower your attendance will be.
Making the most out of your channels
Kate outlines various paid promotion tactics when promoting your webinar:
- Sponsored article on the topic of the event which has a call to action to watch the webinar itself.
- Sponsored emails “create great results for those new names.” Look at what vendors have the right audience for your webinar and see about putting a placement within their newsletter or sending out a sponsored email.
- Paid socials prove useful for pre- and post-webinar marketing, especially LinkedIn. Make use of short video clips which drive the on-demand viewing page.
Making the most of your channels starts at home. When it comes to pre-webinar promotion, make sure you get the event out onto the homepage and feature banners. Similarly, create blog posts on the event topic or event itself that can be shared within socials. Post-webinar, articles outlining the highlights (such as this blog itself) serve the dual-benefit of growing on-demand views whilst also acting as “great hero pieces.”
Making use of the direct mail software company Reachdesk, Adobe sends out ‘personalised’ emails to everyone who signs up to the webinar. Kate recommends sending out gifts, whether that be company swag or vouchers for food and drink.
In a similar vein, when it comes to email nurtures, Kate argues that sometimes marketers “ignore the content.” She stresses the importance of continuously updating your email nurtures in order to keep engagement. And if there’s an email that’s not performing, Kate’s answer is simple: take it out.
As Kate maintains, your sales team provides a crucial opportunity to push your webinar. With their own extensive sales network, it goes without saying that it’s important that they share webinars across social networks and their own channels. “If sales aren’t mentioning the webinar to prospects, then it’s a problem,” Kate states. Weekly meetings between sales and marketing provide an opportunity to raise excitement, expand the channels you’re marketing across all in the name of driving registrations.
Kate’s overall advice is clear: plan from start to finish, test your email and webinar timings and fill your channels with the right content to expand your marketable database. The most crucial thing to remember, however, is “don’t do webinars for the sake of doing webinars.” Make sure that you address your audience’s challenges with engaging content that solves a business issue or challenge.
Check out Kate’s webinar here.