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The Ultimate Webinar Promotions Playbook

Great content is an indisputably critical ingredient to a successful webinar.

driving attendance and engagement is the key that ultimately determines the

content’s effectiveness — no matter the end goal.

A successful webinar promotion strategy delivers tons of viewers who are actively engaged and love your content. Since only about 37% of your pre-registrants will attend the live event, you’ll need to increase your number of registrations to improve your attendance and offer incentives for registrants to watch live.

This guide outlines a set of instrumental promotional tactics to maximize registration, drive attendance, and help guide prospects down the funnel with your webinar content.

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6 essential tools for your promotional toolbox

Structure. Arguably the most important factor in gaining pre-registrations, your webinar needs a catchy, relevant title that makes readers eager to learn more. It’s also key to craft an enticing and informative abstract, rich with keywords that will grab your target audience’s attention.

Email. Email remains the most important promotional tactic for driving webinar attendance. Incorporate personalized, relevant messages with eye-catching subject lines and optimized outreach timing to connect best with your audience.

Social Media. Depending on your budget, utilize both paid and organic content on various social media platforms to amplify your promotions.

Blogging. Informative and fun blog posts are a cost-effective, simple way to promote your webinar, with the option to feature different perspectives and topics.

Influencers. Expert influencers speak to new audiences that you can leverage to market to a wider audience.

Giveaways. Gifts, service discounts, or free consultations provide powerful incentive to engage in the live event (and stay for the whole thing!).

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The ideal promotional campaign spans about 4 weeks prior to the live event, with a minimum suggested promotion time of about 2.5 weeks.

Pre-event promotional timing

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Creating a catchy, relevant title that makes readers eager to learn more is key to driving registrations, but it’s also one of the most difficult aspects to get right.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when crafting your strategy:

Rhetorical strategy — title, speaker & beyond1

● Catchy - Make it memorable, unique, and engaging

● Actionable - Incite an action, solve a problem, or ask a question

● Anti-yawn worthy - Put a new spin on old topics

Title Speaker Abstract● An expert in the field, whether a blogger,

author or industry leader● If it’s an internal presenter, they should

be a manager, senior manager, VP, director or C-suite

● Fun! While sometimes someone may have better credentials, you’ll need a speaker who can really connect and engage with your audience. Beware of putting someone on a webinar just because of their title.

● SEO rich and include at least 3 keywords that target your demographic’s pain points

● Include at least one statistic or metric that proves the informational value of the webinar (i.e. how someone increased revenue or the value of the market)

● Keep it short. Include one introductory paragraph and then lead into the takeaways from the session. People tend to browse abstracts so make sure your points stand out.

The most effective way to get your content noticed is to deliver it directly into your prospect’s inbox.

Email! Email! Email!2

Each email you send has the power to take on its own identity and leverage the subject line to entice your audience to open your email. You can easily A/B test subject lines to learn what works best for your particular audience.

2 largest factors influencing open rates:

Company

Subject line

Source: Chadwick Martin Bailey

64%47%

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Company

Subject lineCc Bcc

Subject: Make it strong and compelling

Subject: Make it strong and compellingTo

Subject: Make it strong and compelling

Cc Bcc

Subject: Make it strong and compelling

Subject: Make it strong and compelling

You have just a few seconds to grab your reader’s attention before they delete your email; make sure you’re using a catchy title, sharing informative data, and/or highlighting an expert speaker to quickly capture interest. Show your audience what they’ll learn from attending your webinar.

The engaging email subject line

Subject: Make it strong and compelling

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Taylor Freitas, Content Marketing Associate

BrightTALK, 501 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94105

ways to personalize email content and create relevance4

1. Describe the webinar topic, time, and duration. These critical details help your prospects determine if the content is relevant to them and if they can attend.

2. Highlight the value for the participant. Help your audience identify how the webinar will benefit them. Use 3-4 bullet points with takeaways to convey this succinctly.

3. Include shareable icons. Drive organic traffic to your webinar by encouraging viewers to share with their networks. If any part of your abstract catches their interest, they can easily share it with the click of a button.

4. Invest in an email marketing service. Utilize the various marketing automation systems that provide features that allow you to personalize every email based on your audience’s personas, behaviors, and demographics.

Combine these email content ideas for a powerful, customized approach:

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Strategically timing your sends and reinforcing registrant engagement throughout the campaign

According our Webinar Benchmarks Report, Monday has the highest pre-registration numbers, followed closely by Tuesday and Wednesday. Send your outreach emails earlier in the week to drive more traffic to your webinar.

There are several types of emails that are useful throughout your promotional cycle. A recent Frost & Sullivan study showed that BrightTALK viewers enjoy and rely on emails to keep them up to date on new information, event changes, and important links.

Confirmations. Registrants want to know they are confirmed for the webinar before adding it to their calendar. They also want a link in their inbox to easily access the presentation.

Reminders. Short reminder emails sent up to 24 hours before your event are among the most successful strategies for increas-ing attendance rates. On BrightTALK, the “Starting Now” email, sent 15 minutes before the live event, receives a 40% click-through rate -- make sure to leverage these emails to maximize attendance.

Follow-ups for pre-registrants. This key email should be sent to those who missed the live event, with a link to the on-demand recording.

Follow-ups for attendees. Make attendees feel valued for watching your webinar and develop your connection with them by thanking them for attending the live event.

Cancellations. Create a cancellation email template to have ready in case of emergencies, but don’t plan to use them regularly. Try to minimize the number of cancelled webinars, otherwise viewers may get frustrated and give up on your content.

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40%CTR

25%CTR

15%CTR

10%CTR

56% of all emails are opened on a mobile device. Make sure your promotional emails are mobile friendly.

Starting nowemails

Follow-up emails for pre-registrants who missed the event

Webinar rescheduled/cancelled emails

Confirmationemails

Source: Litmus

Email CTR Benchmarks

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Tweet, post, connect & share to drive registration and engagement

“Entice potential viewers on social media by sharing:● Statistics● Trends in your market● Speakers● Giveaways● Quotes of thought leaders related to the topic

Pre-schedule as many posts as possible to save time and maintain continuous engagement with your viewers. Some top social media pre-scheduling platforms that can help include:

Content is the fire… Social is the gasoline. – Jay Baer

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If you’re in the B2B space, LinkedIn should be your first priority to promote your webinar. Make sure not to over do it on this platform -- promote the webinar 1-2 times per week at most. You can also “pin” your promotion to the top of your company page to draw extra attention.

● Best days: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday

● Most clicks and shares: Tuesdays from 10-11am

● Optimal viewing times: 7-8am or 5-6pm

As opposed to LinkedIn, Twitter provides a newsfeed that encourages more frequent posting. 1-2 tweets per day promoting your webinar is constant content to grab attention during the sporadic user visits.

● Best days: Monday through Friday● Highest retweet time: 5pm● Optimal viewing times: 12pm and

6pm

In the B2B world, Facebook should come as your last priority, as people who are on the platform are typically less in a work state of mind and using it as a way to escape for a bit. As with LinkedIn, try posting 1-2 times per week for optimal results.

● Best days: Thursday and Friday● Most clicks: 12pm and 3pm● Most shares: 1pm

Optimizing 3 main B2B social channels

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Make it effortless for your colleagues to promote your content by equipping them with social collateral to paste into their preferred social platform. Be sure to include:

● Google URL tracking link to your webinar landing page (minimized with a link shortener like bit.ly)

● Relevant hashtags (check out hashtagify.me to see the best performing hashtags for your topic)

● Company and/or speaker social handle● 4-6 examples for your colleagues to copy and paste into

social media (Click to Tweet makes the process even simpler for Twitter users)

Your employees are one of your greatest promotional tools. In fact, leads developed from employee social marketing initiatives are seven times more likely to convert.

Employee advocacy

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Promote your webinar with blog posts4

While there are a staggering 2 million blog posts written every day, blogs have longer lifespans than many other content formats, receiving 99% of their impressions over 700 days. Despite the huge volume of online content, your blog can still be a cost-effective way to educate and entice viewers. By offering stellar, entertaining content, you’re earning the trust of your audience.

So why not utilize this valuable space to promote your upcoming webinar? Just make sure your post is educational -- not self-promotional.

Pre-Event Blog Post Ideas● Interview with a speaker on market insights● Trends or statistics around the topic● In-depth preview of one of the webinar’s key points● List of useful resources related to the topic● Topic overview to set the foundation for beginners

Proper CTA Placement

Hyperlink a couple of words in the second paragraph of your post so it isn’t entirely obvious that the link is promoting a webinar. Link to the presentation again in the final paragraph, this time using a more obvious CTA that ties into the blog topic, with a request that the reader join you at the webinar to learn more.

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For more about blogging to promote webinars, check out our blogging guide.

Promote your webinar with blog posts Tapping influencers to help promote your content5

One word-of-mouth impression is 5x more effective than paid advertising alone. Influencers are experts with an audience of readers and followers that you can leverage to maximize registration. What can influencers do for webinar promotion? They can share their audience, help position you as a thought leader and identify you as a great resource within your community.

Who are influencers?

In the media

on socialnetworks

Looking for newand interesting topics

to cover

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Make sure the influencers you target are relevant, highly visible individuals who provide reach with their audience.

Influencers might be:

Leaders in industry news

Pro bloggers

Business journalists

Analysts

LinkedIn influencers

Thought leaders

Build your influencer list

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How do you pitch an influencer to become involved with your promotional campaign?

1. Personalize the connection with their first name. Customizing your message demonstrates that you recognize this influencer as an individual and aren’t just blasting everyone in their industry.

“Good morning, Sally.”

2. Start with their topic. Influencers want information to share with their audience. Show you care about their subject.

“I know you write about B2B demand generation.”

3. Acknowledge their audience. What value can you provide their followers?

“I have some great information your readers will find extremely interesting.”

4. Include 2-3 power bullets. Supply a few core points from your webinar (a trend, statistic, or a new study) to grab their attention and highlight your own expertise.

5. Entice with the promise of more. Supply a link to your webinar landing page where they can find more information.

“In closing, this and other information will be in my webinar on [date] and [time].”

6. End with your qualifications. Put the influencer at the forefront and your own details at the end.

“Cordially, Jane Jones. P.S. I lead tech strategy at BrightTALK and authored…”

The perfect influencer pitch decoded

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Giveaways and other promotional incentives6

Small gifts or incentives

Some companies give away $5 Starbucks gift cards or company

swag as a gift to live viewers. Depending on your budget, this could be a fun way to increase

live attendance.

Discounts

Offer 20% off your service or product to a fixed number of registrants or to anyone who asks a question during

your Q&A.

Autographed books

A great option when your key speaker has a book, authority and expertise.

Offer a free, signed copy to five attendees or to the person who

tweets the most about your webinar. Useful, tangible, and relevant gifts

provide a constant reminder of your webinar and encourages sharing.

Set Increasing Goals To Encourage Promotion Creativity

Set a target goal for your registration numbers and don’t stop until you reach it. Try increasing your goal each day on the week prior to the event.

Your exact number will vary depending on the maturity of your webinar program and the size of your distribution database. For example, however, on Monday, you might aim for 400 registrations. On Wednesday, raise that goal to 450.

This technique refreshes promotion motivation and generates new ideas for promotions. Come up with clever tactics unique to your skill set and industry. Brainstorm!

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These powerful tools can help you increase registration, boost live attendance, and engage your audience. Through the strategic use of things like personal and relevant emails, informative blog content,

powerful influencers, and creative incentives, you’ll drive more engaged attendees to your webinars and expand your reach.

To learn how BrightTALK can help you acquire your target audience and accelerate your pipeline success today, visit our marketing solutions page.

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