A demand gen leader at a Series B SaaS company recently shared something fascinating. Last quarter, her team hosted two webinars. The first one: 847 registrations. Marketing celebrated. Leadership loved the number. The Slack channel was full of fire emojis. The second one: 143 registrations. Crickets. The CMO asked if they should "revisit the topic."
Three months later, here's what actually happened.
- Webinar #1: 847 registrations, six demos booked, one deal closed, $42,000 in pipeline
- Webinar #2: 143 registrations, 18 demos booked, five deals closed, $240,000 in pipeline
Same team. Same product. Wildly different outcomes.
The difference?
Webinar #2 wasn't optimized for registrations. It was optimized for the right registrations.
Here's the uncomfortable truth most B2B marketers don't want to admit: we've been measuring the wrong things. We've been chasing vanity metrics while real revenue walks out the back door.
According to research from EntrepreneursHQ Webinar Statistics 2025 Report, the average webinar attendance rate hovers below 50%. That means over half of registrants never show up.
But here's the real kicker: the attendees who do show up and stay for more than 40 minutes are significantly more likely to convert into qualified opportunities.
So why are we still celebrating registration numbers like it's 2016 (even though it was a great year)?
The Registration Trap (And How We All Fell Into It)
Let's be honest about how this happened.
You launch a webinar. Your boss asks, "How many registrations?" You say 300. They want 500. So, you:
- Broaden the topic to appeal to more people.
- Remove any mention of your product (don't want to seem salesy!).
- Promote it to everyone in your database.
- Maybe even add a $25 Amazon gift card for attendance.
Boom. 742 registrations. Everyone's happy.
Until you look at the engagement data. Some 64% never showed up, 47% dropped off in the first 10 minutes, and your sales team got three qualified leads. You just spent 40 hours of team time and $2,000 in promotion to generate three leads.
That's not a webinar. That's an expensive newsletter signup form with extra steps.
What "Better" Actually Looks Like
So, what changed for that second webinar?
Getting ruthlessly specific with the topic.
Instead of titling it "Best Practices for Sales Enablement," which is vague and could apply to anyone, the title became "How Mid-Market Sales Teams Cut Deal Cycles 30% Without Increasing Headcount."
Narrow? Yes. But every word filtered the audience. It targeted mid-market teams (not SMB or enterprise), focused on a specific pain point (deal cycles), promised a measurable outcome (30%), and addressed a top objection (no new headcount needed).
Making the registration form work harder.
Beyond standard contact information, two qualifying questions were added.
- What's your current average deal cycle?
- What's the biggest bottleneck in your sales process?
Did this reduce registrations? Absolutely. Did it give the sales team context before every follow-up call? You bet.
Stopping promotion to everyone.
The email list was filtered for companies with 100 to 1,000 employees (the ICP). Anyone who hadn't engaged with content in six months was removed. LinkedIn ads were targeted to VP of Sales and CROs only.
The list went from 12,000 to 1,400 and the registration rate went down. But the demo booking rate went up 340%.
Metrics That Actually Matter
If registrations don't matter, what does?
Here's what world-class B2B event marketers track.
ICP Match Rate
What percentage of registrants truly fit your ideal customer profile? If you're selling to enterprise size companies and 60% of your registrants are from companies with under 50 employees, you have a targeting problem, not a content problem.
What to track: What percent of registrants match your ICP criteria (e.g., company size, role, industry, etc.)?
Attended-To-Engaged Ratio
Showing up isn't enough. How many people who attended a webinar actually engaged? Asked questions? Downloaded resources? Stuck around for more than half of the session?
Research from Goldcast's 2025 B2B Webinar Benchmark Report shows that webinars with interactive elements (e.g., polls, Q&A, breakouts, etc.) see 2.3 times higher engagement rates than passive presentations.
What to track: What percent of attendees took at least one action (e.g., asked a question, responded to a poll, downloaded a resource, etc.)?
Pipeline Generated per Attendee
This is the only number your CFO cares about. How much qualified pipeline came from the people who attended your webinar?
If you had 500 attendees and generated $100,000 in pipeline, that's $200 generated per attendee. If you had 100 attendees and generated $150,000 in pipeline, that's $1,500 generated per attendee.
Which would you rather have?
What to track: Total pipeline value ÷ number of attendees.
Time to Action
How long does it take for an attendee to take the next step? Request a demo? Download a resource? Reply to a follow-up email?
The best webinars don't just educate—they create urgency. If your average time to action is three or more weeks, your content isn't compelling enough.
What to track: Days between webinar attendance and the next meaningful action.
How to Actually Optimize for Quality
Okay, so you're convinced. Quality over quantity. Great. But how do you do this without your VP of Marketing asking why registrations are down 60%?
1. Start With the Title
Your webinar title should repel as many people as it attracts. That sounds counterintuitive, but it works.
Bad title: "Marketing Best Practices for 2025" (Who's this for? Everyone, which means no one.)
Good title: "How Series B SaaS CMOs Build Pipeline When Budgets Get Cut 30%" (Specific audience, specific problem, specific constraint.)
2. Make Your Promotion Hyper-Targeted
Stop blasting your entire database. Build a segment that actually matches your ICP. It's better to email 500 people who might buy from you than 5,000 who never will.
Use your CRM data. Filter by company size, industry, past engagement, and deal stage.
3. Use Your Registration Form as a Qualifier
Beyond collecting essential contact information (name, email, company), add two or three qualifying questions that help your sales team prepare for meaningful conversations. Questions like:
- What's your current approach to [problem you solve]?
- What's your biggest challenge with [thing your product does]?
- When are you looking to make a decision on this?
These answers become pre-call research for your SDRs. They also help filter registrants by intent and readiness, so you can tailor follow-up accordingly.
4. Create Content That Requires Context
If someone with zero context can get value from your webinar, it's too generic. Assume your audience understands the basics—spend five minutes acknowledging the problem, then dive into the solution. This filters out casual browsers and keeps decision-makers engaged.
5. Design Follow-Up for the Engaged, Not the Masses
Stop sending the same "Thanks for attending!" email to everyone.
Segment your follow-up based on engagement—highly engaged attendees get personal sales outreach within 24 hours, moderate engagement gets case studies or demo offers, and low engagement receives the on-demand recording.
Your sales team should only talk to people who showed real interest. Everyone else goes into a nurture campaign.
Shifting the Conversation Around Success Metrics
When registration numbers inevitably come up in planning meetings, reframe the discussion with data that connects events to revenue. Show pipeline per attendee, ICP match rate, and how much faster deals close from engaged webinar attendees.
When you can demonstrate that 143 registrations generated $240,000 in pipeline while 847 registrations generated only $42,000, the conversation shifts naturally from vanity metrics to revenue metrics.
Making the Shift to Quality-First Events
You don't have to overhaul your entire events strategy overnight—start with your next webinar. Make the webinar title specific enough to repel non-buyers, add qualifying questions beyond standard contact information, and narrow your promotion list to focus on true ICP matches.
Track pipeline per attendee instead of just total registrations. You might get fewer registrations initially, but when you show stakeholders the pipeline numbers three months later with higher conversion rates, faster deal cycles, and better qualification, the conversation around "success" will change.
Want to see how your events compare? Check out the latest B2B webinar benchmarks and trends.
