Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Webinar Invite Timing

Posted by Anonymous on 8/18/2010 at 7:17 PM ET 125 Points
Are there any best practices for the timing of invitations to Webinars?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Levon on 8/18/2010 at 7:20 PM Member
    Several invites should be sent out with a reminder email the night before.
  • Posted by Ryan Rutan on 8/19/2010 at 2:45 AM Accepted
    Hi Steve,

    This is one of several critical questions in improving success rates of email campaigns that you are asking. I have run countless email campaigns, including those aimed at gaining participants for a webinar.

    I think a webinar can be broken into 5 major segments, related linearly in time:

    1. Planning and Setup - preparation of concept, audience identification etc.

    2. Marketing and Promotion - gaining audience interest

    3. Registration and Confirmation - who is coming

    4. Webinar Preparation and Execution - the big show

    5. Follow-up and Analysis - who was there; who wasn't

    Your question spans points 2 & 3 above, so you may consider the following:

    30 days may be too early, for several reasons. Depending on the content of your presentation, 30 days may lead people to question its relevance. This of course, is highly content dependent, and is the least likely concern. More importantly, with this much time between the invite and the event, there are two very likely pitfalls:

    1. People will simply not register because they assume their diary (calendar) will fill in, and prohibit attendance.

    2. People will register, and then not attend, because in fact, their calendar diary (calendar) has filled in, and prohibits attendance.

    I have direct experience in seeing both of these factors effect registration vs attendance rates.

    My suggestion (based on the best results from my own experience, of total registrations, with maximum actual attendance) would be to send the initial invites 10-15 days prior to the event. Second invites for non-registrants / non-responders can be sent 4 days prior.

    Consider sending a reminder 1 day ahead for registrants (unless the event is on a Monday), and 15 minutes prior to the event, rather than several days out.

    Another tactic I have found to increase the number of registrants who actually attend by 7-8% is automating a calendar entry with reminder.

    I hope this helps!

    Kind regards,

    Ryan

    Ryan Rutan
    Branding Brainiac
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 8/19/2010 at 9:08 AM Member
    Read: https://www.commpartners.com/images/stories/brochures/guidelines%20for%20se... and https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/2391/10-Best-Practices-for-Web...
  • Posted by SRyan ;] on 8/20/2010 at 9:17 PM Member
    Hi, Steve. Webinar diva Shelley reporting for duty, although a bit late!

    Ideally, you would send 2-3 promotions, but don't make them identical. The first would be 10-14 days in advance. (Anything earlier than that will not have any sense of urgency, and people tend to ignore the message. It's not like you're asking them to make travel arrangements or get budget approvals for a big fat conference in Taiwan.)

    Do a "last chance to register" message the day before the webinar. I've heard that a text-only message works well for that kind of email, but I can't recall the source.

    If you can do a mailing in between those (say, 5 days before the webinar), be sure to change up the message. Add new info so that people who opened the first one discover compelling new reasons to register.

    I hope that helps! Sorry I didn't respond sooner...
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