Leveraging Facebook, LinkedIn and Other Tools for Reminding Registrants about your Webinar

You’ve got a good thing going with your webinar so far. The topic you’ve chosen is dynamic and timely. You’ve set aside the perfect date and time so that the webinar is accessible to as many people as possible, and your ads are pulling in registrants nicely. Even your outline is power-packed and ready to go. You expect to be able to punch home every point you want to make.

What’s next?

Enhancing Webinar Attendance

Only 36 percent of all webinar registrants actually attend the webinars they register for—and only 19 percent of those attendees become leads that trickle through the sales webinar funnel. With that in mind, getting as many of your registrants to follow through and actually attend your webinar is your next big step.

Don’t worry—there are plenty of action plans and tools that you can use to boost your webinar attendance and convert your registrants to high-quality leads.

And these tools work. Marketing guru Neil Patel has used similar strategies to see a consistent conversion rate of 22 percent (that’s an enormous jump over normal conversion rates of about 2-3 percent). He believes anyone who can run a webinar can see the same kinds of results.

Once you’re on the webinar with your guests, you’ll have an average of 53 minutes to sell them on your products, services, and ideas or to provide content that will lead them back to you in the future. So how do you get your registrants to come to the webinars they’ve signed up for?

Create your Perfect Power Triangle

There are three key ingredients for engaging your registrants and pulling them into your webinar. You can picture it as a triangle. Each corner is necessary to complete the triangle and promote attendance.

1. Use the best tools to keep your webinar in the minds of your registrants.
2. Continually offer good content and add value wherever you can.
3. Provide meaningful engagement before, during and after the webinar

Used wisely and in balance, these strategies complete a power triangle that surrounds your registrants and directs them into attendance—like the point on an arrow.

Keep the Reminders Flowing

The first corner of your power triangle is angled toward keeping your webinar in the minds of your registrants. You have to remind them it’s coming up, and you also have to keep the reasons why they signed up at the top of their minds.

Here are some of the best tools to use—and how to use them.

Facebook Ads

What are the odds that your registrants have Facebook accounts? Pretty high, actually— Facebook is one of the most engaging, interactive platforms available (and it’s a great way to spy on your competitors, as well).

There are 1.45 billion users who get on Facebook daily, 70 million Facebook pages for businesses, and more than 20 million people who use Facebook Messenger to communicate with potential customers.

Here’s how you can use this high rate of engagement to your advantage and remind your registrants about your webinar:

First, you’ll need to set up retargeting ads, which simply keep your webinar information in front of people. Only 2 percent of viewers will convert to registrants on their first exposure, so you’ll need to set up retargeting ads for both your registration page and your thank you page.

Refer to this article if you’d like to see how to get started in five simple steps. As you read, keep in mind that you’ll be creating two sets of ads.  

• One ad set for people who have seen the registration page
• One ad set for people who have seen both the registration and thank you page

Each ad set will need two ads—one to speak directly to people who haven’t registered yet and one for people who’ve already registered. Use the best strategies to create ads that are both effective and engaging.

Once your Facebook retargeting ads are up, you can shift gears and use other tools, like SMS reminders.

SMS Reminders

If you’ve got phone numbers for your registrants, make it a point to send reminder text messages.

Offer the SMS reminder as a service on the thank you page when your registrants sign up. They’ll feel like they’re getting something extra for free, and you’ll have another way to keep your webinar in their minds.

Send an immediate SMS message when you first get their number so that you know the number works and so that they know they’ll be getting a reminder from you on the day of the webinar. Shoot them a reminder for the webinar at least 30 to 60 minutes before your webinar begins. This will allow your registrants enough time to get to their computers and get settled before it starts.

There are some great tools to help with this, including ActiveCampaign, Twilio, HubSpot and other marketing automation/CRM software. Sometimes your webinar hosting platform can do this, too.

SMS reminders are an advantageous tool. Some sources report increases of 15 to 45 percent in webinar attendance from using SMS reminders.

Reminder Notification through LinkedIn Integration

Who knew you could integrate LinkedIn and your webinar software?

Once you’ve done this, it only takes one click for people to sign up for your webinar with a LinkedIn lead form that auto-populates. They’ll get a notification through LinkedIn as well as an option to connect with you there. Here’s how to set it up:

First, go to Zapier.com and search for the LinkedIn Zap.

Next, find your chosen webinar solution (think JetWebinar). Then click the ‘Make a Zap!’ button in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

Choose the event that you want to trigger. In the following example, I show all new webinar registrants, and I can choose all of my webinars or specific ones:

On the next screen, choose which webinar event(s) you’d like to integrate.

Click ‘test’ to make sure everything works.

Once you’ve successfully integrated JetWebinar or another webinar platform with LinkedIn, you’ll have that one-click webinar registrants feature as well as notifications on LinkedIn. It’s a great way to keep your webinar in front of businesspeople who are regular LinkedIn users.

 

Calendar Reminders

If you want a simple touch point that reminds registrants of the date and time of the webinar, calendar webinar reminders can be a great way to go.

While you can’t add extra content to a calendar reminder, you can set up a series of webinar reminders, such as three days out, two days out, a 60-minute warning and a final reminder ten minutes in advance. Look into how to set up an automated sequence with your calendar service and put it to work for your webinar!

Multiple Last-Call Email Webinar Reminders

Send an e-mail reminder to your registrants two weeks before the webinar and then again one week before the webinar. In case they’ve forgotten why they signed up, include snippets about why the webinar will be valuable to them or provide a sneak peek into what’s coming.

Then send two final reminder e-mail messages. One message sent the day before and one sent the day of the webinar will help your registrants manage their schedules and be able to attend. This can be used in conjunction with calendar notifications and SMS webinar reminders to keep your webinar in front of your registrants and on their minds.

Not sure how to create a terrific-looking email that increases attendance rates and conversions? Start here with this e-mail template folder. It includes some great e-mail templates that you can use for all parts of the webinar funnel, and it makes a great springboard for creating your own custom messages.

Hashtag Away

Create a specific hashtag for your webinar and jump in on a few other relevant ones, as well. Schedule some tweets or Facebook updates that include the hashtags. If your registrants are researching those topics before the webinar, they’ll see your updates pop up again and remember they can get more info at your webinar.

Continually Increase the Value of Your Webinar

The second point on the power triangle is your ability to add value to the webinar in the minds of your registrants.

As the webinar event approaches, you can use e-mail webinar reminders, blog posts on LinkedIn and your Facebook ads to offer new content to your webinar registrants. Here’s where that sneak peek comes in—or maybe a hint at a free giveaway at the end of the webinar.

Tell registrants who the speakers will be, why they’re important, and whether or not there will be a Q&A at the end of the webinar. If your webinar guests are popular enough, that might be all it takes to bring attendance up.

The two weeks leading up to the webinar is a great time to offer new content, as well. Include links to relevant articles in your e-mails or SMS reminders, or tell them about a blog post you recently wrote that touches on the same subject as the webinar.

Engagement Increases Attendance and Conversion

The more your registrants participate—even before the webinar event—the more likely they’ll be to attend, to get meaningful takeaways, and to convert to high-quality leads.

It’s easy enough to engage your registrants during the webinar itself with collaboration techniques and an informative Q&A session. You can also follow the webinar with surveys and polls, but how do you involve registrants before the webinar event?

Here are some ideas to get you going:

• If you have guest speakers, ask them to send a brief e-mail message of their own to registrants. A brief introduction telling why they’re looking forward to interacting with your registrants during the webinar can build enthusiasm and boost attendance.
• Send an e-mail or SMS to ask if there are any key points that the registrants particularly want to be covered. Besides engaging them directly in the content, it ensures you’ll be delivering exactly what your potential leads want.
• If you’re offering a free giveaway in the webinar, make sure you announce it where your registrants can find it. You can take this a step further by polling them about what their favorite choices for a giveaway could be. Gift coupons for Facebook ads? Free consultations with your guest speakers? What holds the most value for them?

Once you’ve got registrant engagement in place, you’ve locked down the third corner of your triangle, and your registrant is headed toward webinar attendance.

Directing your Webinar Registrants

If you’re using all the tools, adding value by providing great content, and engaging your webinar community, your registrants will want to come to your webinar. They won’t just see the webinar reminders on their calendars, they’ll remember why they wanted to join in the first place—and they’ll show up.

From there, it’s just a matter of building on the momentum you’ve already created. Keep their enthusiasm up, make your event valuable and memorable, and engage them whenever you can. Who knows? They might share your next webinar event with their friends.