After you host a webinar, you will have a list of hot leads to convert to your product or service. These leads will have either registered and missed the webinar, attended only part of the webinar, or attended the full webinar without making a purchase. They are hot leads in the fact that you know they were interested in what you have to offer. You just need to find a another way to convert them. In this post, we’re going to look at how you can generate revenue from webinar attendees who didn’t buy.
Traditionally it is…Replay Webinars
To recapture those that either missed the webinar or were only able to attend part of the webinar, you will want to offer a webinar replay. There are three approaches you can take for your replay webinars.
- Email those that registered to let them know the replay is ready.
- Email those that registered to let them know the replay is up for now, but will be taken down soon.
- Email those that registered to let them know that oops, the original webinar didn’t get recorded due to technical difficulties, so now they have a second chance to attend the webinar live.
You may want to consider your replay options prior to recording your webinar. Depending on the approach you take, you may want to phrase certain things a certain way, such as bonuses available to live viewers only, bonuses available for replay only, etc. Also keep in mind that if you go with the always-available replay that people could want the deals you offer for months or years to come. With that said, here are the benefits to each of these approaches. The Always-Available Replay If you leave the replay up indefinitely, you can continue to promote it indefinitely. This will allow you to run an evergreen funnel. You will continue to capture email addresses for those that want to watch it and make on-going sales for your products and services. You can advertise the replay to new audiences and create a webinars resource page on your website so your visitors will be able to sign up for all of your current and past webinars. With this approach, you will definitely want to set up autoresponder series that will continue the sales process for replay attendees that do not buy. The Limited-Time Replay Scarcity is proven to work in marketing and sales – if people know they can go and watch something any time, they might put it off until they forget about it. On the other hand, if they know it is only available for the next 36 hours, they will make a committment to watch it. Plus, if you have a time that the webinar is going to be taken down, you can email those that registered once the replay is available, 24 hours before it is taken down, 12 hours before it is taken down, and a few hours before it is taken down. With this approach, you will likely have people emailing you for extended access of the webinar. You can then choose to allow those people the chance to watch the replay or extend the timeframe that the replay is live for longer. People will be appreciative of you giving them the opportunity, and that appreciation could lead to more conversions. Alternate Live Webinar (Beat the Control) This approach gives you a chance to tweak your script and content before trying to convert webinar attendees for a second time to your product or service. Plus, if people know they get a second chance to attend live and ask questions, get special discounts, etc., they will be more likely to re-register and attend. You may want to take time to re-analyze your list of attendees. If you follow the directions later in the post to create a Custom Audience on Facebook using your webinar attendee’s email addresses and phone numbers, you can use Facebook Audience Insights to analyze your attendees. It will give you basic demographics and interests information for your attendees so you can tailor your webinar to suit them. The best part about this approach is that if you do decide to tweak a few things, you can see which webinar converts the best. You can then use the higher-converting webinar as an automated, evergreen webinar for your sales funnel.
Follow Up Autoresponder Series
A follow up autoresponder series for webinar registrants who did not purchase your product or service is another way to help generate more webinar from your webinar. Your autoresponder series will likely start with notifications about the replay. From there, you can follow up with emails that talk about certain highlights during the webinar, additional resources, and promotional emails about your product and service. Note that you don’t have to do this as an autoresponder series – if you are launching live webinars, you can email your attendees standard campaigns after the webinar has ended. But you should consider setting it up as an autoresponder series so that people are automatically put into the funnel after your webinar has run. An autoresponder series will be especially important if you are running automated replay webinars 24/7 so you don’t have to think about creating new campaigns all of the time. Be sure that your webinar attendees are added to your main mailing list as well as a special list for the webinar itself. That way, once the webinar-related autoresponder series ends, they will still get emails from you about new promotions.
Follow Up Webinars (Create Webinar Campaigns)
Using the feedback you gain from your first webinar, you can find out if attendees are interested in diving deeper into a specific topic and offer a follow up webinar for attendees of the first webinar. This follow up will allow you to get in front of your audience again with new content. For example, let’s say that you held a webinar on how to get started with social media. After the webinar, the feedback you received was that people wanted more information specific to Facebook. So your follow up webinar can focus specifically on creating and growing a presence on Facebook. Then, at the end, gear your product or service pitch specific to those interested in Facebook. For those that register to attend this webinar, but do not buy, you can launch a replay webinar and follow up autoresponder series. Based on the success of the first follow up webinar, you can move on to create a series of additional webinars, leading to more opportunities to keep your audience engaged and to pitch them your product or service.
The BETTER Way that will Convert More Attendees and Sell More Products and Services
While the above are terrific options for some Webinar Presenters, many people today sign up for webinars never planning on attending them. Mailing out the replay is so common that many people just sign up, looking to get the post webinar emails of the replay. You cannot blame them, most everyone does their webinars like this. Of course, anytime you are following the majority, it is also probably wrong. This is no different. The better way to follow up with people is to NOT offer a replay. In over 83% of the clients I work with, offering a replay reduces response, it does not increase it. If you don’t offer a replay what do you do? You write your non-converted invite them to another webinar (live or automated). Wait 5-7 days and send an email that the webinar was such a success you are going to hold it again. Then drive the non-attended back to a webinar registration page. Have them register for the webinar again. Do not send out a replay. Don’t bombard them with tons of email reminders. If you are currently sending out replay webinars, test this. In all likelihood you will do far better doing this tactic. This is the highest converting way to follow up right now. Do not underestimate the power of simply sending people back through to re-register for the webinar. If there is sufficient interest, I will also tell you how I and my clients also segment our webinar attendees to give this tactic even more power. And of course, regardless of which tactics you use above this is a terrific way to boost the success of any of the above….
Remarketing with Email
Since you have a list of emails for your webinar attendees, you can use it to do retargeting advertising about your product or service. Here’s how. Facebook Advertising with Custom Audiences To target your webinar attendees with Facebook Ads, you will need to create a Custom Audience. Start by going to your Audiences Manager and clicking the Create Audience button. Then select Customer List.
On the next screen, you can choose to import your webinar attendee email addresses in a CSV file or paste them directly into the specified textbox.
Also note that you can include any phone numbers you received from people who wanted a SMS reminder for your webinar. The phone numbers will be easier to match because while people may have a lot of email addresses, they usually only have one mobile phone. Once you import or paste in your customer list, you will name and save your audience. Then you can start running ads for your product or service specifically to people who have attended your webinar. You may also want to create a Custom Audience with your buyer emails and phone numbers. That way, you can target your webinar attendees with an ad, but exclude people who have already purchased. You will do this when you are setting up your ad and choosing your ad audience.
As you launch new ad campaigns, you will want to update both of these Custom Audiences so that your ads are always targeting the right people. Another added bonus of using Custom Audiences on Facebook is the Lookalike Audience. If you are planning to leave the replay webinar up indefinitely, you can use the customer audience you created to create a Lookalike Audience. You will find this option by going to create a new Custom Audience and choosing the Lookalike Audience.
This will allow you to target ads for your replay webinar to audiences most like the people who have already purchased your product or service. For more on Facebook Advertising, be sure to read this guide on how to increase webinar signups with advanced Facebook Advertising targeting options. Twitter Advertising with Tailored Audiences Similar to Facebook, Twitter offers advertisers the option to upload email addresses and phone numbers to create target audiences. You will find the Audience Manager in your Twitter Ads dashboard under the Tools menu.
Then you will click the Create New Audience button and the option to upload your list.
Here, you can choose to upload your email addresses and then mobile phone numbers that you have collected from webinar attendees. You may also want to upload a customer list in order to exclude customers from seeing your product or service ads.
When you go to create your Twitter campaign, you will be able to add and limit your ad to be shown to the Tailored Audiences you have created.
As you launch new ad campaigns, you will want to update both of these Tailored Audiences so that your ads are always targeting the right people.
Remarketing with Website Traffic
Alternatively, if you host your webinars on your website, you can use retargeting advertising with website traffic to reach your webinar attendees with ads about your product or service. On Facebook, instead of the Customer List option, you would use the Website Traffic option when creating a Custom Audience. It requires you to install a tracking pixel on your website (prior to your webinar) and then telling Facebook the specific page of your webinar from which you want to create a Custom Audience.
You could even use this approach to advertise your webinar to people who came to your registration page, regardless of whether they signed up. On Twitter, you will go to the Audience Manager and select the option to create a new website tag.
You will then choose to track site visits and grab some code to add on the page you are tracking.
If you use Google Analytics and AdWords, you can also use the remarketing feature built in to setup retargeting ads for your webinar attendees on Google.
In Conclusion
With good planning and the right systems set in place, you can continue to generate revenue with your webinar registrants, attendees and initial no-shows. The choice on whether to do it as a one-time thing, replay, or evergreen automated system is up to you! I always prefer automated. Webinars are the most valuable way to convert online, and the cool thing is that even when people don’t initially convert, you can use the above tactics to generate even more business! Just remember, you are building a business, not trying to make a sale. Think long term, not short term. Keep it classy and watch amazing things happen. Let me know your best strategies for converting the unconverted on your webinars.
