Major work goes into building and hosting the actual webinar itself, so adding webinars to your automation strategy can be a daunting task, especially if you don’t know where to begin. I always recommend starting off small, and optimizing or adding touch-points when and where you can. Luckily, it’s fairly easy to start, you just need to understand the workflow and know where additional value you can added for your brokers. Below are 3 tips for automating your webinars and adding additional value.

  1. Understanding the workflow. This may seem more complicated than it sounds. Your organization is hosting a webinar and you want the right audience to attend. For that you need the right list segmentation, an email invitation with a call-to-action that leads them to your form (which should be built on a dedicated landing page) and a confirmation email that has the instructions and event details. The one thing you want to ensure is automated, would be the form. Once a person submits their information, it should trigger that confirmation email. This is the simplest workflow needed to begin your webinar automation journey, and from there you can add further steps to streamline your desired user experience.
  2. Start with building a journey in order to simplify functions and maximize outcomes. Some items to consider when building you webinar automation journey are: Is the call-to-action in your invite clear? What’s your contingency plan if people put in the wrong email? Does your confirmation email have a calendar download? Do you have same day reminder emails being sent out? Are you sending out webinar recordings to people who signed up but didn’t attend? How are you fulfilling credentials (if applicable)? There’s a lot that goes into this automation journey but remember to see what your data is telling you, be open to testing things out, and always look at how you can optimize your audience’s journey for the best results.
  3. Double check if your webinar platform is already sending out communications! Most webinar platforms already have a built-in automated communications that will send out confirmation emails, reminders, and follow up emails. While convenient, there are many downsides to this that include; emails are difficult to edit in these environments, the out of box template might not fit with your organization’s branding, or doesn’t allow for control over the user experience as high design landing pages and emails do. Leveraging your marketing automation platform to its fullest potential as it will ensure the best user experience and email best practices are in place for your webinars. The last thing you want to do is confuse (or worse, annoy) your audience by sending out multiple emails that serve the same purpose.

While this list doesn’t cover everything, this is a good starting point for you and your organization to begin your webinar automation journey.

“By automating your webinars through your marketing automation platform, which will likely be connected to your principal CRM, you’re able to gain a clearer-connected understanding of engagement. This will aid you in one; building valuable education through webinars and events for your broker channel that isn’t solely focused on the interest of licensing credits and two: connect your education efforts with other business objectives, such as new business in a specific line of business” – Jennifer Pugsley, VP, Customer Success at Goose Digital

Need help automating your own webinar experiences? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.