How to Do Webinar Marketing Following Mailmodo’s Handbook

Do you want to turn your webinars into powerful tools for engagement and growth?

Webinars are quickly becoming a preferred marketing channel among marketers. These live online events allow you to share knowledge, showcase products, or lead discussions with your audience. From product demos and expert panels to training sessions, webinars come in various formats to fit different needs.

In this article, you will learn more about webinar marketing and get a glimpse into how Mailmodo has successfully executed 60+ webinars, driving brand awareness and product signups.

What is webinar marketing?

Webinar marketing is a strategy that involves using webinars (online seminars or presentations) to promote products, services, or a brand. Webinars allow real-time interaction, where attendees can ask questions and get immediate answers. This helps in building trust and can lead to conversions, turning viewers into customers.

Take a look at this example of a webinar conducted by Mailmodo:

Why are webinars crucial for marketing?

Webinars offer unique advantages that drive both engagement and growth. They are essential for your marketing efforts because they help in:

• Lead generation: Webinars attract a targeted audience and make it easier to capture qualified leads. The interactive format allows you to connect with potential customers genuinely interested in your offerings.
• Cost-effective marketing: Webinars offer a high ROI by reaching a wide audience with minimal costs. They eliminate expenses like venue, travel, catering, and the cost of printed materials.
• Building brand authority and trust: Hosting webinars positions your brand as a thought leader in your industry. Sharing valuable insights builds credibility. It makes your audience more likely to choose your products or services over your competitors.

Webinar vs. Livestream vs. Pre-recorded Session

Webinars, live streams, and pre-recorded sessions may appear alike, but each serves a unique purpose. Here’s a breakdown to discover which format best suits your marketing needs:

Feature	Webinar	Livestream	Pre-recorded session
Format	Two-way communication	One-way broadcast	One-way broadcast
Audience access	Closed-door, invitation-only	Open to the public, usually on social media	Usually open to the public
Content control	Little to no control, live with real-time engagement	Live with limited real-time control	Fully edited and produced with complete control
Best for	In-depth training, Q&A sessions, product demos	Brand awareness, event coverage	On-demand content, polished presentations
Engagement level	High due to live Q&A and polls	Moderate; limited to comments/reactions	Low; no real-time feedback
Technical requirements	Requires stable connection and interaction tools	Requires a streaming platform and a stable connection	Video editing and production tools

Mailmodo’s webinar marketing journey

Mailmodo launched its webinar marketing journey in July 2021, aiming to build thought leadership and connect with marketers through engaging, live "Growth Chats". By consistently hosting webinars twice a month, we quickly amassed a significant library of content. These sessions, characterized by interactive, one-on-one conversations, are a great way to boost conversions and attract high-quality new leads.

Our webinar strategy was clear: either choose a compelling topic and invite a guest or collaborate with thought leaders to explore relevant subjects. This focused approach, combined with the strategic use of LinkedIn influencers, allowed us to create webinars that not only educated but also drove significant awareness and product signups.

Over time, this method has enabled Mailmodo to conduct over 60 impactful webinars, establishing us as a trusted leader in the marketing industry. Drawing from our experience, we’ve created a comprehensive handbook to guide you through your own webinar marketing journey.

How to create your webinar marketing strategy

To effectively market your product or brand with webinars, you need a solid strategy. You can follow these steps, based on Mailmodo's experience, to get started:

1. Establish clear objectives

• Define your goals: Determine what you aim to achieve with your webinars. Whether it's boosting product signups, increasing brand visibility, educating your audience, or positioning yourself as a thought leader, clarity in goals will steer your strategy.
• Identify key metrics: Establish metrics for success, such as registration numbers, audience engagement levels, or conversion rates post-webinar. These benchmarks will help measure the effectiveness of your webinars.

2. Topic selection

• Focus on relevance: Select topics that tackle your audience's pain points or areas of interest. For instance, Mailmodo centers on subjects like emails and email marketing, along with other related themes that resonate with its target audience.
• Diverse insights: Offer a range of perspectives, from strategic overviews to practical, actionable advice. This mix allows your webinar to cater to various audience needs and interests.

3. Speaker selection

• Choose industry leaders: Select speakers who are not only experts in their fields but also resonate with your audience. Influencers, thought leaders, and satisfied customers can increase your brand’s credibility and appeal.
• Ensure topic alignment: Match speakers to topics that align with their expertise. Their insights should be directly relevant to the content they present. This will make your session more engaging and valuable.

You can approach webinar planning in two ways: either choose the main topic first and then find a speaker who aligns with it, or select a speaker and then develop a topic that complements their expertise and is relevant to your audience. Both methods have their advantages and can lead to successful, engaging webinars, making them powerful lead generation tools. However, no matter which approach you take, it is important to include the speaker selection process in your webinar marketing plan to ensure a cohesive and effective presentation.

4. Scheduling and timing

• Prioritize audience convenience: Schedule webinars at times that suit your target audience’s time zones and routines. Review past webinar data to determine the most effective days and times.
• Coordinate with speakers: Align the timing with your speakers’ availability and book the slot with them well in advance. Make sure they are ready and actively involved by choosing a time that aligns with their availability.

5. Structuring your webinar

• Engaging introduction: Start with a compelling introduction that sets the stage for the topic and introduces the speaker effectively.
• Personal touch: Allow the speaker to share their personal journey and experiences related to the topic. This approach adds a human element and makes the content more relatable.
• Interactive Q&A: Maintain an interactive environment by integrating Q&A sessions throughout the webinar. This dynamic approach keeps participants engaged and encourages active involvement.
• Content delivery: Focus on delivering either broad industry insights or detailed, actionable advice based on the topic. Avoid over-reliance on PowerPoint slides; instead, leverage the speaker’s expertise and experiences.
• Effective conclusion: Use the final 10-15 minutes to address audience questions. Encourage active participation to foster a two-way dialogue rather than a one-sided presentation.

How to market the webinar itself

We at Mailmodo use a set of strategic approaches to increase the number of registrations and attendees by effectively marketing our webinars and ensuring high engagement. Here’s how we do it:

1. Social media and landing pages

• Social media and team channels: We utilize our company’s social media profiles, internal team channels, and employees’ personal social media accounts to generate initial interest. By sharing updates and engaging content, we keep our audience informed and excited. Sharing with internal teams encourages them to promote the webinar on their socials, while we also share content through the company’s channels.
• Relevant groups and communities: We share our webinars with industry-specific groups and communities, targeting those most likely to benefit. Maintaining a curated list of these groups helps us reach our ideal audience.
• Landing pages: We have a dedicated and optimized landing page on our website designed to maximize conversions with clear calls-to-action and straightforward registration forms. The visitors can easily submit their email addresses and sign up for updates for the upcoming webinar and the ones that might happen in future.

Here's an example of a webinar's landing page by Mailmodo:

2. Email marketing

• Existing contacts: We reach out to our existing email list, targeting individuals who have previously engaged with our content, like downloading ebooks or subscribing to newsletters. Personalized invitations are also sent, which greatly enhance our registration rates.
• Referral emails: After a successful registration, we send attendees a referral email, encouraging them to invite others. This strategy helps us leverage the network effect to expand our reach.
• Engaging follow-ups: We send out reminder emails to keep our attendees engaged since they sign up till the day of the event. These reminders go out at multiple intervals: one day before, one hour before, and right as the webinar begins. Additionally, we send a follow-up email shortly after the webinar starts, featuring a screenshot and a prompt like, "Are you here? This is what we're discussing right now." This approach helps boost live attendance and keeps engagement levels high throughout the event.

Take a look at this email sequence below for your webinar:

If you're looking to use email marketing for webinar promotion, choosing an ESP like Mailmodo can be highly beneficial. It offers features such as interactive emails, A/B testing, and marketing automation to enhance your webinar campaigns.

3. Event listing platforms

• Promotion on platforms: We also list our webinars on popular event platforms like Eventbrite, Meetup, and All Events to attract a broader audience beyond our direct network.

4. Paid advertising

• Targeted ads: With an allocated budget, we run targeted ads on LinkedIn and Meta (Facebook). These platforms allow us to precisely target demographics and industries relevant to our webinar topics.

5. Partner and speaker distribution

• Speaker networks: We collaborate with our speakers to tap into their networks. Speakers promote the webinar to their followers and increase our reach and credibility.
• Partnerships: We partner with industry-related businesses, content creators or influencers for co-promotion. We also tap into their audience to boost our webinar's visibility.

How to conduct the webinar

The execution phase is as essential as the planning phase for a successful webinar. Here’s a comprehensive approach by Mailmodo to conduct the webinars:

Platform selection

Selecting the right platform is essential, as it greatly impacts the technical foundation and the level of interaction your webinar can facilitate. Consider the following platforms for optimal results:

• StreamYard and Airmeet: We use StreamYard and Airmeet for their robust features that facilitate streaming across multiple platforms simultaneously. This approach maximizes our reach and makes the webinar accessible to a broader audience. We conduct webinars as closed-door sessions. This setup helps create a controlled environment where participants are more engaged.
• YouTube: When aiming for a larger audience, we consider using conference meets with primary sharing through YouTube. This method allows for a wide broadcast while maintaining a professional presentation.

Crowd management

Effective crowd management is essential for a seamless and engaging webinar experience. Some strategies that we implement to achieve this are below:

Interactive engagement

• Prompt engagement: We actively prompt the audience to engage by asking questions throughout the webinar. This not only keeps the session dynamic but also encourages participants to contribute their thoughts and queries.
• Polls: To gauge audience opinions and keep them involved, we incorporate real-time polls. Polls provide instant feedback and allow for an interactive session.

Comment management

• Dedicated comments handler: We assign a team member, separate from the host, to manage comments and handle backstage operations. This makes the webinar run smoothly and helps to address all audience interactions promptly.

Resource sharing

• Important resources: We ensure that key resources, such as presentation materials and additional content, are shared during or immediately after the webinar. This helps reinforce the value of the session and provides attendees with useful takeaways.

How to drive engagement post-webinar

Even after the webinar wraps up, the work continues. Mailmodo effectively manages the post-webinar phase to maintain engagement and drive product signups by:

1. Gathering feedback

To collect valuable feedback, we use Mailmodo’s interactive email features. Within 24 hours of the webinar, we send an email with a survey that allows attendees to provide their thoughts on the session. This approach not only gathers insights but also keeps the audience engaged with our brand.

Take a look at the post-event feedback email with an interactive survey form:

2. Nurturing attendees

We also have a follow-up email sequence that is sent to the attendees and is designed to keep engagement high without overwhelming attendees. Here’s what the email sequence looks like:

• First email (Within 24 hours): We send a thank-you email with the webinar recording and interactive elements that allow attendees to revisit key points from the session.
• Second email (2-3 days later): We share additional resources related to the webinar topic, such as eBooks and blog posts. This provides further value and maintains interest.
• Third email (2-3 days later): We highlight Mailmodo’s interactive email features and case studies, demonstrating how our tools can benefit their marketing efforts.
• Fourth email (2-3 days later): We include a call-to-action to book a consultation or demo. This encourages deeper engagement with our services.

3. Repurposing webinar content

To extend the life of the webinar content and reach a wider audience, we repurpose it across various formats:

• Podcast: We convert the webinar into a podcast episode, making it accessible on different audio and video platforms.
• Video clips: Key moments from the webinar are edited into short video clips and shared on social media. This attracts attention and drives traffic to the full recording.
• Blog post: The webinar content is transformed into a detailed blog post. It offers a comprehensive overview of the session for those who prefer reading.
• Social media: We also create and post tweet threads, carousel posts, and LinkedIn updates featuring quotes and key takeaways from the webinar for sharing on different social media platforms. This increases visibility and engagement.
• Newsletter: We include highlights and key insights from the webinar in our newsletter. This reaches our subscribers who might have missed the live event.

4. Inviting past attendees for new webinars

We actively invite past attendees to future webinars. This ensures they stay engaged with our content and are aware of upcoming sessions. This ongoing invitation helps build a loyal audience and reinforces our image as thought leaders in the industry.

How to evaluate webinar marketing success

To evaluate the success of our webinar marketing efforts and ensure that our efforts align with our goals, we assess whether our webinars are on the right track. Here’s how:

1. Tracking registrations

We start by analyzing the number of registrations we received. This provides an initial gauge of interest and potential reach. A high registration count suggests effective promotional efforts and audience interest.

2. Tracking attendance rate

We measure the number of attendees and aim for an attendance rate of 45-55% of total registrations. This range is considered a strong indicator of engagement and relevance. We track the number of webinar attendees when the event starts and also when it ends so that we have new data and a more concrete idea of audience behavior.

3. Measuring lead generation

Lead generation is evaluated by tracking signups related to the webinar. While signups are important, they are not the primary KPI. We monitor these over time, often reviewing them 6 months after the event to assess long-term effectiveness.

4. Researching awareness and engagement

We measure awareness and engagement using different metrics on different platforms. Here are some of them:

• YouTube metrics: We review YouTube views, comments, and likes about a month after the webinar. These metrics help us understand the level of awareness generated and how well the content resonated with viewers.
• Video traffic: Analyzing traffic on the video page provides insights into how often the content is accessed and engaged with. High traffic indicates ongoing interest and visibility.
• Social media impressions: We evaluate impressions on social media platforms to measure how widely the webinar content has been shared and discussed. This helps assess the broader impact and reach of our promotional efforts.

Takeaways

Webinar marketing can significantly boost your brand's reach and engagement. By leveraging the strategies outlined in this guide, you’re now equipped to create impactful webinars that captivate your audience and drive growth.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your approach, following these steps and adopting insights from Mailmodo’s successful webinar journey will set you on the right path to crafting rewarding and effective webinars. So start today and captivate your target audience with a webinar marketing campaign.