Want to double your webinar attendee show-up rate?
If you are like the average webinar presenter, you get an approximately 40% show up rate to your webinars. That means that about 60% of all webinar registrants don’t attend your webinars.
What if I could show you how to double that attendance rate? Obviously, you would also be doubling your conversions and profits. If that is interesting to you, this blog post will be very valuable.
The data in this blog post is based on over four years of research from the most popular automated webinar system running (based on attendee event usage data); StealthSeminar. The following schedule is for automated webinars. Use this schedule and profit BIG!
Traffic Specifics
This data is specifically for cold traffic. That means any traffic you drive to your registration page via PayPerClick, JV mailings, Youtube, Banner Ads, etc.
To determine the best time and day for warm traffic it takes more consideration of your individual market. Therefore I could not provide an exact schedule for that without investigating your specific situation.
Why Webinars Are So Powerful
One of the many powers of webinars is that it is an event based activity. That means the attendee will make time to consume your message, and that is the significant difference from any other online promotion. Many people have great intentions of returning to your video, blog or articles but get swept away in another direction, never to be seen again. With webinars, if they are interested they must consume the content at the time it is offered.
The Downside of Webinars
According to many, webinars are their strongest marketing tool. However, the biggest issue in webinar marketing is getting the webinar registrant to actually show up for the webinar they registered to attend. Most people get about a 40% show up rate. Many wonder why do 60% of their webinar registrants never show up for the actual webinar. Here is why…
Top 3 Reasons Webinar Registrants DON’T Show up for Your Webinar
Here are the three top reasons I have found why webinar registrants go missing:
1) Need Changes
When people register for your webinar they have a need. Between that time and the time your webinar is presented, that need has been satisfied. Therefore, they skip your webinar.
2) Life Happens
Most people are busy with many varying responsibilities. Unfortunately, even if people still have the need for your product or service, often times life can get in the way and make your webinar a lower priority. Issues with kids, health, work, spouses, etc., happen and change our priorities on that day. The webinar gets missed.
3) Communication Issue
Over 20% of all email goes missing. It makes no difference if you want that communication or not, it simply disappears for a number of reasons that are totally unrelated to the sender or the message.
Sure you can take steps to be on a whitelisted server and send only transaction emails, etc. but the fact of the matter is if an ISP(Internet Service Provider) such as Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, Charter does not want their clients to get communication, they are not getting it.
And of course, without reminders many people will not make it to your webinar.
Analysis Revealed Troubling Data
When I analyzed this I discovered something VERY troubling. All three of these things are totally outside of our control. There is NOTHING we can do to remedy these things 100%. Therefore I started to test a number of different webinar schedules and finally uncovered a schedule that typically gets at least an 80% show up rate.
Obviously if we are doubling the show up rate, we are doubling the number of people being helped by your webinar, doubling the number of people consuming your content, doubling the number of people you are developing a relationship with and doubling the number of conversions and of course, and therefore doubling the number of dollars you generate. Not a bad outcome from reading one blog post.
The Highest Converting Webinar Registration Schedule
3 Attendee Registration Options on the Webinar Registration Page:
Top of the next hour (looks like it offered once today)
11:00 am tomorrow (looks like it offered once tomorrow)
7:00 pm the day after tomorrow (looks like it offered
once the day after tomorrow)
Details of this Schedule and Why it Works
The following are details on the suggested schedule as well as my theories as to why the schedule is so powerful.
Top of the next hour
Top of the next hour is great because in all likelihood they have time available currently or they would not be surfing the net. In addition, many people want immediate gratification, but we still want to keep the event based nature of the event intact so they are sure to consume the content. By offering the top of the next hour, it looks like the visitor is just in time for the webinar that is provided today.
Now keep in mind, that time is going to be updating automatically so if someone shows up at 9:30am, today’s webinar is scheduled for 10:00am. If they show up at 1:15pm, the webinar is scheduled for 2:00pm and so on. The webinar is also only presented during the hours of 9am to 9pm so that it maintains the illusion. You don’t want someone surfing your page at 1:30am and see you giving a webinar at 2:00am.
This means that while it looks like the webinar is being offered once a day, it is really several times a day, at the times that are most convenient and suitable for that cold traffic to consume the event.
In addition, by also immediately allowing people to register and be dropped off at the webinar countdown page, we take all email communications out of the picture. So even if the registrant put in a bad email address, they still are deposited on the webinar page and ready to go. Plus, that webinar page is occupying their computer screen now.
11:00 am tomorrow
Although we know to satisfy the immediate gratification the top of the next hour is great, we also allow for that to not be the case. Therefore we offer an morning option for tomorrow.
7:00 pm the day after tomorrow
And if the current top of the next hour is out of the question, and the morning is bad for them, we also offer an alternative of the day after tomorrow in the later afternoon/evening.
In Closing…
By offering these three time options we are maintaining a real event based schedule and serving a lot of options for your prospective registrants without looking like we are offering the webinar 36 times in the next 3 days.
If you want more great actionable webinar tips that will make your webinars even more successful and profitable, register for a terrific training here.
And should you wish to explore working with me personally, click this link and let me know where you are at right now so I can see if its a good fit for an exploratory call.
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If so, Click Here for a FREE Webinar Exploratory Session Today
Very helpful. Thanks man! Huge fan of Stealth and even bigger fan of Geoff Ronning!
Thanks much Frank! Feeling is mutual.
Thank You Geoff! One of my favorite tools!