Keeping them engaged is one thing; closing the deal is quite another. That’s where post-webinar sales techniques come in.
Post-webinar sales is a powerful tool for turning webinar attendees into loyal customers. By strategically following up and nurturing relationships, you can continue the momentum and guide prospects through the customer journey. 60% of webinars have demonstrated the success of this strategy.
Key Takeaways:
- Post-webinar engagement is critical for converting interested attendees into loyal customers.
- Follow-ups must be personalized to continue the conversation and increase conversion rates.
- Your webinar content can be repurposed, thus prolonging the value of such content and reaching a bigger audience.
Why Post-Webinar Audience Engagement is Crucial
Post-webinar engagement is one of the most important stages in selling and marketing, and it very often defines the long-term success of your effort. Running a successful webinar is an achievement in itself, but the real value actually comes after.
If you can build momentum around your webinar with some effective engagement, you will foster relationships. Also, you gain important feedback so that you can fine-tune your methods for future webinars.
Here’s why post-webinar engagement is important in your business.
Capitalizing on Webinar Success
Your webinar was a success, but what’s next? The immediate period after the event is a very important window of opportunity. People are still on the high of your event, and your brand is fresh in their minds. Seize this moment to push them deeper into the webinar funnel.
The post-webinar engagement allows for the reinforcement of the value delivered during the webinar. You can also address questions or concerns that might still hold people back from purchasing.
Nurturing Connections
Webinars can do this and allow you to build personal connections with your target audience. This doesn’t necessarily end the moment the webinar is ended. They do need to be nurtured.
Follow up regularly and with thought. You can turn a one-time webinar attendee into a lifelong customer. Continue the conversation and provide valued content, keeping your brand at the forefront of your mind and sustaining the momentum of the webinar.
Learning from Feedback
Your feedback from the webinar attendees is really valuable. It gives you insights into what worked and what did not. And how you can make the next webinars even better.
You’ll also be able to look for and analyze feedback in order to refine your approach. By doing this, you prove to the audience that you are really interested in their opinion. This may be helpful in establishing further relationships with the client to grow prospects.
10 Effective Post-Webinar Sales Techniques
A successful webinar needs to turn the interest and engagement generated into sales. This may be achieved by having appropriate post-webinar sales techniques that will keep your audience hooked.
Personalized follow-ups hold the key to post-webinar success. They increase engagement and conversions by as high as 68%.
Here are the best methods to help you increase your post-webinar conversion rates.
1. Send a Thank-You Email
After the webinar, show your genuine appreciation to the attendees. A thank-you email may sound a bit simple, but it can mean so much. That shows one’s time and participation mean something.
First, one can easily personalize such an email by addressing the attendees by name and referring to certain points discussed during the webinar or questions they might have raised. The personal touch may leave a lasting mark.
Next, your thank-you email should also include a summary of the webinar. Mention all the key takeaways and most valuable points discussed. This summary not only reinforces the content but also adds value to those who might need to revisit the information. It is a reminder of what’s learned from the webinar and can cause further action.
Moreover, each thank-you email will need a specific call to action toward the bottom. It may be to schedule a demo, start a free trial, or simply download some related resource. In any case, ensure that your CTA aligns with a further step you want your attendees to take.
The CTA needs to be easy to locate. All in all, it is easy to do so that your audience seamlessly flows further down the sales funnel.
Example: “Thank you for joining us for our recent webinar on advanced data analytics. As promised, here’s a quick summary of the key takeaways. To take the next step, we’d like to offer you a 14-day free trial of our analytics software; click the link below to get started.”
2. Encourage Ongoing Discussions
Ask questions to get the conversation going about the content of the webinar.
Why? In doing so, you’re opening up an avenue for your audience to be able to express thoughts, challenges, and ideas. How? Use these questions in follow-up emails, social media, or discussion forums.
As a result, it creates a sense of community and facilitates ongoing dialogue. This provides greater depth and increased value from important contacts.
In addition, social media is a tool that extends the life of your webinar. Encourage attendees to continue the discussion with a specific webinar hashtag on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. In fact, studies show that 93% of B2B marketers share content through LinkedIn. Share the highlights, quotes, and insights gleaned from the webinar, asking participants for their takeaways as well.
Lastly, establish a dedicated discussion platform. It can be a private group on Facebook or even a Slack channel. That way, attendees can ask questions, share observations, network with each other, and more after the webinar presentation is long over. You are literally creating a community for your brand and keeping your audience engaged with it.
3. Conduct a Post-Webinar Survey
Create a post-event survey with well-thought-out questions to gather feedback. Touch on some key areas:
- Relevance of content
- Effectiveness of the speaker
- Webinar format
- Technical problems
You can also add questions related to what else you would like to see them cover in future webinars. Ensure that your survey is short and only asks about essential elements of the event.
Furthermore, strategies should be used to enhance the survey response rate. Your survey would have a better response rate if it was short and easy to complete. If you said there would be some kind of incentive like a discount code or entry to a prize draw, maybe that would entice someone to take part in it. After the follow-up email, embed your survey in it or provide a one-click access link.
4. Promote the On-Demand Recording
Not every person who signed up for your webinar could attend the live session. Therefore, this recording should be made available on demand. Place it on your website and email it out to all registrants–including attendees. Within this email, you need to point out a few reasons why further revisiting of this content will be useful.
Promote your on-demand webinar across all of your channels for maximum reach. Tease on social media using snippets or highlights from the webinar, linking to a full recording. Moreover, let your email newsletters promote the recording and add it to your email signature for visibility.
Moreover, repurpose your on-demand recordings into other forms of content in order to extend their life. Cut down video clips for social media, and write a blog post or article with key takeaways from your webinar. You can continue reaping value from the webinar long after it actually occurred by rewrapping that material.
5. Reach Out to Non-Attendees
Non-attenders are a missed opportunity if not followed up correctly. Send personalized messages to all registrants who failed to attend to let them know you’re sorry they missed the event. Thus, provide the link for the on-demand recording.
Additionally, include the direct link to your on-demand recording in your follow-up message so that it’s easy for them to catch up on what’s missed. Emphasize key reasons to watch the recording.
If there were promotions or CTAs you set during the live webinar, reiterate those. In this way, you will not only regain missed opportunities but also show that you value their time.
6. Segment Your Attendees
Not every attendee of a webinar is at the same stage in their buying journey. Hence, it’s necessary to segment them into their level of engagement.
As an example, you may consider attendees highly engaged who asked questions, stayed until the end of the webinar, and downloaded additional resources. Or those who are not highly engaged. Now that you have segmented your attendees tailor your follow-up communication to resonate with each group.
For highly engaged attendees, this could be an offer of a one-on-one consultation or a special discount in order to encourage conversion. In the case of less engaged attendees, it may be additional resources or an invite to a future webinar that better aligns with their needs. This personalized approach can really increase your likelihood of conversion by quite a bit.
7. Inform Your Sales Team
Do let them know what went on during the webinar. This could be a quick summary of the relevant parts:
- What was talked about on the agenda?
- What other issues might have been opened up?
- What is the interactivity level?
That way, they can prepare your sales team with key insights. So they are prepared for mastering sales webinar follow-up that may be engaging to prospects.
You may wish to make this follow-up easier by providing your sales reps with some scripts or email templates they can use. These should, if possible, be with the tone and messaging during your event so that the conversation is seamless. You are assisting your team in being consistent with its messaging and making it simple for them to guide conversions.
8. Analyze Webinar Metrics
It’s time to look at the right metrics, which are going to tell you how effective your webinar has been. Some metrics include:
- Number of registrants compared to attendees
- Level of engagement during questions asked and polls
- Number of attendees converted to webinar leads or customers
- Number of click-through rates
These metrics will be able to tell, upon analysis, which optimizations to pursue next in webinars and post-webinar strategies. Additionally, survey responses give you concrete feedback regarding your audience’s experience of the webinar. You consider qualitative and quantitative feedback to get an overall feel.
If the attendees felt the content was too advanced or too minute, adjust your approach in the next session. If technical problems are common, make sure your platform and technology are up to standard. This lets your audience know that you listen to their concerns and will work toward bringing value to them.
9. Repurpose Webinar Content
Convert your webinar to an on-demand, automated one. Automated webinars never stop capturing leads or making sales after the live show is over.
To keep the interest of new viewership tuning into automated webinars, adding interactive features to your webinar, like polls or Q&A segments, will be important. Choosing the right automated webinar software is important, and StealthSeminar is one of the good ones for that.
Some of the features that StealthSeminar provides to help with your automated webinars include:
- Branding: You can brand your webinar by customizing its look so that it represents your company and looks very professional.
- Powerful Automation Tools: This controls all aspects, from webinar registration page forms to emails.
- Integration Capabilities: Integrate it easily with other tools and platforms, such as CRM, to make things easier for you.
- Advanced Analytics and Tracking: Analytics will help you monitor your webinars.
With these features, automated webinars have one consistent, smooth process from start to finish.
10. Plan Your Next Webinar
The insights you pick up from your post-webinar analysis will then directly inform your planning for other webinars. Consider what worked and what didn’t, and use these insights to really hone content, format, and promotion strategies.
Set up a routine in your webinars to anticipate and maintain long-term interest from your target audience. You can create monthly, quarterly, or biannual webinars.
What is most important in your marketing efforts is your consistency. Consistency will help you develop a following that lets the audience know when a new webinar is due from you.
Final Words
Sales webinar success is part of the bigger picture. Maximize conversion rates through applying—upon completion of this guide—personal thanks, continuity with the conversation, and content reuse.
Keep in mind that the success of your webinar doesn’t stop when the event is over. But it’s where the deeper relationship with your target audience starts.
Begin to implement these strategies and use the right webinar platform like StealthSeminar to achieve maximum benefits from your sales webinars.
