If you want to grow your email subscriber list, there are few routes better than webinars. The immersive online lectures have become a popular choice among inbound marketers, but they’re also intimidating — can you pull one off quickly? Easily? Is it cost-effective? Time-effective?
While the concept may sound intimidating, if growing your email list is a priority, webinars are absolutely worth the investment. Here are some ways to make it work and see that ROI take effect.
Promote your webinars on your blog.
Cross-pollination between platforms is one of your best bets for encouraging repeat visitors. Regardless of whether or not you have a strong blog following, you want to make at least three announcements: once to announce your webinar, another reminder closer to the date, and a third after it’s done so people who missed it can catch up. In each instance, you can collect emails by promising to keep subscribers up to date on the event’s progress.
You can offer multiple opportunities to sign up for your newsletter when promoting or posting webinars, and also encourage direct communication with a “get in touch” call to action—another opportunity to create one-on-one leads.
If you’re asking people to spend up to an hour with you, it’s not a big stretch to ask to keep in touch during the process. If you’re hosting the webinar on your blog afterward, design the page with a sidebar, pop-ups or some other call-to-action encouraging newsletter signups. They’re there anyway—you’d be remiss not to take advantage.
Share hosting duties and sign-up emails.
If you partner up with another company, you can capitalize on a broader audience by sharing email lists and splitting the promotional budget.
Shopify, the e-commerce giant, partners with different thought leaders all the time to product high-quality webinars.
We can’t say for sure whether they split the email lists for signups (they’re an enormous company, so they could have enough leverage to simply promote their partners through exposure, backlinks or some monetary compensation). For smaller businesses, sharing the email signups is certainly doable and a great way to double your strength by partnering with another budding business.
Reuse your webinars after they’ve been archived.
All the above rules hold true for reusing old webinars, particularly if they’re newsworthy again. Post links to them on social media or write a new blog post to remind new visitors what you’ve got in your archive. Once they’re done, you’ve got content in the bank—ideal for reposting on a well-thought-out editorial schedule.
By creating this constant content output, you’re creating more incentives for potential subscribers to sign up for your content. Remember: just because you made it doesn’t mean everyone saw it, especially followers you’ve gained in the last few months. Revive popular webinars every few months, and you’re bound to convert a few more readers into subscribers—or, if it was a notably well-received webinar, you could even post a permanent link in your sidebar as part of a “most popular” tab to keep the momentum going.
Make your webinars informative, fun, original—and consistent
This one’s a no-brainer: if your webinar sucks, nobody’s going to want to sign up to see more.
You’ll need to create a reputation for producing high-quality content, making sure your webinars are actually informative and useful. Getting feedback from viewers is critical for this, and will make sure you’re creating a reputation for yourself that sees more and more people returning and spreading the word.
But that also involves a level of consistency and commitment that can add extra hours to your workload. It’s not ideal to do your research, host a great webinar, grab some subscribers and then never do another. Webinars get easier the more you develop a following and reputation, so keep consistency in mind when taking on this kind of project.
Follow Up.
This is perhaps the most crucial step of all, particularly if webinar viewers didn’t subscribe to your newsletter. You’ve created a great excuse to email them again: how did they like it? What feedback do they have? Did they find certain tips useful? If they left midway through, why?
Following up via automation is one of the four crucial steps to making a great webinar, but it’s also an opportunity to convert vaguely interested parties into leads. Craft these emails smartly and personably, and they’re one of your strongest tools for email marketing growth.