Webinars have historically been a tough game for engagement.
Attendance rates around the 40-50% mark, with ON24’s latest benchmark report citing an average of 46% attendance.
This implies that less than half of the individuals who initially responded positively by clicking “yes” to attend actually end up showing up. So, sending a webinar invitation email to a list of a few hundred recipients can often result in a disappointing turnout.
But by positioning your webinar as an exciting online event, you’ll be able to improve engagement and drive conversion for your webinar invitation emails.
In this article, we’re going to show you how.
We’ll walk you through a simple yet incredibly effective nine-step sequence to building webinar invitation emails that actually get noticed. We’ll cover aspects such as subject line and CTA best practices and provide examples of real-world brands that are getting their webinar emails right.
1. Craft a compelling subject line
The subject line is the first thing your recipients will see when they get your email before they even open it.
The subject line has one simple goal: enticing the reader to open the email and learn more about your online event.
It follows that your subject line needs to generate excitement about your webinar by speaking to your audience’s intrigue and be so irresistible that they have to open the email.
It also needs to be short enough to display nicely on both desktop and mobile devices (less than 60 characters). Otherwise, your subject line could be cut off part-way through.
That’s a lot to juggle for just the subject line! Luckily, Klenty recently studied over 200k emails and gave us the inside tips on crafting the perfect webinar invitation subject line:
- Pose a question (subject lines with questions get nearly 70% more opens)
- Use a number in the subject line to drive open rates (more than 65% higher)
- Include an emoji to drive open rates (12% to 20% higher)
- Personalize the subject line with the recipient’s name (these emails get opened nearly 4x as often!)
Looks like RollWorks got the memo — this subject line in their webinar invitation email ticks all four boxes.
Here are a few more great webinar invitation subject lines to get your brain juices flowing:
- Join [X] [industry] professionals at our upcoming [event name]
- Last chance:
- Your chance for a 1-on-1 with [guest speaker]
- Discover the secret to [webinar topic]
- Nearly sold out: Sign up now!
And one last tip: Check out CoSchedule’s free Headline Analyzer tool to get specific tips on how to improve and optimize your subject lines.
2. Tell recipients what’s in store
Your subject line got your email opened, now it’s time to generate some excitement and hook your audience.
While it may be tempting to want to maximize viewership, your goal should be attracting viewers to whom the content is relevant rather than everyone possible.
To achieve this, your invitation email should provide a clear description of what is to be learned and how your webinar will be unique and entertaining, so readers can self-assess and determine whether your webinar is right for them.
Check out the bullet list under “You’ll learn” in this event listing:
Bullet point lists are a great way to draw the reader’s eye down and quickly promote several benefits of watching the webinar.
The list in the above screenshot tells potential attendees exactly what’s in store, but it also goes one step further, building excitement for the online event by speaking to the real-life impact of watching: “So creating content doesn’t become your full-time job.”
3. Drive home the problem to be solved
Here’s where you really focus on inspiring and motivating your audience to sign up.
Your webinar should speak to some kind of problem or challenge your target audience is currently facing and, in particular, should address methods, tactics, or strategies for solving that problem.
That challenge, or pain point, is what’s emotionally driving your audience to seek your help. Use it.
Here’s what one of our Eventbrite event creators used to entice potential viewers:
“What if I told you there was a way for you to grow your business without having to spend thousands of dollars on ads a month, do TikTok dance videos every day, or wrack your brain trying to figure out where your audience is online or what they need?”
The first sentence in the event description really digs into customer pain points (spending thousands of dollars on ads, endlessly creating content, and struggling to determine audience desires).
Now, imagine you’re a small business owner or marketer experiencing those exact problems right now.
Spending 90 minutes in a webinar may seem like a fair deal because it can help you save time and money by solving the challenges that the event promises, don’t you think?
Identify the core challenges that motivate your audience, and address them directly in your webinar invite email copy.
Then, it’s time to sell the dream…
4. Talk to results and outcomes
You’ve introduced the problem to be solved. Now you need to talk results.
This sets up a framework that establishes clear expectations from the start, enhances learning outcomes, and serves as a source of motivation as readers imagine themselves having already achieved the desired outcomes.
For example, this online event listing from VirtualWebinar tells readers exactly what they can expect to gain from watching:
To really make your invite stand out, include some real-life results that help potential attendees understand outcomes in a more tangible manner.
Numbers work best here, for instance, “Learn how to reduce call handling time by up to 40%.”
Even better, refer to actual results from previous webinar attendees. For example, “[attendee] cut call handling time in half after watching this webinar.”
5. Make your CTA unmissable
Your CTA (call-to-action) is where you finally pop the question and ask, “So, do you want to come to the webinar?”
Using a button-style CTA in your webinar invitation is a no-brainer here. Buttons drive 127% more clicks than other forms of CTA.
Of course, it helps to make your CTA button easily visible and, ideally, make it stand out on the page. Our recommendation would be to use a contrasting color to really make your CTA pop out, like in this email example from Iterable.
Iterable keeps the email on-brand by not straying from its color palette but uses a contrasting color to draw the eye to the button and encourage further clicks.
If you have space in your email design, try to include two CTA buttons, one at the top of the email and another at the bottom, like this webinar invite from Litmus:
Note as well that Litmus doesn’t shy away from creative CTA copy. Rather than a simple “Register here,” they went with “Save my seat,” doubling down on building a sense of urgency and motivating recipients to RSVP.
6. Include an option to watch later
The standard idea behind a webinar is that they are a live event, kind of like a traditional seminar, except online (hence the name).
But requiring that everyone attend in real-time simply limits your viewership. Not everyone will be able to make it for the live webinar, either due to scheduling conflicts or simply because they forget!
Besides, webinars are pretty commonplace these days, and most of us know that they are typically pre-recorded anyway as so they aren’t really live.
Plus, if you’re serving an international audience, time zones often get in the way of maximizing attendance (who is getting up at 3 am to watch a webinar?)
For these reasons, it’s a best practice to include an option to watch later to get as many eyes on your webinar as possible.
This is a smart tactic for maximizing sign-ups, as it tackles the objection “I would sign up, but I can’t make that time.”
Then, once the webinar is over, you send the recording out to those who couldn’t make it (and even to those who did, in case they want to re-watch any important parts.
If you’re using Zoom Webinars to run your online events, you can simply schedule an automated email to go out a few hours after the event ends. There you can thank your participants and provide them with any recordings or other resources.
7. Follow up with a registration confirmation
The moment someone signs up for your online event, they should receive another confirming their attendance, reiterating the time and date, important details about accessing the webinar, and providing an “add to calendar” link.
Here’s an example of what one of our Eventbrite creators sends out on sign-up.
Like your initial message, the copy here should be inspiring and exciting. Remember, you’ve only got them to sign up so far; you still need to motivate them to attend!
Take this webinar confirmation email from Ellevest. It uses inspirational language (dream big) to get attendees excited and encourage attendance.
You want this email to go out immediately to provide attendees with a confirmation and to motivate them to add the event to their calendar, and create a way to improve attendance rates.
To achieve this, you’ll want to find a platform that allows you to send personalized, automated emails out immediately on sign-up, like Eventbrite’s Online Registration platform.
8. Position your webinar invitation as part of an email sequence
Your webinar invitation shouldn’t be a one-off email; it should be part of a sequence.
Why?
First of all, you aren’t going to get everyone to sign up from the first email. A good practice is to set up an email campaign with a few different invites (being careful not to spam), which might look something like this:
- Initial event announcement
- First webinar invite email
- Second invite email (speaking to a slightly different motivation)
- Final email invite (focused on driving urgency as the event reaches capacity)
To maximize attendance and build a buzz around your upcoming webinar event, you should also build out a webinar reminder email sequence and schedule it in your virtual events platform.
A week out from the event, you’ll want to send out a reminder like this, ensuring attendees are all set up to watch the webinar without experiencing any technical challenges.
Then, as a last-minute reminder for those who are, shall we say, less than great at calendar management, schedule a pre-webinar attendance reminder email on the day of the event.
Lastly, think about how you’ll keep audiences engaged after the event, and provide additional value to your attendees.
This post-webinar email from AWeber is a great example, where those who attended the event get access to some bonus content: a free email copywriting course.
9. Provide an incentive to share
There is no more powerful distribution machine than word of mouth, which means you should be doing everything you can to get your existing audience to spread the word and invite others to attend your upcoming online invite.
To make this happen, it’s a good idea to provide some kind of incentive.
For instance, you might offer a free consultation or service for successful referrals.
Alternatively, a great incentive in the B2B context would be to include a special shout-out and brand mention for those who get others to sign up.
Building out referral programs like this is not only the perfect way to expand your reach and drive more sign-ups, but it also helps improve attendance (those that invited others are much more likely to pull through themselves).
Create webinar invitations that excite and inspire!
By developing a good webinar email invitation using the steps discussed above, your company will be well on its way to driving more potential customers to your online event.
Across all communications, your focus should be on inspiring, exciting, and motivating your audience to take action, working not just on webinar registrations, but on driving attendance.
By partnering with an online events platform like Eventbrite, you can attract more viewers, build trust, and take advantage of built-in confirmation features.
