For most B2B webinars, the follow up consists of sending out a link to the recording and thanking people for showing up.
It’s what the common tools, like Zoom, allow you to do. And it seems like it should be enough, right?
If they showed up, they listened and got the information you wanted to convey.
If they didn’t, now they have another chance.
Not so fast.
This is one of those cases where following “best practices” is hobbling your results.
Here are three ways you can level up your post-webinar communications.
Level 1
Send the replay, and also send a transcript in the same email. It doesn’t have to be perfect. AI voice recognition can do most of the work, but you’ll definitely want to review it.
Level 2
Same replay + transcript, but now you add highlights & takeaways. This requires a bit more work, but it delivers a lot more value, especially if getting someone to understand and engage with some of the key points helps them move further toward a purchase. Bonus points if you can tie the highlights to time-stamps on the video. That will be a whole lot more effective at getting someone to start watching than just showing them a link to the replay.
Note that you want to provide actual value in the highlights. It’s not enough to say, “We discussed how companies can [insert big words and complex phrases].
This can also be done in the single “follow up” email provided by Zoom or other services.
Level 3
All of the above plus detailed insights, dripped out over a sequence of emails. For example, you might divide the webinar into topics or themes, then send one email per topic with highlights, time stamps of the video, key learnings, deep dives into details not covered in the presentation or other resources that will help the person make the most of the information.
Each of those emails is also another chance to present your Call to Action, underscore the value of your services, and nurture prospects toward a purchase decision.
Yes, it’s all a lot of work. Even sending out a transcript will require at least half an hour from a reasonably competent person.
But think of the energy and effort you and your team have put into the webinar.
Preparing the content, getting people to sign up, figuring out all the tech, going through the live performance. And after all that effort you’re just going to say, “Thanks and bye forever” to most of the folks who showed up?
This relatively small bit of extra effort can have a big impact on your results
There’s a mindset shift behind it.
We’re used to thinking of our webinars as valuable.
But what if we look at it differently. What if the webinar was just the trigger?
People signed up for the webinar because they were interested in the topic. They thought you had something valuable to teach them. So valuable, in fact, they were willing to block out an hour of their busy day to get that information.
But when the time came, maybe there were problems. Maybe they got scheduled into another meeting. Maybe their boss emailed. Maybe the webinar started out kinda boring and they drifted away into aligning text boxes on their latest powerpoint and never really drifted back.
(Let’s face it: most webinars are boring. But that’s a problem for a different day.)
Use the webinar as an excuse to educate a person who is interested in the topic. In this framework it doesn’t matter if they showed up or not, or whether they paid attention. Our follow ups give them an easy, curated opportunity to understand the key parts of the message.
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