Fix your webinar emails before your...

Webinar emails that motivate people to click, make time in their busy calendars and actually show up aren’t easy to write.

I get it. Been there, got the T-shirt. 

The single biggest mistake (or missed opportunity) I see companies make repeatedly is not selling the value of their webinars and online events enough.

This is a great example of what I mean (no offense to Wistia): 

I see these kinds of webinar promo emails all. The. Time.

• Title? Check.
• Event date and time? Check.
• Relevance? None that I can see. I used Wistia to embed a video in my Squarespace page months ago and haven’t used it since. Do I really need to book 30+ minutes to learn why video resolution matters?
• Offer? Nonexistent. How does this webinar move me from A to B? What’s the advantage of attending this webinar…and what’s the FOMO factor?
• Angle and hook? Nowhere to be found.
• Compelling, persuasive, specific copy? Oops.
• Recording promise? Check.

Many companies are so eager to share dates, times and smiling speakers that they forget to persuade people to come!

“Free” isn’t the big sell that most companies think it is. Why? Because it isn’t free. You’re asking people to spend time and attention, and those are valuable, perishable assets.

Dig deeper: If your webinar attendance is dropping, it’s not the audience’s fault

If you’re not persuading, you’re wasting sends and blending in with all your competitors. No value. No differentiation. No FOMO. Just another calendar invite they may not need.

So, please, use my process and copywriting framework. It will get you people who are receptive to your post-webinar follow-ups. Here it is, step by step.

The list

Who are you sending to, and what do you know about them? The needs of a VP of sales who has been at the same company for six years are different from those of a recently hired sales director, for example.

How is this webinar relevant to their role, company, industry and growth stage? What questions do they have that the speaker can or will answer?

The more specific and narrow the list, the better.

• Pro tip: If you want to craft messaging and copy so relevant it hurts to say no, do what Matt Kleinrock does when strategizing for events, and ask: Why are they here? What brings this type of person to an event like this? What I like about Matt’s approach is that it forces you to bring a future event to the present, to imagine that the webinar is live, your attendees are filing in, and it’s time to deliver what they need.

Do: Filter the list by people who would find the event valuable and relevant to their goals.

Don’t: Send the webinar invitation to “everyone” for the sake of “engagement.” The more relevant your event is, the better your engagement will be. Everyone else will just tune it out, which isn’t good for your deliverability… or your domain reputation.

Dig deeper: How the event-first approach to marketing can maximize research ROI

The offer

The offer is the most important and underrated part of your webinar promotion.

Popular, well-respected speakers can attract attendees, for sure. But most companies aren’t hosting the Neil Patels of their industry, so name-dropping a speaker or a topic isn’t enough.

So, what is an offer?

I love the definition Doug Foley shared on an episode of AI & Events: “A really good offer moves somebody closer to their desired state.”

A few questions to help you develop an offer:

• How does your webinar take your target attendee from their current painful state to a desirable or aspirational state? Will it help them solve a problem? Build a workflow?
• Are there any valuable resources/frameworks/discounts you’re offering to attendees and no one else?
• What unique perspective or experience does the speaker bring, and how will it give attendees an advantage or boost in their jobs/lives?

Now, assuming you can’t make any strategic adjustments or changes to the offer—and let’s be honest, that’s 90% of the time—you focus on drawing out what’s already there as best as you can.

Do: Research the speaker(s) to learn more about their expertise, what they’ve published, what stages or podcasts they’ve spoken on, etc. Find out what’s unique about them, and use that as the offer.

Don’t: Overhype the recording or the “free” nature of the webinar. These aren’t offers, they’re suggestions that maybe your event isn’t worth their time. Save the webinar recordings for people who show up, and for future content you can use in your mid-funnel and bottom-funnel flows.

The message

Your message is the core ideas and themes in your webinar—what it’s about, why now, why it matters, the stakes involved.

Messaging is different from copy, which is the specific content that expresses your message effectively: tone, hooks, benefits, calls-to-action, etc.

This is important because if you go back to the Wistia example, you’ll notice the email is sparse on both.

There’s no message, and therefore, hardly any copy.

To help you develop a message that earns interest and racks up registrations, make sure your campaign answers the questions:

• Why this speaker/topic, and why now?
• What’s this about, and who is it ideal for? What makes this different from other webinars out there? 

Do: Tie your event to news, trends or ongoing industry aches and pains. If you can get the agenda or questions beforehand and any frameworks or insights, that’s gold. If you can’t, try mapping the topic of the event to the speaker and their content, and draw from that.

Don’t: Be short for the sake of brevity. Relevance is more important than word count.

Dig deeper: How to use AI to turn one event into a month of content

The copy

This has a mini cascade process of its own. The process I use is: 

Angles → hooks → email copy structure (AIDA, PAS, etc.). I always select the structure that fits the messaging and the event.

• Angles: Connect to a trend, a recent report or stat, a story or perspective, a fear. Testing angles in your emails is ALWAYS a great idea, so don’t feel like you have to stick with one. Brainstorm several and see which ones drive registrations and signups.
• Hooks: Ask a question, lead with a shocking stat, address a specific and painful problem or aspiration that is directly relevant to the contact’s role or industry.
• Structure: Select the structure that matches the angle with the value. Are you solving a problem? Use problem – agitation – solution (PAS) or attention – interest – desire – action (AIDA). Helping them achieve something they want? Use desire – obstacle – solution (DOS).

If your webinar is about helping marketing ops teams build AI workflows, your structure could be:

• Problem: Complexity. Which AI tools should you use? What makes sense for your stack?
• Agitation: Complexity slows down projects, strengthens silos and chokes productivity and effectiveness.
• Solution: This speaker and webinar topic tell you how to select tools based on your stack, the basic building blocks for getting started. Here are their credentials. The resources they’ll share. The value you’ll walk away with.

Alternatively, it could be: 

• Desire: Building AI workflows that win executive buy-in.
• Obstacle: Identifying the business challenges AI workflows can solve and building solutions as quickly and effectively as possible.
• Solution: This speaker and webinar topic shows you how to identify the business challenges to start with, how to select tools based on your stack, and the essential building blocks for getting started. 

See that? It’s the same topic, but your campaigns will look very different based on who you’re talking to, what you’re offering, and what your message is. 

Do: End emails by reminding people what they risk by not attending. You’re not trying to scare them, you’re just reminding them of the stakes involved, and consequences for not making time to learn this info. 

Don’t: Fake scarcity or manufacture urgency where it doesn’t exist.

One that works

Better promotions = emails people want to read = webinars they want to attend 

When you follow this process, you get stronger emails.

And rather than sending forgettable promotions like Wistia’s, you send memorable promotions like this one from MarTech (no, they didn’t pay me to say that):

Final tips

• Send retargeting emails: I’ve written about this before here. And don’t worry about sending too many. If you’re sending relevant and valuable emails, you won’t annoy people nearly as much as you think. You might even snag those impulsive, last-minute types, or remind someone who would have forgotten about your event otherwise.
• Don’t be brief for its own sake: Focus on relevance and value. If there’s one mistake I’ve seen webinar promotions make, it’s not digging into the pain or the aspiration enough.
• Don’t bait and switch: If you promise something and don’t deliver, it will hurt your brand.
• Don’t share spoilers: After all, that’s the point of the webinar. Give everything away, and there’s no need to attend! But that brings me to my next point:
• Fascinate: Use fascinations to arouse intrigue and motivation. Eddie Shleyner has an excellent micro course on this.
• Don’t oversell: Most people know that an hour of two or three people talking isn’t going to magically solve their sales or business challenges.