May 05, 2016 Carole Snitzer
When it comes to promoting your webinars, you just can’t beat email. We recently asked the live audience of “Unlocking the Secrets to Driving Webinar Registration” how many pre-event promotional emails they send, and over 57% said they sent at least three. But, are they getting the most from those emails? On average, you have less than eight seconds to convince the reader that your message is worth spending time reading through all the way. How do you make those eight seconds work for you? These are the five elements of great event promotion emails:
Enticing Subject Line
Without a killer subject line, people may not even open your email. There is definitely an art and a science to crafting that killer subject line. The art lies in crafting a line that sounds cool enough to make people want to engage and read more. It should promise a change or offer a solution to a pain point or need specific to your audience. The line should be clear, exciting, and above all, short.
And what about the science part? That calls for A/B testing. Want to know whether questions or statements make better subject lines? Test it! Suspect that different audience segments might respond to different messages? Segment them out and test it! Thinking of experimenting with personalization in the subject line? Test it! The more test you run, the more you will learn about your audience — and the higher your next email open rate will be.
Clickable Banner
The top of your HTML emails should serve as an ad for your webinar. In fact, it could actually be a variation on the creative you used in your banner ads or paid social promotions. The banner should include the name of the webinar, time and date, an eye-catching image that supports the theme of your webinar, and a great big “Register Now” button (which, ideally, they then click on and register for).
Awesome Opening Line
They opened your email, saw a gorgeous clickable banner, and now… you have to wow them with an awesome opening line with the last few remaining seconds that you have their attention for. Your opening line is like the first few minutes of a great TV show. It needs to further pull the audience in so that they’re interested enough to keep watching — or in our case, reading. So have fun with it! Ask a thought-provoking question. Share an interesting statistic or fun fact to pique their interest. Pose a compelling hypothetical scenario. Show your readers that you understand their situation and their pain points, and they’ll want to know how you’re going to resolve them. Which brings us to…
Scannable Bullets
In three to five bullets, let the reader know exactly what they’ll get from attending your webinar. Address solutions to the paint points you raised in the opening line, or expand on the promise implied in your webinar title. Focus on actionable takeaways such as tips, how-to’s, and data points. Keep your bullets short, so the reader doesn’t have to do a lot of work. It should come together to look like this:
Closing Call to Action
You caught their attention, you showed them what you have to offer; now it’s time to bring it home! Close your email with a clear statement of the benefits of coming to the webinar. This could be a light-hearted play on your webinar title, a natural conclusion to your opening line, or even a straightforward value prop. Then give the reader an obvious clickable button or hyperlinked copy so that they can register right away.
Looking for more great tips on bringing in bigger webinar audiences? Check out Unlocking the Secrets to Driving Webinar Registration.
