Webinar Engagement

Webinars are coming forward as effective communication formats that foster interaction and facilitate information sharing with clients, target audiences, and other professionals in the industry. The ON24 Webinar Benchmark Report for 2021 has revealed some astonishing stats and behaviours that marketers could exhibit with webinars in the past year. It is found that the percentage of webinar attendees increased by 251 as compared to the previous year’s attendance strength. Moreover, the hours of webinar content viewed increased 290%. It implies that webinars are a promising B2B marketing strategy and are worth including in your marketing mix.

However, you need to create an impact through your webinars so that more and more attendees will come back to you and eventually become your leads. Following are a few best B2B marketing practices that help you achieve success with webinar hosting:

Webinar promotion

Promotion is a crucial part of your planning process, as it will help you fetch as many people signed up as you can. You can send out promotional emails, including the date and time of the webinar, an intriguing reason to attend, along a link for registration. The study has shown that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days of the week for sending out promotional emails. Around 63% of the registrations come from these three days.

Besides that, about 39% of registrants sign up more than a week in advance, while 20% are among very early registrants who sign up more than two weeks in advance. 15% are among the registrants who sign up the day a webinar is being held. These stats can be considered while deciding how far in advance to begin sending promotional emails.

You can consider sending emails as early as three weeks in advance so that it becomes easier for early registrants to reserve their spots. Additionally, it will be wise to send one follow-up email a week in advance and one the day before the webinar.

Pick the best time to host a webinar.

As mentioned above, mid-week is the best time to send out promotional emails. Similarly, it is also the best time to host a webinar. Specifically, Wednesday and Thursday have high rates of attendees. Tuesday is also a good day to host a webinar with an over 20% of attendance rate. Usually, Monday and Friday do not have significant percentages of attendance. However, the best timing for you to host a webinar can vary with industry variations. Pick the time that helps you fetch maximum attendees.

According to ON24, the best time for a webinar is 11 AM Pacific Time (2 PM Eastern and 1 PM Central). It means afternoon timings are the best times of the day to host webinars. However, pick the most common time zone for your audience, considering their availability. You can consider the timing that had wo1rked well for you previously and continue hosting your webinars around that time.

Engagement and viewing time

Research has shown that as webinar attendance and registrant-to-attendance conversion rates have been rising from year to year, engagement and viewing time has also been rising. The average viewing time is around an hour. However, improve the engagement rate by offering interactive tools throughout the webinar. For example, 86% of attendees participate in Q&A sessions, 70% download attached documents, 43% take part in the surveys, and 22% engage in answering poll questions throughout the presentation. These are among the most used interactive tools that you can implement.

 ON24’s research found that 43% of registrants only watch on-demand webinars. Thus, consider offering on-demand webinar content, as many registrants might need flexible webinar timings. You can offer a watch on-demand content with 29 minutes of viewing time that contains the best portion, including interactive sessions.

Towards the end

The popularity of webinars is on the rise. Thus, include webinars in your B2B marketing strategy and make them work for you. Make use of stats and tips discussed in the blog to fulfil your registration and attendance goals. Now a successful webinar journey is around the corner for you!