39. How to Increase Your Webinar Show-Up Rate

Your webinar show-up rate has less to do with your audience size and more to do with your copy. In this episode, Samantha digs into why people register for webinars, never show up, and why sending one generic confirmation email is leaving money on the table. She shares the five core show-up emails she writes for her clients, the best practices behind each one, and what the research actually says about attendance rates, live conversions, and calendar adds.

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Transcript

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Hey, friends. I had an interesting conversation with a bunch of business owners recently, and I was talking about my webinar from one of my last launches. They were talking about their webinars, and they said, "Yeah, but it's such a numbers game, though." And I thought, What do you mean it's a numbers game?" And they said, "Well, the more people you get on to register for your webinar, the fewer people actually show up. It's kind of a law of diminishing returns." And I thought, "That's not the case." I've hosted webinars where 30 people register. I've hosted webinars where 500 people register, and for me, my show-up rate stays between about 35% and 45%. So I started asking questions, and what came to light was that people were getting as many people as they could registered by any means possible. That means by ads, by affiliates, by inviting people that they already knew. But the further that they got from actually knowing the people who were signing up, the colder that their leads were, the less likely that they were to show up. And to be honest, I have found that this is not a connection problem. It is a copy problem. And gosh, as I'm saying that out loud, I feel like I sound like ChatGPT, but I pinky swear I'm not reading from my screen as I say this. It truly is a copy issue, because when people sign up for your webinar, they sign up because they are stoked about what you have to offer, and the more time that goes by, the more they forget what they were excited about. They forget who you are. So yeah, sometimes it does have something to do with the connection that they have with you. But in all reality, it is up to you to keep them excited about showing up. Because while you won't get 100% of people to show up to your webinar, there's a lot that you can do to get people to come to your webinar. And so that's why today I am going to walk you through my webinar show-up emails. Lucky for you, I also have these templatized. But Today I wanna walk you through what I tell my clients to write or what I write for them when they hire me, when they're doing a webinar-focused launch. If you do not launch with webinars, this is still relevant if you ever host any live trainings, workshops, webinars, or even challenges. So if you host anything, this is worth listening to. I'm gonna talk to you today about show-up emails and how to get people to stay excited enough that they actually show up to the thing that you host. Let's dive in. And before I get started, I touched on this in the intro, but I do have all of these emails templatized. They are $37, and they will be at the link in my show notes. If you're a friend on Instagram, I will also make sure that my template shop is linked in my bio there always. So first things first, what are show-up emails? Show-up emails are the emails that you send after somebody has registered for your event, probably a webinar, but before the event actually happens. There is a right and a wrong way to send show-up emails. The wrong way would be to send one generic confirmation email and not contact them again until the event happens. This contact email typically says something like, "Great, you're registered. Add it to your calendar, and I'll see you next week." And then they don't hear anything else. So there are some best practices that we can put in place before we walk through what emails I would send that I'm gonna recommend, and those best practices are, one, address your people by name whenever possible. This is probably a best practice in any email, but when you have people register for your event, grab their name and their email address so that when you send an email, you can automate a personalization in that email that says, "Hey, Samantha, you're registered. I can't wait to see you." It also gives you a second data point for your people, because sometimes people sign up with email addresses that are registrations123@gmail.com. That's not gonna tell you anything about who they are, and if they get an email saying, "Hey, registrations123@gmail.com," it's not gonna land. This is a very simple way to personalize and start forging that relationship, especially if people are new to your world. Second best practice when sending your show-up emails is send at least three reminders. So the basics are gonna be to send that one that says, "Hey, great, you're registered. Here's the information that you need." But according to a study done by GoToWebinar, which is one of the largest webinar hosting platforms, businesses who send multiple reminders see a fifty percent higher attendance rate on average. That doesn't mean that t- people tend to see at least a fifty percent show-up rate, but if you had, like, a ten percent show-up rate at first, you're gonna jump that number up to a potentially fifteen to twenty percent show-up rate just by sending multiple email reminders. Then it comes down to the content of those emails to increase that show up rate even more, which is why third best practice is that you should use those reminder emails or your show up emails to remind people why they should attend. So rather than saying, "Hey, you're in, here's the information," add a few sentences that tell people why they should attend and especially why they should attend live. Now, why attend live? That brings us into best practice number four, is encouraging people in those emails to show up live and giving them the calendar information so that they can use an app such as Add to Cal or AddCal. There's a whole bunch of cheap or free softwares that you can use that let people add it to their calendar with one click. So to recap these best practices so far, we wanna address them by name, we wanna remind them multiple times, we wanna remind them why they should show up, and give them an easy way to show up, which is to also add it to their calendar. This means that when it's added to their calendar, it could show up when they're driving down the street on their Apple CarPlay, and it reminds them, "Oh, I have somewhere to be at ten AM." They may get a twenty-four-hour reminder from their calendar. It all depends on how their calendar is set up. But personally, I try to stay out of my inbox, so sending me invitations or reminders even an hour before the event is helpful, but it's not more helpful than having an easy link to click that's in my calendar because I schedule my life around my calendar, not my inbox. Best practice number four, again, remind them why they should show up. Don't just remind them what the webinar is, remind them what they're gonna miss. So rather than saying, "Hey, we start in one hour," you could say something that's more descriptive, like, "In one hour, I'm showing you the exact system that we use to drop the average cost per click in ads from five dollars to five cents. You need to be there. Here's the link." Rather than just saying that it starts in an hour, give them a reason to show up in an hour and do this throughout all of your emails. Now, this is where we get exciting on our best practices because if you are selling something in your event, you want people to be there live so that they hear the sales pitch. Why? Because people who show up live are seventy percent more likely to buy from you than people who don't show up live So in your emails, what can you do to get them to show up live? Yes, we are getting it on their calendar. Yes, we are reminding them why they should show up. But also, this is where you can start seeding your bonuses and seeding the offer that you have. So for example, if you have a PDF or a download or something that you can give away, even a ChatGPT or a Claude prompt or skill that you can give away, start telling them that live attendees will receive that bonus for free. Attendees are 22% more likely to show up live when there is an exclusive bonus or a live Q&A. So to use that same example as the cost per clicks that I used in the last best practice, you could say something like, "And remember, those who stay till the end will get our five meta ads swipe files, so you can use the exact system that we used to cut costs by 300%." Give them a reason to show up live and make sure that they stay throughout the duration of the webinar. And finally, best practice, remind, make sure that they can add to calendar straight from your email. People are 60% more likely to show up live when something is on their calendar. Again, people live by their calendars, not by their inboxes. So you wanna show up in multiple places, both their inbox in the days leading up to the webinar and on their calendars right before the webinar. So here's an example. Don't do this. Do not say in your emails, "We'll be live on Zoom on Tuesday at 10:00 AM. Be sure to add this to your calendar." There is way too much room in that for time zone issues, and you can't really expect people to do the additional labor of copy-pasting your thing over to their calendar. You are asking them to do more work. Instead, say something in your show-up emails like, "We'll be live on Tuesday at 10:00 AM Pacific. Click the button below to add this to your calendar." Okay, so those are some best practices throughout all of your show-up emails. Now, if I were writing your show-up emails and you were doing a webinar, here are the emails that I would send. The first email to send is a confirmation email. Tell them that they are registered. And of course, in this email, you are going to make sure that they have the basic information about why they should show up and how to put it on their calendar. I have a bunch of ideas for this email that get people super involved in your world. They're included in the webinar show-up email templates, which will be linked in the show notes. Remember, this is going to be the email that they are most likely to open in this entire sequence. So you wanna be sure that you are using this real estate to your advantage. Get them wrapped up into your world and keep them super stoked Depending on how far out people register for your event, you will wanna have intermittent touch points throughout. Best practice here is probably gonna be every two to three days. I typically start my sequences when I write them in my business for five days before. The reason for that is because I don't usually start advertising my webinars until about seven to 10 days before. So for me to have one that goes out five days before is a great opportunity to educate and encourage people to show up. So that is email number two, is to send one about five days before, educating and encouraging people to show up. If you have a longer runway where you might be registering people two to three weeks in advance, I would say send at least two emails a week reminding them that the webinar is coming up, what they're gonna learn, why they should show up live, and you can throw in some additional value there. Teach them the first thing that they're gonna learn and why they should stick around for the other two topics that you're covering or something like that. So email one is that you're registered. Email two is what to send several days before. Then we start getting into our urgency emails. So the third email that I would have you send would be about two days before, and this is where you are getting people hype. You may even be giving them a little bit of homework in this. So in this email, you're reminding them that they signed up for the webinar, you're having them add it to their calendar, and you are telling them what their life is gonna look like three days from now once they have learned what you are teaching. And of course, in this email, you wanna remind them to stay until the end, where they get the bonus that helps them take the next big step on their journey. Email number four is gonna go out about one to two hours before the event. This one is gonna be super brief and simply reminds them why they should show up and why they should drop what they are doing and come. Remember, your goal is to get them to show up live. Their goal is to receive value from whatever it is that you are doing or teaching, so keep that in mind when writing this email. Again, if that's a challenge for you, go to the link in the show notes and grab the show up emails. This is all templated out, and I have swipe copy from my launches available in that document so that you can take that and use it within your own launch. You may also note that in these last couple emails that go out right before the event, that you may wanna just include the Zoom link or the link to join live rather than the add to calendar link. This is gonna make it way easier for people who are going from their inbox and might be adding this to their to-do list last minute And finally, email number five is the email that you send right when you're starting. This email is heavy on the FOMO and may be sent within two to five minutes of the start of the webinar. Some people like to send it just before the event starts to make sure that people have more time to see it. Some people send it right at the start time on the dot and say, "Hey, we're waiting for you." And some people even choose to send it two minutes later and say, "Hey, where are you? We've already started." So it depends on what your favorite messaging is. Do whatever feels most right for you, but that is the fifth and final email that you're gonna send as a show up email. Now again, you may send more emails than this, especially if you have a longer registration period, but these are the five core ones that I want you to send. What comes after this is typically that during that live event, you're gonna open cart, which means that these emails are all leading into your sales sequence. So this is the red carpet that you are rolling out, where they get to the main event, and you invite them to continue to work with you moving forward. So these emails have to be salesy without feeling pushy. They have to give a really great example of what it's like to work with you, what it's like to communicate with you. They have to be inviting, and they have to actually get people to convert in a way that they spend time with you, that they find value in what you have to say online, and they wanna see what it looks like in real life. So these are some of your most important sales emails, because sending multiple emails, as you have learned, increases your show-up rate. And when you increase your show-up rate, you increase your conversion rate, because people who show up are 70% more likely to buy your offer from you. So again, webinar show-up emails or show-up emails can be sent to people who are coming to a webinar, a workshop, even a free challenge, any event that you're hosting, and they are designed to get people there live so that you increase your conversions of whatever it is that you're selling. I have all of these emails templated out. You can grab them in the show notes. You can always reach out to me with any questions. You can find me on Instagram. I am at Nomad.copy. You can find me online. I'm samantha@nomadcopyagency.com, or my website is nomadcopyagency.com. I'm happy to answer any questions and can't wait to see what happens as you increase your show-up rate to your next event.