Ask the Readers: What’s Wrong with Webinars?

If you’re active online, then dollars to donuts, you’ve attended a webinar of one kind or another.

Some of them are sleazy pitches, and some of them are valuable learning opportunities.

If you’re running a business online – maybe you’ve run them too – they have a tendency to work really well in terms of getting tons of new subscribers interested in what you’re doing. We believe strongly in the webinar as an engagement, and as a sales technique.

However – there is a problem with webinars. And it’s a big one.

We’ve got pretty good numbers for the webinars we run. On average…

• 50-60% of people who visit the landing page will register.
• 20-30% of those people will attend live.
• 5-10% more will watch a live replay over the weekend.
• 20% of live attendees will buy something from us.

Now, these numbers may be above average for the industry, but something seems… off.

What gets to us is that 60-75% of people don’t watch the webinar they registered for!

(And in case you’re thinking it’s because we don’t release recordings, you’re wrong; we stopped releasing recordings when we found that most people don’t watch them, and having a one-time live replay over the weekend actually works for a lot more people, by the numbers of people who actually watch it.)

This sucks for a number of reasons. They don’t have the chance to get to know us, or we them. We don’t get the opportunity to see if there’s a fit for the product we offer, and we don’t get the chance to give them any of the value we offer!

So Why Do People Do It?

• Is it because they assume there will be a recording they can get to someday?
• Is it because their initial excitement dies off in the time between registration and the event?
• Do they forget the signed up at all?

Now, we’re playing with a few different ideas on how to fix this problem – here are some of them:

• Adding a button that lets you add the event to your calendar to the registration page.
• Asking for a phone number so we can text people before the webinar begins.
• Showing an emotionally resonant video after registration that will, hopefully, start to make a connection.
• Explaining in advance that we don’t offer recordings because we believe in appointment marketing – but let them schedule their own replay.

We’d like to get your thoughts on this:

What do you think the problem is, and what might the solution be? Have you ever encountered this? Have you ever registered for a webinar you didn’t attend?

Let us know in the comments!