Some of you may not know what automated webinar sales funnels are, so let us explain. An automated webinar is simply a webinar you run on autopilot, without you having to go live. The sales funnel is a pathway that you want potential customers to take, eventually leading them to a sale.
An automated webinar sales funnel consists of a series of steps you’ll lead a potential customer through. The main step is an automated webinar:
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Achieve a high number of signups from participants interested in watching your webinar
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Maximize the percentage of participants who actually attend your webinar
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Maximize the percentage of participants who convert, either during or after your webinar
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Follow up with those signups who do not attend your webinar
So, your automated or evergreen webinar content should be as useful for attendees who take part next year as it is right now. That means you should be able to record your webinar and keep using it, allowing it to keep generating leads.
You can even automate the entire lead generation process, meaning your webinar could continue attracting new attendees, engaging them, and converting them, without you having to do anything extra.
Automated webinars are a one-time investment. They will continue to generate leads and increase their ROI over time.
What are the Benefits of Automated Webinars?
While webinars are an excellent lead generation tool, creating and holding new webinars on an ongoing basis just isn’t suitable for most brands. For some, hosting a single live webinar may be tricky and expensive unless they already have access to all the right resources.
The strategy then becomes increasingly expensive and more difficult the more webinars that you hold. Unless you can record one webinar and schedule the replay for anyone who wants to watch it at any time, automate the signup and registration process, and let people watch the replay whenever they want.
Automated Webinars: Pros and Cons
Pros:
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You only need to create and pay for each webinar once
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One single webinar can be used indefinitely
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There is no need to host a live event
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A fully automated webinars funnel can generate new leads while you focus on closing them.
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You get all the benefits of webinars without having to pay for them
- An auto webinar can play every hour around the clock and can thus sell your services and products automatically.
- You can create automated, live, evergreen, and on-demand webinars.
- Real people see questions and answers given by bots and think that they are at a real webinar.
Cons:
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Creating truly evergreen articles can be difficult
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You must not use any time-sensitive references.
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It’s harder to create opportunities for interactivity than it is to create content.
The unfortunate reality is there is never any content that is truly evergreen. Change is constant, and what’s relevant in your industry today might not be relevant in a few years’ time. Most importantly, the needs of the target audience will also change over time. You might even be targeting a completely different audience in a few months. For example, at which step in the funnel did visitors drop out of your sales process?
For the purposes of creating an automated webinar funnel for your target audience, you need to create a webinar that keeps providing value for them for as long as possible It could be one year, or ten years depending on your industry, audience, and content.
You’ll want to avoid any time-specific references, as they could hurt the relevancy and longevity of your webinars. For example, referring to “last year”s digital marketing stats“ will cause problems for someone watching your webinar three years from now.
Mentioning historical events wouldn’t cause the same issue, but be aware that certain references could become less relevant as time goes on.
Finally, there’s another challenge: creating opportunities for interactivity during recorded webinars. That’s something that we’ll also discuss a bit later.
Using Funnel Analytics to Increase Webinar Conversion Rate
If you find in your funnel analysis report that 65% of people who register for your automated webinar drop out before the webinar, then you know that there’s something wrong with your registration form. This could be a sign that the written copy of your registration page is not resonating with your visitors.
Maybe, your registration page is just too long. It might be too short. There could be a need for more pictures or fewer pictures. The point is that you need to test what works and what doesn’t by using webinar analytics so you can optimize your webinar funnel.
Instead, let’s say that 50% or more of your prospects are dropping off at the sales page. This could indicate they are not ready to buy. Or it could mean they think the price point is too high. At this point, something you can do is send an email to those that signed up, asking them what made them leave the page. From there, any responses you receive could help you better understand what your prospects are looking for. Maybe they need a payment plan to seal the deal, or perhaps they felt the offer didn’t give them enough for their money so you throw in a few bonuses.
Once you start analyzing your data, you can get crystal clear on things like:
— Who is visiting your landing pages
— How many people are visiting and where they are coming from
— When people are leaving your pages
— What percentage leaves without taking the action you want them to take
— What your audience wants
— The things that make them object to making a purchase
The more information you can gather at each step, the better.
Building Your Automated Webinar Funnel
Now that we’ve discussed some of the pros and cons, and just why an automated webinar funnel is a good thing to add to your lead-gen strategy, just how to go about building one.
1) Capture Leads With an Irresistible Landing Page
The first step in your automated webinar funnel will be a way to collect the email addresses and other information from your new leads. You should have your webinar landing page created.
Even if you’ve never used a landing page before, it can be easy to create if you follow some basic guidelines. A landing page should include the following key elements:
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A catchy and effective title and subtitle which correspond to your call-to-action (CTA)
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A brief description of the offer, which accurately and concisely explains its benefits
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Relevant supporting images and logos
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A well-optimized form for capturing your visitors’ contact information
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Optional supporting elements include security badges or testimonials.
- Webinars are one of the most important parts of the sales funnel for any type of business.
Follow Up Using Automated Emails
With an automated webinar funnel, email automation is even more vital. After all, there’s no point in automating most of the process if you still have to email the leads manually.
And there’s no point collecting webinar leadsif you don’t follow up with them at all.
A good email sequence could look something like this:
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Email one: Thank them for registering, and reiterate the benefits of attending the webinar
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Email two: Remind them of the upcoming webinar, and explain the problems you’ll be helping them solve with your webinar.
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Email three: Remind them again, and include testimonials or other social proof
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Email four: Final reminder before their scheduled viewing. Reiterate the benefits of attending the webinar.
For many leads, companies become ‘out of sight, out of mind’ after just a few days. Make sure you’re sending at least one or two reminders to ensure people are actually attending the webinar at the scheduled time.
Some tools include emailing capabilities and you can easily configure these tools with your email service provider. However, if you want to use third-party services like Zapier to sync everything, you will need to set them up manually. You can follow up with subscribers by sending them emails.
Follow-up with retargeting
Social media ads are powerful when coupled with relevancy. You can use your marketing strategy to show your leads relevant ads and nurture then to the next stage in your sales funnel.
If you’re trying to sell a product through your automated webinars, and if leads don’t buy the product because of its price, then you need to lower the price. Try running ads that offer deals and discounts.
Deliver Value With an Automated Webinar
A key aspect of an automated webinar funnel is the webinar itself; webinars are an effective lead generation tool and a way to build lasting relationships, but only when they are well put together You need to offer something valuable to your audience.
If your webinar has too many CTA buttons and sales pitches, your attendees will probably never return for another one of your webinars and they may not be interested in doing business with you. Webinars are about building relationships with your leads. Once you have a customer base, you can start trying to convert them into customer
It’s good practice to run your webinar live first. That way, you’ll know that it converts and that it’s worthwhile automating.
Create Ethical Urgency
The difference between an automated webinar and any other recording on Youtube is the built-in urgency.
Webinars work because they have a deadline, so people who attend them will be forced to act Attendees must decide to attend by a specific time and have to click through CTA buttons before the webinar ends to register for the webinar. Automated webinars can help you create the same sense of immediacy with your audience.
A good way to create some urgency for people to register for a webinar is to have a special deal for those who sign up before a certain date.
Tools like Deadline Funnels make this easy by creating personalized deadlines for each individual in your funnel. Once the deal has expired, Deadline Funnel will auto-redirect the user to an expiry page where they can opt-out of receiving future emails from us. The Deadline funnel also takes care of the user’s local Time Zone and shows the local time.
Create Your Follow-Up Email Sequence
Attending your webinar isn’t the final goal of an automatic webinar funnel. Ideally, those attendees would eventually become customers. Most sales won’t occur during the webinar, but some will. Make sure you have some well-timed follow-up emails for people who attend a webinar.
We’ve already discussed the follow-up sequences for Personal Gain, Logic, and Social Proof. Now let’s discuss the follow-up sequence for Urgency. Offer a link to a free trial or a VIP demo of your product so that people can see for themselves how great it is.
Most people need a lot of touches and follow-ups before they eventually convert.
Webinar Automation Tips
According to the ON 24 2017 Webinar Benchmarks report, the average conversion rate from webinars is 46 percent. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to improve your webinar attendance rate, including:
Choose the Right Automated Webinar Platform
Choosing the right webinar software is essential for creating an effective automated Webinar Funnel. There are many automated webinar systems available, each with its own pros and cons.
When deciding on the right automated webinar platform, look for a platform that offers:
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Enough bandwidth to handle multiple presenters and at least 100, attendees
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Sales features and tools which can help you convert viewers into buyers
- Features that can help an automated webinar perform better.
These could include:
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Live chat, which allows you pre-schedule questions to appear automatically in the conversation.
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Allowing you to adjust the number of attendees in the room, so that it appears to have 400+ people, even if there is only one
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Block dates, which allow you to stop your automated webinar from playing on specific dates or at specific times.
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A price that you’re comfortable with
Make Use of All the Webinar Automation Tools and Features
Automated webinars provide many features and tools for automating webinars, including schedule creation, recording, analytics, etc. One of these tools is Just-In-Time Webinars. This allows viewers to watch your webinar whenever they want. They can click through to your webinar immediately, rather than having to sit and wait for days or weeks before they can attend. Features like this in a webinar platform are ideal when you want your audience members to know the webinar has been recorded.
There are other features that might be useful when simulating a live webcast. We’ve already discussed some of these, such as data blocking. If you’ve paid for a platform to use when creating your automated webinar funnel then make sure you’ve used all the tools and features available.
Create a Sense of Urgency
Creating a sense of urgency can often be extremely effective in increasing conversions. One way to achieve this is by adding a countdown timer to your signup page. This way, people are encouraged to reserve their tickets quickly, rather than miss them out.
Chase Up Lost Leads
Other than following up by email with leads who attended your live event, but didn’t end up buying anything, you should also follow them up with phone calls.
You can reach out to these leads by sending them an email reminder, asking if anything has changed for their business since they signed up for your webinar, and even asking if they would be interested in attending another webinar in the future. It opens a door for further relationships. You can also invite people to watch the webinar again, or send them a copy of the transcript or replay.
Final Thoughts
Webinars are a great way to generate leads and build relationships. Automated webinar funnels allow you to create multiple webinars without any effort at all.
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