Love them or hate them, a good webinar plays a powerful role in educating and engaging prospects and customers. But to be “good” it has to be well planned and executed. Part of that is getting people to attend and stay excited about the topic, whatever it is.
It’s a lot easier to do both when you communicate by opening up a conversation instead of just pushing out information. You know, talking WITH people instead of talking AT them.
By using Skipio to have conversations with potential and confirmed attendees, you’ll enjoy more successful webinars with people who genuinely want to be there. Here’s how to do it.
Before the webinar
Create an event in Skipio & RSVP page
Skipio includes in-app event creation to help you streamline your event-focused communication. By creating an event in the Skipio calendar, you get a shareable RSVP page for your event.
Share the RSVP page to social media, include it in emails, send it over text. Anyone who RSVPs will be automatically added to your Skipio address book and receive the event’s reminder texts that you create when you make the event. This page could even completely replace other event software or pages you use.
Customize automated reminders
When you create your event and RSVP page, you also customize a series of reminder text messages. (Don’t underestimate the power of reminders when it comes to improving show rates.) These messages go out automatically to anyone who RSVPs.
If need be, like if you collect RSVPs on a landing page or other form fill, you can use our Zapier integration to set up an automatic import for when people register. That way they’re added to the event in Skipio and will start receiving reminders without you doing anything.
No matter what, as long as someone is added to the event or RSVPs on their own, they will receive text reminders from you before the event (and follow-up messages after it’s done).
Your final “reminder” should be a text message with the link to join the webinar. Send this about an hour before you start.
Start conversations early and gather questions
As part of your reminder messages, schedule a message at least 3 or 4 days before the event to ask about priorities, needs, or questions related to the webinar topic. Use their answers to finalize your main talking points and start helping people right then.
By reaching out to have a conversation, you build trust and credibility. You’re not just there to get their contact info and turn them into a “lead.” You want to genuinely help them.
And by showing off your expertise on the topic beforehand, they’ll hopefully get excited to learn more from you. They’ll see the value you can offer and are more likely to show up — and maybe eventually become a customer in the future.
Set up text-in keywords
You’ve probably seen or used a text-in keyword before. It’s a simple way to encourage interactions because it takes little effort.
By setting up text-in keywords in Skipio for your webinar, you give attendees a way to continue engaging with you. Usually texting in a keyword gets someone enrolled in a list. But in Skipio they aren’t just added to a group where they’ll sit until you remember to text them.
Instead, people who text in are automatically added to an associated drip messaging campaign. That way messages start sending immediately (or on whatever timeline you set) and continue sending.
So create keyword campaigns related to different sections or topics of the webinar. You then share the keywords and your number during the event and people text in about what they find most interesting.
During the webinar
Share your text-in keywords
Show the keywords along with the number to text. Put them in the chat, on your screen share, and say them out loud. When attendees text the keyword(s), they’ll enroll in the campaign(s) you set up and receive the tailored messages related to that topic.
Make it clear when sharing the keywords how often the recipients will receive messages. So maybe that’s once or twice a month that you’ll deliver relevant content. Even better, clearly communicate that they’ll only receive messages on those topics (if that’s what you intend to do). People don’t want texts about things they don’t care about.
Ask people to text in questions
If you don’t mind doing live Q&A, have people text in their questions. Far too often questions typed in a webinar chat get buried or lost once the webinar is over. Giving people the opportunity to text you means you have yet another way to interact personally.
Think about it: If you don’t get to a question while live, you now have it in your Skipio inbox and can continue that conversation 1-on-1 with person who asked it.
After the webinar
Follow up soon after
Fortunately, this is super easy with the reminder campaign you set up when you created the event! The templates for these messaging campaigns include one post-event message by default, and you can add as many as you need.
At some point, send a follow-up message with a link to the recording (if you recorded the webinar) or to a summary. If you used a slideshow or presentation, you may want to share that too.
Other engaging follow-up may involve relevant talking points or stats. This could be as simple as a quick message like, “Hey, a lot of people asked about X strategy that we mentioned, so we wanted to share Y resource that talks more about it.” Yet again you have an opportunity to build your credibility and provide value to your attendees.
Close your follow-up messages with a question. Ask them what they enjoyed most about the webinar, find out if they need more information on a related topic, or offer help in some way.
Survey attendees for their feedback and ideas
In order to keep your communication organized post-webinar, create a drip campaign specifically to request feedback from attendees. Anyone who used your event page to RSVP will have been put into an “event group.” Once you write your drip campaign, add that group to the campaign.
When setting up your drip campaign, make sure to take advantage of the “drip.” You won’t hear back from everyone after one message, so put multiple messages in the campaign. Let Skipio do the follow-up for you and you get more replies.
The convenience of text messaging for event communication
The communication surrounding virtual events like webinars shouldn’t be time-consuming or stressful. Skipio helps make sure of that.
Automating your outreach and follow-up with Skipio is effective for you and convenient for attendees. All in all, you provide better experiences for more people as you send personalized messages and engage in actual conversations.
Start communicating with Skipio on your own or make it a team effort with our multi-user option.
