Enhancing Webinar Engagement with Effective Calendar Management best practices

Great presenters know how to craft and deliver a webinar that keeps your audience interested and engaged. But even the very best presentation falls on deaf ears unless you fill the room, even in a virtual environment.

People may accept an invitation, but the trick is getting them to actually attend. 

Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take to improve webinar attendance, such as writing a compelling invitation that excites and motivates people to attend. You will also need to craft a presentation that invites audience participation—no one wants to sit in a one-way conversation; attendees want to feel engaged! Once done, there are other tools that can help you streamline scheduling, invitations, and event reminders.

In this article, we will explore creating an enticing invitation and an engaging presentation to maximize the webinar’s chances of success.

The first step is creating an invitation that drives excitement.

Writing an Invitation that Drives Webinar Attendance 

There are several ways to encourage your audience to register and show up for the event. To increase webinar attendance rates, you must write an enticing webinar invitation. The average webinar attendance rate is generally 40-50% of your average webinar registration rate, so crafting an engaging email invitation is crucial.

Writing a Compelling Subject Line

Your first hurdle is getting readers to open that email by designing an email subject line that captures their attention. What are the pain points of your attendees that your webinar will address? These concepts should be woven into the subject line to grab their attention and get them to open the invitation. If appropriate, you can get creative or even controversial in this heading. Savvy marketers also test headlines to discover which is most engaging.

Focus on the Body Copy

Next, the body of the invitation should highlight the benefits of attending your webinar. Your message should also be memorable and conversational to help readers feel invited and get them excited about the event. State the topic and benefits and clearly label the date and time to help readers remember it.

The Importance of Collecting RSVPs

Be sure to set your webinars up as RSVP events so that you know who will be in attendance, what their interests are, and what their roles are. 

You can collect RSVPs through a variety of methods, such as:

• RSVP link
• RSVP email
• RSVP website
• RSVP form 
• RSVP button 
• Using event registration software (some of which allow for free online RSVPs)

Pro Tip: If you use AddEvent’s RSVP tool, you don’t need a separate add to calendar link generator since this feature is built into our RSVP pages. If you aren’t familiar with an add to calendar link, it allows your guests to add your webinar to their calendar with the click of a button! 

Continue to Build Excitement

Once invitees have registered, you’ll want to trigger an email sequence that reminds them of the benefits of showing up on the day of the event. Schedule countdown emails as the event approaches to enhance webinar attendance. 

Next, it’s time to deliver your promise of an engaging event experience by creating a helpful and engaging presentation.

Create an Engaging Webinar Presentation

How can you create a webinar that is effective and gets your audience to participate or respond to your call to action? The formula is simple, really. 

Audience Participation

Optimize your presentation with content prompts for audience engagement, such as live polls or an open Q&A. Interactive communication, such as calling out people’s responses and questions during the event, is also helpful. 

For example, asking everyone where they are from and welcoming them from the start promotes initial engagement. Don’t forget to tap into your social channels if you are trying to build your social media presence or already have a strong social media following. Your guests can engage with you on social media before, during, and after the webinar. Choose one channel and create a unique hashtag to build even engagement across multiple channels!

High-Quality Content

Webinar success is not as difficult as you think when you couple these engagement techniques with high-quality content. That includes creating visuals that are both informative and eye-catching. Too much text could lose the audience, so make your presentation simple and direct, highlighting the most jaw-dropping information you can find. Audience members like statistics that are punchy and to the point, don’t get lost in numbers if they aren’t easily digestible. That said, don’t let shock value distract you from your message. 

Engage via Q&A

During the presentation, have a designated moderator manage the Q&A or chat box. Keep in mind that repeated questions could indicate something is unclear—be sure to clarify anything that attendees seem to be confused about. If you are hosting this webinar more than once, you may want to address that for the next time. If you aren’t hosting this webinar again, use these learnings to clarify and iterate for any future webinars.  

Format of the Presentation

Other items to consider are the format and style of your presentation. 

• You can invite a speaker or host a panel, giving the audience multiple voices and points of view. 
• You can integrate videos or animations, making the presentation visually appealing. 
• Provide your audience with a takeaway item, like a checklist or worksheet, by providing their email, which can double as lead gen.

Other Tools to Help Optimize Your Event

Leverage Visual Problem Solving

Visualizing problem-solving is crucial to preparing a captivating webinar, particularly when considering the scheduling process. Use items like flowcharts, maps, and diagrams to lay out the customer journey to visualize their experience from start to finish.  Include invitation and registration, starting from when your subscriber receives the invitation, reminder emails about your webinar, access link email, all the way up to post-event calls to action such as surveys, downloadable worksheets, or other lead gen CTAs.

One way to drive attendance is to map all of the above out with a mind map, a virtual organizational tool.

Enter the main problem, such as registrants who forget to attend, in the center of the page and then add branches depicting potential solutions, such as sending event reminders. 

Event Calendar Management Software and Event Registration Software

Event registration software and event calendar management software should be an integral part of addressing these issues because it gives you the ability to automate periodic reminder emails (and sometimes texts), from the moment a user is registered until the time of the event. 

You can use event registration software to integrate registrations and calendar apps, allowing registrants to see your event in their calendars and set their own reminders. When guests RSVP to your event, you will get an idea of how many people to expect. Even more than an estimated headcount, you can also collect data, such as names, titles, companies, and email addresses, which allows you to send out a thank you email with a takeaway worksheet, content, or a case study. 

Share Your Calendar of Events

After your webinar, if you collected RSVPs, you can share your calendar of events with your registration list to keep them engaged. We highly recommend creating a subscription calendar with upcoming events you’d like to promote. Once you have your calendar set up, you can share your calendar link with attendees to view and subscribe to your upcoming events calendar so they never miss an event!

How to get more attendees to your webinar is an art that involves creating an engaging invitation. Once there, deliver an outstanding presentation to keep participants engaged and interested. Use the best tools to keep things flowing properly, and you’ll have repeat attendees for all your events.

Ready to elevate your webinar engagement?

Now that you have our tips and tricks for enhancing webinar engagement, get started with AddEvent. Use AddEvent to collect RSVPs, send reminder emails, create and share a subscription calendar, and become the webinar superstar we know you’re meant to be!

About the Author

Miles Oliver is an independent writer with a background in business and a passion for tech, psychology, news, and simply helping people live happy and fulfilled lives. He has lived and traveled all over the United States and continues to expand his awareness and experiences. When he is not writing, he is most likely mountain biking or kicking back with a cup of tea.