Email Marketing vs SMS Marketing: Which is best to drive webinar success?

Anyone who has hosted webinars for any length of time knows that attendance rates often disappoint.

You put in the work to create an exceptional webinar. You promote it across your various channels.

You get a ton of signups. And then when it comes time to go live your audience is less than half of what you had hoped for based on the number of signups you got.

Webinar attendance rates are often disappointing.

If this happened to you, the first thing you need to know is that you’re not alone.

The exact number varies from study to study, but most agree that the average webinar attendance rate is below 50%.

One study put it at 46%.

In either case, the point is that less than half the people who sign up for your webinar actually end up attending.

You can improve your attendance rates.

What can be done? Some people think email is the solution. So the webinar host might send a reminder email six hours before the webinar and then another an hour before. And this makes some amount of sense. After all, email is a huge signup driver for webinars.

According to one study, which we already linked above, email accounts for 57% of all webinar signups.

But whenever you’re making marketing choices, you need to consider the type of communication you’re sending and what channel best suits that particular type of communication.

It’s not surprising that email drives webinar sign-ups. Emails are longer forms of communication, so they lend themselves to selling, and our technology makes it very easy to sign up for a webinar from an email.

But is email the best medium for reminding people of something they’ve already signed up?

Answer: Probably not!

Reminder emails are easy to delete—think about your own email use. How often do you click emails that are just reminder alerts. Often all that these emails do is briefly draw a person’s attention to something before they promptly forget it again as soon as the email is gone. This makes sense: Often they’ll have 25 other emails sitting in their inbox that need to be addressed. In cluttered inboxes, simple messages, like event reminders, are easily lost.

So what works well for reminders? Text messaging. And don’t just take our word for it. One marketer reports seeing attendance improvements of over 300% thanks to text message reminder messages.

If you’re struggling with sagging attendance at your webinars, texting is almost certainly going to be the best solution to your problem.

Conclusion: Email or Text? Why Not both?

Different marketing channels have different strengths. Email is great for generating webinar signups. But it’s a crummy tool for reminding people of events. SMS works far better for that use. So don’t make the mistake of thinking of your various marketing channels as being competitors with one another. Because each has different strengths, each can be used as one part of your marketing toolkit. Thinking this way about your marketing channel will give you more options with your marketing and greater success on your various projects.

With texting, you can take your established webinar audience and make it considerably more valuable to your sales team.

If you’d like to get started using texting to improve webinar performance, sign up for a free trial with Mobile Text Alerts today. You won’t need to give us your credit card information when you sign up. It’s a free 14-day trial that allows you to test out the software to see if it’s right for you. Good luck!

Zoom & GoToWebinar Users

If you are using one of these webinar platforms, we have a special offer for you. For a short period of time, we are giving away free Mobile Text Alerts accounts which are pre-loaded with 50 messages each! Just sign up with your email. It takes about 15 seconds. No credit card required.

SMS Reminders for Zoom Meetings

According to the Zoom Help Center: > Zoom Meetings are designed to be a collaborative event with all participants being able to screen share, turn on their video and audio, and see who else is in attendance.

Zoom Meetings are free although they do have limitations on participants (100 participants) and length (40 minutes).

Zoom Meeting users use Mobile Text Alert's mass texting feature to remind their particpants to show up to their meetings. Texts can be sent or scheduled before or after the meetings.

Would you like a free Mobile Text Alerts account? You can send text message reminders to your Zoom particpants and instantly boost your meeting attendance. This video explains how you can Use SMS with Zoom.

Zoom Meeting Users - Sign Up Here

SMS Reminders for Zoom Webinars

According to the Zoom Help Center: > Zoom Webinars are designed so that the host and any designated panelists can share their video, audio and screen. Webinars allow view-only attendees. They have the ability to interact via Q&A, Chat, and answering polling questions. The host can also unmute the attendees. Attendees in webinars, can not rename themselves as well.

Zoom Webinars is an add-on plan which means you have to have at least one licensed host to purchase it. Zoom Webinars start at $40/mo/host for 100 attendees.

Zoom Webinar users use Mobile Text Alerts to automatically schedule SMS reminders before and after their webinars to double their attendance, replay views, and sales. Signing up and connecting your Zoom Webinar account can be done in less than 1 minute.

If you include the Zoom Webinar join URL in your SMS reminder message then you can track the number of people who click on it to join. This will help you measure the effectiveness of SMS reminders for webinars.

Would you like a free Mobile Text Alerts account? You can send text message reminders to your Zoom webinar registrants and instantly boost your webinar attendance. Watch this video to learn how. Click the button below to learn more and sign up for a free Mobile Text Alerts account.

Zoom Webinar Users - Sign Up Here

SMS Reminders for GoToWebinar

According to GoToWebinar: > GoToWebinar is a webinar software tool designed for engaging online events. Webinars help you reach your audience and build brand awareness so you can grow your business.

GoToWebinar Lite starts at $49/month and limits your webinars to a maximum of 100 particpants.

GoToWebinar users use Mobile Text Alerts to automatically schedule SMS reminders before and after their webinars to double their attendance, replay views, and sales. Signing up and connecting your GoToWebinar account can be done in less than 1 minute.

If you include the GoToWebinar join URL in your SMS reminder message then you can track the number of people who click on it to join. This will help you measure the effectiveness of SMS reminders for webinars.

Would you like a free Mobile Text Alerts account? Send text message reminders to your webinar registrants and instantly boost your meeting attendance. This video explains how. Click the button below to learn more and sign up for a free Mobile Text Alerts account.

GoToWebinar Users - Sign Up Here