How to Double Your EasyWebinar Attendance Using SMS [2023]

Is this familiar?

A number of years ago a marketing agency started hosting webinars as a way to try and engage potential clients and build trust with them in hopes of turning that prospect into a customer. The first webinar had several hundred signups. Everyone was excited.

Then the day came and only about 40% of the people who signed up actually attended.

The next webinar saw about 10% fewer signups. And only 30% of those who signed up actually attended.

By the time they got to their fifth, sixth, seventh webinars the signup figure had dropped into the low hundreds and attendance was at around 15-20% of everyone who signed up.

They had a great idea. The initial returns were promising. Everyone got excited. And then… it fizzled out. Familiar, right? Depressingly familiar, in fact.

So why don’t people show up for webinars? Is it because they aren’t interested?

No—if they weren’t interested they would not have signed up for the webinar in the first place. They’re interested. They just aren’t attending.

The reason: Everyone is busy. We all have plenty of commitments, a number of different responsibilities to monitor, and in the midst of all that we forget.

It’s especially easy to forget about a webinar since a webinar doesn’t require us leaving the office, meeting another person face-to-face, or finishing a necessary task for our job.

When we feel squeezed for time, we start looking for things to drop—and webinars are often the first to go.

How SMS Marketing Can Improve Webinar Results

You can’t fix the fact that your prospects are busy, of course. But you can help them remember that you’re hosting the webinar and you can continue to explain to them why they should attend. And the best way to do that is through text messaging.

Why? It’s simple: Everyone reads their text messages.

By using text messaging to remind your attendees that the webinar is happening (or to share a link to the recording with them after the fact) you can improve attendance and overall viewings. In fact, you can improve them dramatically.

In one study, we found that using text message reminders to attendees increased attendance from 11% to 68%—a sixfold increase (source). In another study, one business owner found that 91% of the people who signed up for her webinar saw it either live or through watching a recording later (source).

When you can use texting to promote your webinar, you get better results.

How Does SMS Marketing for Webinars Work?

Using an integration via Zapier, EasyWebinar hosts can add a phone number field to their webinar signup form. Then through a partnership with SMS marketing company Mobile Text Alerts, you can automatically send out mass text messages to your attendees to remind them when the webinar is happening and to share a link to the recording after it is done.

Here’s what EasyWebinar users can do using the Zapier + Mobile Text Alerts integration.

• Increase webinar show-up rate by automatically sending SMS reminders to registrants before the webinar. The reminders might look like this:
  • Hi John, the webinar starts in 5 minutes. Click here to join [unique join link]
• Increase webinar replay views by automatically sending SMS follow-up messages after the webinar. Example:
  • Thanks again for registering for the webinar, if you missed it or want to watch it again click here for the replay [replay link]

• Increase webinar sales by automatically sending SMS marketing messages after the webinar. Example:

  • John, I wanted to thank you again for watching the webinar last week. Did you want to take advantage of the offer? Today is the last day for the sale! Click here [sales page link]

How to Set Up SMS Reminders for Your Webinar

Apps you’ll need:

• Zapier (free trial)
• Mobile Text Alerts (free trial)

• EasyWebinar

Support for this integration is available at contact@mobile-text-alerts.com.

Here are the steps:

1. Click here and login to your Zapier account or create a new Zapier account.
2. Click “Sign In to EasyWebinar” and enter your EasyWebinar API Key and API Secret.
3. Select the webinar you want to use for the SMS integration and follow the prompts for the EasyWebinar step
4. Get a free Mobile Text Alerts trial account. Keep the Zapier window open, we’ll come back to it later.
5. After signing up, you will receive an email containing your Mobile Text Alerts account ID. Copy that ID for the next step in Zapier.
6. In the Zapier window, 2nd step, paste your Mobile Text Alerts account ID in the corresponding field.
7. Follow the remaining prompts and turn your zap on. Now all future webinar registrants will be sent to your Mobile Text Alerts account.
8. Go to the Webinars section in the Mobile Text Alerts application to schedule SMS messages to your webinar registrants. Since you’ve already connected your webinar, you can ignore the “Webinar platform” section.

9. When you’re finished, toggle the switch to “On” to activate your SMS integration. That’s it! Now your thank you, reminder, and follow-up text messages will be automatically sent to your registrants based on the time they registered for your webinar.

   For a full walkthrough of this process, check out the documentation here.

   Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions! We would be happy to help you get set up - contact@mobile-text-alerts.com.

   Conclusion

   If you have hosted webinars for any length of time, then you know how hard it can be to get people to actually attend even after they have signed up for your webinar. To a large degree, this is simply a technical problem: Your attendees have a lot of things going on and it is easy to forget about a webinar.

   This means that the problem can be solved with a technical solution: Make it easier for them to remember when the webinar is happening. For that kind of need, SMS messaging is the best solution by far. So use texting and watch your attendance and watch rates climb—and from there your revenue will follow.