So you’re trying to help your colleagues hit their sales objectives, and you’ve come up with an awesome strategy…
You’ll host a webinar, and invite everyone who could potentially be interested in your company’s products or services. Once the webinar’s over, your colleagues can then reach out to attendees and upsell them.
Now, the goal here is to design a highly compelling webinar invitation email – one that’ll intrigue your prospects, and get them to RSVP immediately.
In this article, we break down the different components that go into a webinar invitation email and teach you how to design the perfect email to promote your webinar. Let’s jump right in!
Editor’s note: Did you know you that you can organize, host, and promote your online presentations with GetResponse webinar software? It’s got all the tools you need to run a successful webinar marketing campaign.
6 components of a webinar invitation email
Great email campaigns come in many shapes and forms. But a webinar invitation email usually consists of 6 key components – your subject line, banner image, header text, webinar introduction, webinar details, and call to action. Read on to learn how to optimize each component.
1. Subject line
When crafting the subject line of your webinar invitation email, the standard rules apply: make sure your subject line isn’t too long (and that it doesn’t get cut off). Personalize your subject line (and see an 18% lift in your email open rates), and if possible, intrigue your subscribers.
To make it clear that you’re promoting a webinar, you might want to put the phrase “[webinar]” in your subject line – for instance: [Webinar] Learn How To 5x Your Number Of Leads In 24 Hours.
If an industry expert or influencer is speaking on your webinar, including their name in your subject line might help to increase open rates: [Webinar] Sales Guru XYZ Shares How To 5x Your Number Of Leads In 24 Hours.
To make your subject line more intriguing, consider phrasing it as a question instead of a statement. For instance: [Webinar] How Do You 5x Your Number Of Leads In 24 Hours? XYZ Shares His Tried & Tested Strategy.
Last but not least, conveying a sense of urgency in your subject line can improve your open rate and conversion rate as well. Try: [Webinar – Last Call] Learn How To 5x Your Number Of Leads In 24 Hours.
2. Banner image
Here are a few webinar invitation best practices for email banners: make sure that your text stands out clearly from your background, include all the important details on the banner, and showcase pictures of your hosts/guests. You might also want to throw in a call-to-action on your banner.
Let’s check out a couple of negative examples, so you know what not to do. If you look at this image, for example, you’ll see that part of LaneTerralever’s logo fades away into the background, which isn’t ideal…
Then there’s this other banner from Metric Insights, which I’m not a huge fan of as well. The white text at the bottom doesn’t stand out as much as it should, and the image itself is a little too plain; there aren’t any pictures of the speakers.
In contrast, here’s a positive example:
This Live Content Marketing Webinar banner is clear-cut, features all the necessary details, and gets us excited about who’s going to be sharing their insights. The only thing we’d do here is to rework the headline of the image so that it’s benefits-driven.
3. Header text
With their header text, most folks simply reiterate the name of their webinar or what their webinar is about, but this doesn’t add any value to your prospect. Instead, try tapping into your prospect’s pain point, or communicating a benefit of joining your webinar.
Here are some negative examples:
- Live Content Marketing Webinar By Company ABC
- Join Our Live Content Marketing Webinar
- 25th February 2019 – Live Content Marketing Webinar
And some positive examples:
- Want To Skyrocket Your Content Marketing Conversions In 2019?
- Figure Out Why Your Content Strategy Isn’t Working, Once And For All.
- Discover Tried-And-Tested Strategies Used By Neil Patel And Brian Dean.
4. Webinar introduction
With your webinar introduction, you’re leading into your pitch on why your prospects should attend your webinar.
Don’t just focus on communicating the details here – instead, share what your prospects can expect to gain from your webinar.
Here’s a negative example:
Join us for a content marketing webinar on 25th February 2019. The webinar will kick off at 9 am PST, and it will be hosted by content expert Neil Patel. We will start off with a 20-minute sharing session, and close with 10 minutes of Q&A from the floor.
And a positive example:
Ever wanted to pick Neil Patel’s brain, and learn the specific strategies that he uses to generate up to 1.2M readers PER blog post? Now you can. Join us at our content marketing webinar hosted by Neil, and stay tuned for the last 10 minutes, where we open the floor for you to ask him all your burning questions.
Related resource:
Want to scale your business with online webinars? Join our free email course and learn how to improve your webinar marketing game.
Webinar Marketing Bootcamp »
5. Details of the webinar
Now, here’s where you follow up with the details of your webinar including the date, time, speakers, etc.
If you’d like, you can also add in the key takeaways that prospects can expect from the session. Here’s an example:
In this short but intensive 30-minute webinar, you’ll learn:
- How to craft the best blog titles that your readers can’t help but click on
- How to produce content that’s highly relatable, and has the potential to go viral
- How to distribute and promote your content to maximize its reach
6. Call To Action
Finally, end with a Call To Action button that is linked to a webinar landing page. This is where your prospects will RSVP for your webinar.
Interesting to note: studies have shown that Call To Actions written using first-person pronouns perform better than those written in second person pronouns, so instead of saying “Reserve YOUR seat”, “Reserve MY seat” might work better.
Here are some other variants you can A/B test:
- Reserve my spot
- Claim my spot
- Save my seat
- Save me a seat
- I’m in!
(For more on the subject of CTAs, read Email Calls-To-Action: Five Guidelines For Conversions)
Best webinar invitation email examples to get inspired by
We’ve scoured the web, and found some of the best webinar invitation emails that you can draw inspiration from. Time to get those creative juices flowing!
1. This invitation email from typecast
First on our list is Typecast’s webinar invitation email, which packs in a ton of social proof:
Now, put yourself in the shoes of a subscriber. If you get this invite in your inbox, you’ll probably think: Dang, their webinar is that popular? I better register for a slot, so I don’t miss out.
Moral of the story? FOMO (the Fear Of Missing Out) is a powerful thing, and you can use it to motivate your prospects to act!
2. This webinar invitation email from Buzzsumo
Next up is this webinar invite email from Buzzsumo:
Right off the bat, this invite draws you in with a magnetic headline: Want a 50% boost in your eCommerce revenue?
I don’t imagine Buzzsumo has any subscribers who’d go “nope, I’m making enough on my eCommerce store”, so this is an immensely powerful hook that entices their subscribers to attend their webinar.
3. This invitation email by Copy Hackers
This next webinar invite is pretty interesting. It contains zero graphics, zero pictures, and just a bunch of text:
Now, I know we just discussed how you should include a nicely designed banner image on your webinar invitation email. That said, if you’ve got mad copywriting skills (like how the folks over at Copy Hackers do!), you might just be able to get away with a plain-text email.
If you’d like to try this approach, keep in mind that you’ll have to employ a highly conversational tone. The goal is to build a rapport with your subscribers or prospects and to craft an email that’s highly relatable.
Few more picks from the editors:
To help you with your webinar planning, we’ve asked our colleagues to pick some of their favorite webinar invitation emails they found in their inbox.
Here they are.
4. This webinar reminder by SmartBug.
Take a look at this reminder. Even though it’s most likely been sent automatically, it doesn’t feel this way.It contains a personalized message recorded by the presenter and rather than just saying “Hey, we’re going live soon” it focuses on how the recipient can get the most value.
And what way is that? By asking the organizers a question before the event starts so that they can make sure to include it during their presentation.
The header image is worth mentioning too. The presenter’s smile and the very-contrasting play button make you want to click them!
5. This webinar email from Agency Scaling Secrets
There are two things that you notice right away in this email; the funny t-shirt (obviously) and the blurry hands.They both capture your attention and shift it right down to the central part of the email – the copy.
So how’s the copy? It’s short, funny, and makes a few pretty good attempts to convince you that you’re better off registering.
It points out exactly what you’ll get if you attend, what you’ll miss out on if you don’t, and how all of this will impact your business.
In short: In our opinion, it’s awesome!
6. This email we decided to do a bit differently
You know how they say, “Practice what you preach”?We decided to test one of the tactics we, for some reason, stopped for a while – personalization.
The results?
Not too shabby.
This webinar invitation email you see above generated a 42.41% open and a 3.67% click-through rate. It also got us a decent number of personal replies.
The email asked whether you’re going to join the webinar later that day. It also mentioned how many people registered already (social proof) and what they’ll take away from the event (value).
The most important thing, however, is that this webinar reminder was personal.
We’ve sent it from Irek (our presenter) using his email address and his signature.
No rocket science there, right?
The open rate and CTR weren’t the only things we noticed after this campaign. We also saw an uplift in the attendance to registration rate.
We usually get it at about 10% (our registrants mostly know we’re sharing the webinar recording after the event).
This time we scored 15%, while the overall number of registrants stayed at a similar level to what we typically observe.
We’ve tested the same approach a few times afterward (whenever the webinar’s run by one of our team members) and so far we’ve seen the same pattern.
BONUS: Sending a series of webinar invitation emails
A single webinar invitation email, crafted perfectly, can work wonders. But if you send a SERIES of emails, that’s even better – your take-up rates will shoot through the roof.
Don’t worry – I’m not asking you to manually follow up with each person that’s ignored your first email. It doesn’t make sense to do anything quite that tedious.
Instead, simply set up an automated email campaign to trigger emails to the folks who didn’t open your first email (or those who opened your first email, but didn’t click/RSVP).
If you want to target the former (people who didn’t open), you can use the EXACT same content for your body email, and just switch up the email title. Pretty straightforward, right?
If you want to target the latter, you’ll need to get a bit more creative. I recommend using some humor here, for instance:
Email title: [Webinar] Don’t keep us hanging, because someone else wants that seat…
Email copy: Hey, {Name} – are you still interested in attending our webinar, where you’ll learn how to do X, Y, and Z? Slots are filling up fast, and if you don’t want that seat, somebody else does!
A final word on designing the perfect webinar invitation email
Your sales colleagues need to generate enough leads, and they’re counting on you to save the day.
Which of our above-mentioned webinar invitation best practices was your favorite?
Are there any tips that we missed out on? Let us know in the comments below!
Additional reading
Here are some additional resources you’ll want to read if you want to run a successful webinar marketing campaign:
Author: Max Benz, Content at UpLead
Max is a SaaS enthusiast and loves actionable content that provides direct value.
