Although remote working can come with many positives, it presents challenges in running your events calendar as usual. Luckily there is still a way to bring people together for events through online webinars.
Chances are that you have already attended at least one webinar during the "new normal", but you may not have held your own event yet. Or you may be looking for a new CRM after being let down by another software.
The highlight of using CiviCRM for your webinars is that it provides you with a range of useful tools in one place, such as email automation, surveys, and event registration forms. Plus, the CRM enables you to easily reach out to existing contacts and get in touch with new connections post-event.
The Benefits of Webinars
Rather than webinars being an inferior alternative to in-person events, there are lots of benefits to online events. According to Neil Patel, 49% of webinar attendees converted into sales, and Q&A sessions have been found to have an 81% success rate.
Plus, it can take attendees fewer steps to gain the information they would need to convert online as it would face-to-face, and you can reach a worldwide audience.
By holding a webinar you will also save time with event organisation and save a large sum of money on the usual costs of holding an event at a physical venue.
Inviting Attendees
The first and most important step to setting up any kind of event is making sure that people attend. This can be done by using the CiviEvent registration form for attendees to fill in to access your event.
By doing this, their information will be automatically saved within CiviCRM which makes it easier to manage further communication with attendees.
Alternatively, you can manually import data from another platform such as Zoom into CiviCRM but this will take longer and can be prone to human error.
Email Communications
To ensure that your attendees have all of the information they need to access your webinar event, you can set up a Civirule to automate a confirmation email when someone registers.
This should include the time and date (adjusted to their time zone), link to join the webinar, and the passcode if necessary.
It's also beneficial to send reminder emails to people who have signed up for your event just before the webinar to maximise attendance and make sure that nobody misses out.
Post-event
Once you have wowed your online guests in your webinar, you can also send a post-attendee thank you email.
This is a great time to collect feedback with a Civi Profile survey so that you can make your next webinar even better.
In this survey you should ask your attendees questions on what they liked/disliked about the event, if they would recommend the webinar, and any further comments that they may want to provide.
It's best to keep this short and straight to the point (no more than 10 questions) to increase the likelihood of the survey being completed.
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