EXELLIUS WEBINAR BENCHMARKS & BEST PRACTICES REPORT 2 0 2 2 - 2 0 2 3 www.exellius.com
2 With the widespread use of webinars, benchmarking statistics are now available to compare your programs against other webinar organizers. Several top webinar platform companies—like GoToWebinar, ON24, ClickMeeting, Livestorm, INXPO, and others— publish benchmark reports based on analytics from several hundred thousand webinars each year. The good news is that these statistics have “settled” and there are clear prescriptions for webinar organizers : some days and times work better than others for attendance, ondemand webinars draw increasingly higher registrants, and so on. The not-so-good news is that most of these benchmark trends and statistics have remained the same when there have been new insights for marketers to learn. The Exellius Webinar Benchmarks & Best Practices Report is a vendor agnostic report based on data from webinars across several of the top webinar platforms. We identify patterns from our benchmarks and those of the top webinar platforms where results are similar and highlight the areas where they differ. Still, benchmarks can only help so much. It’s up to you to stand out from the crowd and make your webinar special. To help, we’ve included some of the best practices for you to up your game. The tech is here and there has never been a time more right where we have powerful tools at our disposal at price points for companies of all sizes. But whether you win at webinars still depends largely on you, your approach, your content, and your creativity. Experiment, have fun, and may your webinar program be a very successful one! The Exellius Events Team EXECUTIVE BRIEF Atharva G Editor-in-chief Exellius Systems / Media Martech www.exellius.com
3 The report summarizes data from 5,619 webinar campaigns over a 3-year period from 2020-2022. The statistics include webinars with a worldwide audience across multiple industries, functional roles like IT, HR, marketing, sales, and finance, and varying company sizes from large enterprises to small businesses. The report includes both live and ondemand webinars. The report presents benchmarks and best practices for the different stages of a webinar from launch to engagement to conversion. APPROACH www.exellius.com
4 IT & Technology Banking, Accounting & Financial Services Insurance Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals Transportation & Logistics Entertainment, Travel & Hospitality Retail and Wholesale Trade Human Resources, Compensation & Benefits Central, State & Local Government Marketing, Advertising & Public Relations Education, Training & Development NonProfits & Non-Governmental Organizations Real Estate & Construction Renewable Energy Chemicals & Plastics Engineering & Manufacturing 11 - 50M 51 - 100M 101 - 250M 251 - 500M 500 - 1B 1B+ Information Technology Human Resources Marketing & Sales Finance 16 INDUSTRIES WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE FUNCTIONS REVENUES ($) APPROACH www.exellius.com
5 About half of all registrations come in before the week prior to the event and the rest come in the final week. A significant number comes in during the last few days and even on the day of the webinar. The best time to start promoting your webinar is 3-4 weeks prior to the event. ON24 reports that extended promotional cycles is the trend. GoToWebinar prescribes starting promotions 4 weeks in advance and reports 69% of their total registrations by the week leading up to the webinar day with 33% occurring on the day of. Livestorm recommends a shorter cycle with social media promotions at least 2 weeks in advance and email promotions 1 week in advance. LAUNCH Promote no earlier or later than 3-4 weeks before the event. Ramp up all promotions in the last 2 weeks. About 2/3rds of your registrations come in during this period. Email is the top channel to promote followed by social media, the phone, and direct mail. Using a media partner for promotions is becoming increasingly popular. Promote right up to the event – about 10% of all registrations will often come in on the day of the webinar. BENCHMARKS Registration % BEST PRACTICES www.exellius.com When do I start promotions?
6 Two-thirds of all registrations happen over the first three days of the week. Tracking when a prospect first interacts with your email is a better indicator than when they finally register which often happens later. Statistics show about 15% of registrants have their first interaction over the weekend and about half of them on the first 2 days of the week. As the best day for email promotions, GoToWebinar recommends Tuesdays, Livestorm Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and ON24 and ClickMeeting mid-week from Tuesday through Thursday. BrightTALK reports that each of the first 3 days of the week achieve between 21-23% of registrations. Companies use multiple promotion channels like email, social, display, and search, but email is the most popular and successful. GoToWebinar says email makes up 73% of their registrations. The timing of when you schedule your promotional emails has a significant impact on your webinar signups. LAUNCH Schedule your emails early to mid-week so that prospects become aware of your webinar before filling out their schedules for the week ahead. Email opens and clicks taper off mid-week to the end of the week so it’s best to not send emails then. Don’t hesitate to also schedule emails over the weekend; a fair share of prospects open emails then. Decide if that is suitable for your audience. BEST PRACTICES BENCHMARKS Registration % www.exellius.com When do I schedule my emails?
7 Common sense would indicate that the start and end of a week wouldn’t be a good time to schedule a webinar and the statistics provide support. Mondays tend to be the busiest time for most people and Fridays are when they are wrapping up the week. The middle of the week is a better option. Several webinar software platforms’ statistics suggest Thursdays as the best day to hold your webinar – INXPO with 34%, BrightTALK with 33% followed by Wednesday with 27%, Livestorm suggesting either Wednesdays or Thursdays, ClickMeeting anytime mid-week, and GoToWebinars recommending Thursdays. Very rarely are there webinars scheduled for the weekend but these typically see lower attendance as compared to other days. For ondemand webinars however, we’ve seen viewership numbers in the 5-10% range for IT and technology related webinars on weekends. Schedule your live webinars to be mid-week, ideally Wednesdays and Thursdays. For on-demand versions, views occur more evenly across the week including the weekends. You can schedule email promotions throughout the week. Schedule your emails earlier in the week if your webinar is held midweek. People open more promotional emails over the weekend and at the start of the week which results in most registrations over the next two days. LAUNCH BENCHMARKS Registration % BEST PRACTICES www.exellius.com What day of week do I have my webinar?
8 The time of day when you schedule your webinar greatly influences if your audience can sign in to participate without other commitments getting in the way. This applies to live webinars only and not on-demand webinars that can be viewed at any time including after work hours and weekends. The earlier in the day you can schedule your webinar the better. As there are several other factors affecting attendance rates besides time, the registration percentages need to be interpreted as approximate at best. LAUNCH Considering the time zone of your audience, avoid early or late in the day and lunch/break times. This makes “global” webinars difficult so offer an ondemand version for participants across different time zones. In countries with multiple time zones, schedule to suit the largest part of your audience. Consider offering the webinar at two times on the same day – although this means more work for you, you’ll see higher attendance numbers. In the US, schedule your webinar to start no earlier than 9am and no later than 12pm on the West Coast (that puts it in a 12pm-3pm window for the East Coast). Communicate the webinar time in the time zone of your audience including your emails, registration pages, and calendar invites. BENCHMARKS Registration % BEST PRACTICES www.exellius.com What time of the day do I have my webinar?
9 On average, conversion of a third of your registrants to attendees is good. Conversion rates vary widely by the webinar purpose as shown above. For marketing webinars, GoToWebinar reports 37% attendance, INXPO 38%, BrightTALK 36%, and ON24 39.9%. INXPO reports seeing higher attendance for registrations made more than a week prior to the event. Often companies focus on the attendee rate over registrations. That’s understandable but the reality is that your impact on attendance is limited. All registrants are actual leads and we recommend optimizing for them instead. Registrants have expressed an interest by signing up, and even if they miss the live webinar, you can still engage them with an on-demand replay and additional touches. METRICS LIVE WEBINARS Focus on registrations first. Attendee rates are not completely within your control. Use reminder emails and calls to increase attendee rate but focus your energies on driving registrations. Retarget registrant no-shows and provide an ondemand version of your webinar or invite them to your next webinar. They have already shown an interest in your company’s offerings – they’re leads! Select a webinar hosting platform that provides the most frictionless sign-up and signin experience. Some webinar platforms differ greatly in their ease of use for your audience to register and participate. Registrants and Attendees BEST PRACTICES BENCHMARKS Registration % www.exellius.com
10 The more attendees the better, right? Not always. If you intend to have a more interactive session, like engaging mid-funnel leads or for customer onboarding, it’s important to have a manageable number of attendees. Other types of webinars like employee training or communications webinars can have larger numbers. With the ratio of live attendees to registrants at about 1/3rd for marketing webinars, the number of registrants needs to be three times the desired attendees. A popular goal is 100 attendees with 300 registrations although a vast number of marketing webinars have fewer than 50 attendees. Another interesting observation from the benchmarks is that there is a wide range in the size of webinars indicating that one size doesn’t fit all, and that webinars are being used in a more focused approach with the number of attendees planned based on the nature of the webinar. METRICS LIVE WEBINARS Plan your promotions to achieve registrations at three times your goal for the number of attendees. Work backwards from the desired number of attendees to the number of registrations based on your conversion rates. Your goals for the webinar and the purpose of your webinar should determine the desired attendee count and not the need to amortize webinar costs over the largest number of attendees. If the purpose of your webinars is lead generation, smaller audiences and more targeted webinars with higher interaction with the attendees result in higher sales conversions. Live Attendee Count BEST PRACTICES BENCHMARKS Registration % www.exellius.com
11 Livestorm suggests 45 minutes to an hour as ideal, INXPO reports viewing times of 44 minutes, and BrightTALK says webinar lengths have been declining but viewing times have increased to 22 minutes. GoToWebinar’s findings on the other hand, report that longer webinars attract more registrations and attendees stay longer for 90-minute webinars. The best webinars keep their attendees participating the whole time. Engaging content, good presenters, and using interactive tools all contribute to avoiding “hang ups.” Most webinars today are planned for an hour, but the metrics show this may not the ideal duration for a webinar with viewing times shorter than an hour. METRICS LIVE WEBINARS Plan your webinars to be between 30 to 45 minutes in duration unless you have a compelling topic that needs longer and are confident you can keep your audience engaged for the duration. Adding an interactive Q&A session at the end greatly helps increase participation time. Collect questions during the webinar (or even before) to kickstart the Q&A session. Use interactive tools like Q&A and polling to keep the attendees engaged rather than a unidirectional “lecture” that forces your audience to be passive listeners. BENCHMARKS Registration % Participation Time BEST PRACTICES www.exellius.com
12 The best webinar platforms offer several tools for interacting with your audience. The best organizers use them extensively resulting in webinars with deeper engagement and positive participant feedback. The most popular tools are the use of video inserts, Q&A, and resources for download followed by surveys, polls, social, and finally group chat. According to GoToWebinar, 40% of all demand generation webinars use some type of engagement feature. Of these, video is emerging as a popular option with 45% companies using it in webinars according to Demand Metric. INXPO reports 74% of attendees respond to polls, ClickMeeting 53% to group chat, and BrightTALK 56% to ratings and feedback. METRICS LIVE WEBINARS Choosing a webinar platform with interactive tools is a must. The days of one-directional discourse intended for a passive audience are over. The more interactivity, the more successful your webinar will be. The best interactive tools to use are video inserts, Q&A sessions, and resources for download. The easiest tools that don’t need additional video inserts or resources for download (that may not be available) are Q&A, surveys, polls, social and group chat. Make time to use these tools and keep the interactivity going right from the start (not just a “we’ll have time for questions at the end.”) Use of Interactivity Tools BENCHMARKS Registration % BEST PRACTICES www.exellius.com
13 On-demand webinars (or replays) provide a second opportunity to engage registrants. Also, many viewers increasingly prefer to watch ondemand at their own schedule and pace. Ondemand replays provide the opportunity for additional registrations and a wider audience reach. For a global audience, on-demand webinars are the easiest way to overcome time differences across the world. Live webinars are still the most popular form of webinar although on-demand only webinars are fast catching up due to their convenience. 73% of registrants in a recent poll said they preferred an on-demand version to a live webinar, while another study reported 84% of B-to-B consumers preferred replays to live webinars. All webinar platforms report this growing preference for ondemand webinars. ON-DEMAND WEBINARS From the start, prepare to offer an on-demand version. Select a webinar platform that allows replays and provides tools to send links to the replay, send out new invitations to register, and consolidates reporting for both live and ondemand viewing. One of the worst things you can do is mention you’ll have a replay when you announce your live webinar. If you’re going to have a live webinar, build excitement around it and don’t cannibalize your live audience by saying they can get the same content later if they don’t show up. Plan your promotion budget to include post webinar campaigns to get additional registrants and extend the reach of your webinar. About a third of all your registrations can come from post webinar viewers, don’t lose that opportunity! Repurpose Live to On-Demand METRICS BEST PRACTICES BENCHMARKS Registration % www.exellius.com
14 When you offer an on-demand replay, after your live webinar, you’ll see a significant number of your original registrants attend and you’ll also see new people signup that didn’t sign up for the live webinar earlier. Together, these new viewers can help put viewership over 100% of your target! For the best webinars, about 70% of the live noshows viewed the replay, and there were 27% new registrations for the on-demand webinar. Benchmark reports from ON24 and BrightTALK corroborate these results. BrightTALK reports an additional audience of 47% in the first 10 days after the live webinar and 22% additional registrants from 30 to 100 days after the live event. METRICS ON-DEMAND WEBINARS Retarget the no-shows from your live webinar. Say you missed them, and send them a link to the on-demand version. Promote the on-demand webinar to new prospects. These could be people that showed some interest but didn’t sign up earlier for the live webinar or net new prospects. Let your webinars run over time. You should get most of the follow-through views in the 4-5 weeks after the live webinar, but if it doesn’t cost much to keep the replay available, then you can pick up registrations even beyond 5 weeks. On-Demand Views and New Registrations BEST PRACTICES BENCHMARKS Registration % www.exellius.com
15 Similar to engagement time for live webinars, viewing time can be measured for replays. The shorter and more compact you make the duration of your webinar, the better. The time spent viewing ondemand webinars is significantly lower than spent on live webinars, but that’s not such a bad thing. During on-demand webinars, viewers often skip ahead and view parts that most interest them. The percentage of viewers that go through to the end of the webinar (and your next steps) is higher than on live webinars. Another added benefit is that on-demand viewers often also view related webinars and resources that you offer alongside the replay. Replays allow the viewer the convenience to watch at a time suitable to them and the flexibility to skip ahead to parts they are interested in. Don’t expect the view times to be the same as live webinars. The length of view is often not the same as the interest level of the viewer. On-demand webinars don’t have the advantage of the interaction possible on a live webinar but you can counteract that by including the results of polls, surveys, and summaries of the live webinar in the replay to increase its value. Offer related webinars to the on-demand viewer. If available, offer follow-on webinars (sequels) or nurturing webinars aimed at mid- to bottom of the funnel prospects. Encourage the binge watchers! Participation Time and Pull Throughs METRICS ON-DEMAND WEBINARS BENCHMARKS Registration % BEST PRACTICES www.exellius.com
16 Here are some of the top webinar software platforms that represent the best choices available for webinar organizers. Each of these platforms have their own pros and cons and some may be more suited to your purpose than others. If you are looking for a webinar platform, we recommend you compare the features of at least 3 providers before you decide, and remember to ask how they stack up against the competition for the benchmarks presented here. For broader requirements that include communications and collaboration for real-time group interactions, see Gartners’ Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions (Sept 4, 2018) that includes companies like Adobe, Arkadin, BlueJeans, Cisco, Google, Huawei, Lifesize, LogMeIn, Microsoft, PGi, StarLeaf, Vidyo, and Zoom.. WEBINAR PLATFORMS All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this report are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement. www.exellius.com
We’ve loved bringing you the Exellius Webinar Benchmarks & Best Practices Report and we hope you’ve enjoyed it too. Our hope is that you find these benchmarks useful in comparing how your webinars perform against your peers. That’s an important first step. The next step to making your webinars highly successful is to use best practices from every stage from planning, to promoting, to engagement and conversion. We’ve already begun by sharing some here. But there’s more, much more, where that came from. 17 For more information on webinar best practices, leading webinar software platforms, and valuable resources for your webinar programs, visit www.exellius.com Looking for help with your webinar? WHAT’S NEXT WEBINAR RESOURCES YES, I’D LIKE TO SCHEDULE A CHAT www.exellius.com
18 Exellius provides performance-based marketing services by orchestrating multi-channel campaigns across email, web, mobile, tele, social, search, and display. Brands, agencies, and martech platforms rely on us for lead acquisition at scale. Marketers from large enterprises to small and mid-sized companies use our experts for their marketing programs. Media Martech is a network of media properties across 16 industries that provides marketers with multiple options to target markets, reach audiences, and develop accounts across 120 countries. Exellius is a digital marketing and media company that provides brand awareness and lead generation services worldwide. The Exellius team consists of over 50+ marketing specialists, data science experts, and martech engineers that execute and orchestrate over 2,800 campaigns each year. ABOUT US For advertising, sponsored content, and demand generation solutions: Atharva G [email protected] James Vargees [email protected] www.exellius.com www.mediamartech.com www.exellius.com