We recently held an online event where we shared best practices on how to follow up after your webinar and drive sales and growth for your business. Check out the slides, video highlights, full recording and transcript below.

Here are also some email templates you can use for following up on webinars.

View the slides:

Video Highlight: The importance of following up on webinars

Video highlight: When to followup on webinars

Full Recording:

Transcript:

Hi. How are you doing? Welcome to our webinar on how to follow up on Webinars.

So today I am going to do a 20-minute presentation, but would love questions as they come through. At the end, I can answer anything that pops up.

Our agenda is going to be a quick intro to me and Milk Video. And then we’re going to go through some best practices on Webinar followup at the end. As I mentioned, we’re going to do some Q and A, so please throw anything. I can see the comments as they roll through, so please drop them in as I progress.

So a little bit about me, my name is Ross Cranwell. I’m the CEO here at Milk Video. I’m co-founder with Lenny Bogdonoff, and we’re based in New York City. And we’re building out this tool because of a lot of my experience in marketing over the years in China and the US, we’ve been working with Webinar teams, and I’ve seen the success of Webinars and the opportunities that are there, especially now with COVID.

But even before then, Webinars are a fantastic tool for marketing teams, for sales teams, for B2B businesses.

What is Milk Video? So this will take two minutes, and then we’ll dive into the tips and tricks. So at Milk Video we turn Webinars into video highlights. That’s the quick overview. So on the left there you can see a video that’s being transcribed and turned into clips. And on the right, you’ll see an example from a company. Here we’ll go one, we’ll have turned that into a clip to share on LinkedIn and on social media.

I’m going to give you a two minute demo, and then we’re going to dive into some more details. So here is Milk Video. Basically, the idea is that you take a video, an MP4, also an MP3 file, an audio, and then you can have it automatically transcribed with Milk. So this video has been instantly transcribed and the accuracy is about 95 to 96%. And then as you go through, you’re looking to highlight some moments, take out some key clips, like some brilliant quotes or some great customer testimonials.

So you hover over the section that you’re most interested in and simply clip. And on the left, a whole series of clips are created from one from one video. So you’re basically taking something that would normally sit behind a landing page or sit in your Google Drive and it’s now turned into multiple assets for marketing and for sales. Now the next part is making sure that it’s aligned to your brand.

So then once you have the clips, all the transcript can be edited too, you can then design it. So if you have a brand custom font, custom designs logo, you’re going to make sure that it’s aligned. So you can kind of do some basic template here. And we’re going to turn this into a canvas where you can then repurpose it a little bit. So do a little bit of design.

So instantly you have a video clip right, and the video and the captions match. And then if you want to do some nice optimization of the video, you can do little things like this. You can organize the captions like so, you can change the colors of the fonts, and so on.You can add a title to the video and then create a little template. And this video file is then ready to export. It turns into an MP4 file that you can then share on social media, in your email, on your website, with your clients, whatever it may be. And so the turnaround from a video to a usable design video highlight takes a matter of minutes when normally it could take a few hours or even in some cases, a few weeks. So here are some kind of nicer designed videos where they have built a nice template that they can use.

Here is an example where you have multiple speakers that can be organized like so. And then here’s one also where the focus is more on the captioning to engage your audience. Okay, so any questions about that, feel free to let me know, and I’ll jump back into the presentation. So the main reason for this Webinar is to talk about follow-up on Webinars. So why would you focus on follow up? Well, when you organize an event, there’s a lot of preparation.

Then there’s a live broadcast like we’re doing now. And then there’s a post event, and the post event is often ignored, there’s not enough focus put on it. And it’s one of the most important parts because you’re ultimately looking for people who are attending to do something, whether to learn about your product or maybe to book a meeting with somebody or to drive subscriptions, move along an existing deal, if it’s a current opportunity, or just trying to keep your current customers engaged, so after the event is actually just as important as before and during.

The problem is once the event is over, people just lose focus on that area. So it’s really important. And this is why timing is key, because you need to follow up fast. When somebody attends an event, they are going to move on to the next thing very, very quickly. So try to follow up within 24 hours, whether it’s marketing or sales. It’s fresh in mind for the attendees.

But if you wait too long, wait a few days or a week or two weeks, they won’t even remember that they attended this event. And what’s also interesting is not just the attendees who will lose focus, but also the organizing team who put all this effort to promote the event, all this effort to organize the event and the presentation. They will then move on to the next project. And so they haven’t closed the deal yet. They haven’t finished the project, but they’re like, okay, let’s move on to the next thing. But there’s so much opportunity with the existing attendees and non-attendees that there should be a lot of effort put into follow up. Sales and marketing needs to be on the same page here.

The content needs to be ready to go, and it has to be a quick turnaround. So we’ll dive into that soon. So really focus on how we get that fall out to be fast. It doesn’t have to be within the hour or two hours, but 24 hours is a good timeline that’s recommended across the board. Not too short, not too quick, but it doesn’t take too long so it’s still in people’s mind. So organization. So this part is the complicated part, especially if you’re dealing with multiple departments. So the first step is to segment your list. Okay, so split it up very simply by attendees and non attendees. That’s the easiest kind of split.

On the right you can see the registrant to attendees conversion rate is on average, 55%. I think that’s a bit high one 24 uses this metric for last year, but they’re using different industries, obviously more of a number around the 45% mark.

But generally speaking, let’s just say half people attend, half people don’t attend. So you need to have messaging for the people who attend and messaging for the people who don’t. Then as you segment those two, then also prioritize. Who asked a question? If they asked a question, they’re going to be engaged. So follow up with them first. They’ll want to learn about your thought process or your products, whatever it may be. Is it an account that is a target account or an important account? If it’s an important account, let’s prioritize those too. And then is it a prospect, an opportunity or a customer, maybe a prospect that you’ve being going after for quite a while, has attended, did ask a question, then they are the highest on the list. So just keeping all these aspects in mind when you’re looking at your list, sharing this information with your sales team if they’re doing the follow up, but this will help you to prioritize. You don’t have to follow-up with every single person individually, and that can be covered by marketing. But if you’re going to do personalized outreach, then it should be based upon accounts that are the most value to your organization, and then the ones that will either turn into a meeting or help close the deal.

You don’t want to spend your time on accounts that may not be the core focus for your business. Then there’s the list part. This can get a little bit messy as you’re dealing with multiple people across multiple departments, and marketing can do a message to everybody.

Marketing can send out communications to companies that attended across the board, that’s a very simple approach, but the personalized approach is a much better option. So sales often want to do that outreach themselves. And so marketing can hold off that the opportunity is with the personalized approach with sales and there you would split by whoever owns that account or that lead, whether it’s an SDR could do the follow up or an account executive. Where do you organize this? You would organize it in Excel, is a simple option, but preferably in your CRM, so all the data is kind of kept in there. This is the most time intensive, the one that requires multiple people.

So it could be a good thing to meet up before the webinar to really get the structure right, knowing who’s already attended and then kind of planning the next step so that after the event there’s not a big mess and rush to work out who to follow up with.

Messaging. So what exactly should you be sending these teams, you know, sending these attendees and non attendees afterwards. So, the channels for messaging predominantly are email. So sending an email through marketing is a pretty easy option that I mentioned before, sending them the resources, the recordings, the highlights, the blog posts or how did you find the event? Then also, sales should be doing personalized outreach and they can send two or three emails and this will be more personalized. And then also you don’t want to go over three emails because people who are registering for these events already received a ton to to sign up and then to remind them to attend the event and so on. So outside of email, sales teams can also add in phone calls, LinkedIn messaging to their cadence, whilst marketing can also share after the event on social media and do a blog recap and so on, so forth. So email is the core one to remember. Nothing very complicated or massive about that, but the content to use is the key part.

The onus is on the marketing team to be able to turn that content, so the webinar recording into assets, that the sales team can use immediately within that 24 hours that I mentioned. So after an event, people who don’t attend those, 50%, often ask for the recording, so you can send them the recording, you can also send them key highlights, you can send them the slide, the transcript, potentially a blog, which may take a little bit more time, so you can send that to them maybe a week later in the third part of the cadence. But people tend to ask a lot for the recording, even though they may not actually watch it.

They had the intention to watch the event live. They have the intention to watch the recording, that doesn’t always take place. So you really just want to engage them in a key part. So whether it’s the slides and they can learn something about you and your business, or a video clip, a highlight that’s highlighting a key moment that you want them to learn about, and then the goal there is to get them to to take action. So the CTA, if you give them this recording, then make sure there’s a call to action – after watching this, then sign up for this. If there’s no call to action, then you’re just giving them resources and maybe maintaining that relationship. That could be good for customers, but not necessarily everybody.

So what are some examples? So here are some quick email examples. This is a little bit weird. Here is a picture of myself in it, but it’s basically an email to people who weren’t able to attend. Very simple, but it’s added in a GIF of the recording and then a link to a clip key highlight. This will peak their interest because they wanted to come to the event, but they weren’t able to, but they can catch a couple of moments and then you can push them along. So this is kind of a nice little touch.

This is one example from BombBomb, which is really cool. So what they did here is that they took the actual speaker, recorded a video after the event and said thank you. And again, they put the kind of the GIF embedded in the email, and then because people wanted to listen to the speaker and they open the clip and the speaker is doing a little recap of what the webinar was about or key learning, and then a call to action at the end.

So in this video specifically, she talks about a deal that they can take advantage of. So I haven’t seen this that much before, so I thought this was pretty innovative from BombBomb, and obviously it takes a little bit more work. We are asking the speaker to do an additional recap, but because it’s only a minute long, it’s really interesting. And potentially if you AB test these emails, this could be something that really engages your audience. If it helps them to then convert in whatever shape or form you want, then it’s completely worth it. So really, really interesting idea there. And I have some of these examples for you to look at afterwards if you wish. And I’ll send the slides after. But what most people do is they send links to the full recording, slides and automated transcripts. So just a simple email. This is the easiest thing to get out.

The problem is they’re going to click on the link they’re going to watch a little bit, maybe look at the slides, but unless there’s a call to action on the landing page, there may not be a direct result for you. So a better alternative is messaging them that the webinar is over, if you didn’t attend, in this example, I’m sorry you weren’t able to attend.

Would you like to see some of these resources? Here’s some options. Here’s the full recording. Here’s the slide. Here’s the clips, and that way you can start a conversation with someone, maybe you weren’t able to obviously attend the webinar and maybe you have been trying to build a relationship with. So this is an easy way for them to respond. They can say, I’d like to see the slides, please, and you can begin that rapport.

So to recap as we hit the 18 minute mark, follow up fast, that is crucial. That is dependent on having the lists built, and that is dependent on having good content there. So segment well by attendees. Try and do it before the event. Coordinate with your sales teams and other relevant teams, maybe client success or whatever team is important in your business. Prioritize the most important accounts and do follow up with them first and then try some different creative approaches. Try video trial, GIFs, try getting your speaker to create a personalized recording, create a personalized recording yourself. Try different methods and make sure to track what works best and then learn. Take that on for the next webinar. So just as we’re about to finish up, just let me know if you have any questions about that, any of the slides, or any of the examples that you want to kind of look at in advance, but that is basically the full view of the follow up for webinars.

So I’ll wait a couple of seconds, see if there’s any questions, I can jump into anything. So the question here about follow up on social media. So yeah, I’ve talked a lot about follow up through email because you’re trying to push them through to subscribe, to purchase or whatever it may be.

On social media, there’s less of an immediate expectation, but within 48 hours to share a recap. You obviously want people to attend your next webinar, so you want to share with them what they missed out on. So that’s a good kind of time frame. Sharing video clips, sharing again a link to the blog, that may take a little bit longer. So if you have the webinar on a Thursday, then within the next week or two, being able to post multiple pieces of content to recap and then drive them either to the on demand version or to your next webinar. The idea is that a lot of people stop at the point when the webinar is done, they think their work is done.

But actually there’s a lot of work afterwards that can help you drive results, drive more leads, and drive more sales. So it’s very important to not lose the energy and not shift focus like I mentioned. Any other questions? If not, then feel free to reach out to me at Ross at MilkVideo.com  if you have any questions, if you have any kind of suggestions and best practices around webinar follow up, but thank you very much for listening, and I will be following up with emails and with some of the slides, with some of the recordings, with the transcript.

Okay, one more question here before we wrap up. If I have only the audio of a webinar by accident, can I use that too? Yes so often what happens with the webinar is the recording isn’t great. We’re using Stream Yard here, it’s fantastic and they seem to be very solid. But sometimes on Zoom, the recordings don’t come out as you had planned. And if it doesn’t, if it’s just a black screen when you had intended to have multiple people or a panel, you can still pull the audio. Zoom, for example, separates the two so you can pull the audio again, you can transcribe it. You can turn that into like an audio podcast. You can turn that into, with Milk, you can also turn that into a little visual clip. So all is not lost. And then again, I think people would be interested in receiving this in their email, too, as follow up. So if the video turns out really badly visually and you still have the audio, all is not lost.

There’s a lot you can still do. So that’s actually a really interesting question, because with Zoom, people often run into that kind of issue. So unless there’s any other questions, I shall leave you to the rest of your day. But thank you very much for listening in. And hope to see everybody again soon. And I’ll be following up. Thank you.