What to do after a webinar: recording, emails and follow-up

Clicking "end broadcast" feels like the finish line. After a week of preparation and an hour of concentration, the natural thing is to close the laptop and rest. But a lot of what a webinar achieves happens in the days after it. People who missed it watch the recording, people who were on the fence book a call, and people who dropped in for five minutes come back for the rest.

This article goes through what to do after the broadcast, in order. Most of it takes a few minutes, and some of it you can prepare before the webinar even starts.

Within the hour: a thank-you email

Anyone who watched to the end gave you an hour of their day. A short thank-you, sent the same evening, closes the session properly and reminds them of the next step. Three or four lines are enough:

• Thanks for coming.
• One sentence summing up the most important point.
• The next step you offered on air, with a link.
• Your name and a way to reach you with questions.

You can write this email before the broadcast. That way it doesn't get pushed to tomorrow when you're tired.

The same day or the next: the recording

Send the recording to everyone who registered. That includes the people who didn't show up, and they need it most. Many registrants miss the live session for reasons that have nothing to do with interest: a doctor's appointment, a sick kid, a meeting that ran over. For them, the recording is the webinar.

It's worth writing two different emails:

• For attendees: "here's the recording if you want to revisit a part". You can list the minute where each topic starts so it's easy to jump.
• For no-shows: "you missed it, but here it all is". Add two lines on what they'll get from watching, so they have a reason to click.

The difference sounds small, but an email that fits the reader's situation gets opened and read far more than one general email to everyone.

Read the report

After the broadcast you have information you didn't have before: who joined, when, and how long they stayed. Give it ten minutes.

• Who stayed to the end. These are your most engaged people, and worth contacting personally.
• Where people left. If many left at the same point, that section was probably too long or less relevant.
• Who joined late. If it was a lot of people, the start time may not have suited them.
• The rating, if you asked for feedback. An average score is nice, but written comments are worth more.

Treat the report as a tool for the next webinar. What you learn goes into your preparation for next time, along with the ideas in webinar attendance.

The questions nobody answered

Almost every webinar ends with questions you didn't get to. It usually means the audience was engaged. But people who asked and got no answer remember it.

Go through the open questions and answer them by email. If a question is personal, reply to that person. If it would interest everyone, collect a few into one email to all registrants: "a few questions we didn't get to on air". An email like that is almost always read, because it continues a conversation the reader was part of.

And keep the questions. The ones that keep coming back are the topic of your next webinar.

The week after: don't disappear

People who came to your webinar were interested in what you offer. If they never hear from you again, that interest fades. A short series of emails in the week after keeps the connection:

1. The day after: the recording, as above.
2. Two or three days after: something useful on the topic. A document, a checklist, an example you didn't have time to show.
3. About a week after: a last reminder of the next step if your offer had a deadline, or an invitation to your next webinar.

Three emails is plenty. More than that starts to feel like pressure. If your webinar ended with an offer, webinar structure that sells explains how to carry it past the broadcast.

Use the recording again

An hour-long recording is raw material for a lot of things:

• Short clips for social media. One minute with one clear tip works better than a long excerpt.
• A blog post. The transcript of a good talk is close to a first draft.
• A lesson in a course. If the webinar taught something in order, it can be the first chapter of a course. There's a full article on this: turn a webinar into a course.
• An automated webinar. If the topic doesn't date, you can play the recording again at set times, with chat and questions working live. More in automated webinars.

Keep the files

One last thing that's easy to forget: recordings aren't kept forever on every platform. Check how long yours is kept, and download a copy to your computer or cloud storage. If you want it in a year, you'll be glad it's there.

A short list to print

1. Thank-you email, the same evening.
2. Recording, the same day or the next, with a different email for attendees and no-shows.
3. Ten minutes with the report.
4. Answers to the open questions.
5. Two more emails in the following week.
6. A copy of the recording saved somewhere safe.
7. A list of topics for the next webinar, drawn from the questions.

Everything waits on one page

On Kolcast, when a webinar ends, everything is on its page: the recording to download, a replay at the same link, a report of who came and how long they stayed as an Excel file, and feedback from 1 to 5. The thank-you email goes out by itself, and questions nobody answered are emailed to you. A week before a recording is removed, you get an email with a button to download it. You can see it all on the webinars page, and check how long recordings are kept on each plan on the pricing page.