BrightTALK, which has been publishing webinar benchmark data since 2010, analyzed more than 14,000 webinars, 300 million emails, feed and social promotions, and a total of 1.2 million hours of engagement from the past year. This annual report helps B2B marketers compare their performance to those of their industries and see which practices lead to the greatest success.
- In 2017, participants spent an average of 42 minutes watching each webinar, a 27 percent increase year-over-year from 2016.
- Email conversions to webinar signups were up 31 percent from the previous year, a direct result of marketers’ improved insights into audiences’ preferred topics.
- Total volume of webinars on the BrightTALK platform increased 40 percent year-over-year, suggesting that webinars and professional talks are an increasingly essential tool in marketers’ storytelling arsonals.
- Webinars are transforming into on-demand video content. Almost half of a webinar’s viewing takes place in the first 10 days following the live event.
How to Best Promote Your Webinar
Perhaps the most valuable information that I found in the report was on strategies to promote your webinar to maximize attendance. For our clients, webinars continue to be an incredible resource of leads. We’ve found that people that attend webinars are typically deep in the buying cycle and looking to validate or learn more about the investment they’re going to make. The issue is, of course, how to drive as many prospects as you can there.
Thankfully – BrightTALK provides some great best practices there:
- Webinar programs see the success when they are promoted early (3-4 weeks out), and continue through the live day.
- The majority of your audience will have registered within two weeks of the live event. These rates have remained relatively consistent over the past three years.
- Brighttalk recommends sending three dedicated email promotions, with the last on the day of the webinar itself.
- Email conversion for webinars was up 31% over the past 12 months, and up 35% over the weekend
- Conversion rates for promoting webinars were actually relatively flat throughout the work week, with Tuesday performing best.
- Live attendance rates are relatively flat Monday through Thursday but dip 8% on Friday.
- The best time to schedule a webinar is 8:00 am to 9:00 am (PDT, North America).
- BrightTALK customers drove 46% of their webinar registrations via their own promotions (email, advertising, social, etc) with paid leads were close behind at 36%. 17% of leads came from organic traffic.
I’d highly recommend downloading and reading the full report that BrightTALK’s put together, there’s a ton of value in this benchmark report!
About BrightTALK
BrightTALK brings professionals and businesses together to learn and grow. More than 7 million professionals engage with more than 75,000 free talks and 1,000 online summits to discover new technologies, learn from trusted experts and enhance their careers. Thousands of businesses use BrightTALK’s AI-powered content and demand marketing platform to grow revenue. BrightTALK was founded in 2002 and has raised more than $30 million in venture capital. Clients include Symantec, JP Morgan, BNY Mellon, Microsoft, Cisco, and Amazon Web Services.
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