Benefits of a Replay

Everyone understands the power of a live event and the engagement/interaction those events can drive. However, the reality remains that not everyone who registers will make it.

Whether people are stuck in traffic, busy in a meeting, out with their family, or just occupied with the billion other items on their calendars, we can't expect everyone to show up.

(Although if you dial in the pre-webinar campaign correctly, you should be able to achieve a 20-40% show-up rate on your events. We cover more of these details on our Attendance Growth course.)

The question we naturally then ask ourselves is: What about all the other registrants who have submitted their info and raised their hand that they are interested? Should we simply forget they exist and move on?

Absolutely not! This is where creating a replay campaign comes in.

If you also promote a replay to people who didn’t attend then you can normally get an additional 15% of people to watch the replay.

— John Ainsworth, Data Driven Marketing

Replays offer a chance for those registrants that weren't able to attend (for the variety of reasons we outlined earlier) to still engage with your material, after the fact. While John Ainsworth quotes 15% as the expected percentage, sometimes that rate can be even higher.

In all cases, that means more eyes and ears on your content, more opportunities to share your offer and ultimately more results.

For lead generation events, this means more qualified leads entering your pipeline.

For sales events, this means more users that successfully enter your conversion funnel, and ultimately lead to more sales.

Our email sequence starts by sending registrants to the replay page. As the time draws closer to the deadline to get the offer, we talk more about the offer and losing the opportunity to get in on it. By the time we send the last email on Tuesday night, we get another 2–5 purchasers.

— Tanya Brody, FunnelDash (Full Case Study)

For brand awareness events, this means more opportunities to build authority and attract additional exposure.

In short, regardless of the specific type of event you run, the replay serves as an  avenue for additional results, built on top of all of the hard work you've already done!

Additional Benefits

However, the buck doesn't just stop there. In addition to the extra engagement you'll get from those who missed the live event, you'll also be able to reap some further rewards.

First, you can extend the same benefits to any Attendees that did attend but had to leave early. These are people that are hungry for your message (all things considered, they did show up) and are eager to lap up what they missed.

Second, allow any Attendees that may want to review the content or go over certain portions of your presentation, the chance to do so. This is another opportunity to help them reach their aha moment on the value you bring.

Finally, turn your presentation into additional content you can deploy across a variety of platforms to achieve other objectives. You can grab snippets to turn into teasers for future events, generate social media graphics, create podcast or blog posts, and a multitude of other possibilities. By reusing and repurposing this content, you'll be able to maximize your output (on the effort you've already worked so hard investing).

Now that we've discussed a few of the benefits of having a replay campaign, let's explore the steps we need to take to prepare one.