When to Schedule Your Next Webinar for the Best Attendance
If you want people to attend your webinar — we’re assuming you do or else you wouldn’t be hosting one, right? To get the largest group possible to attend your next webinar, scheduling it at the right time is key. Afterall, there are certain times of the week, or even specific times of day that work better for certain things, and for different people.
In general, people prefer attending webinars that are held in the middle of the week (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays). Think about it: on Mondays, people are likely catching up on emails and attending staff meetings, and by Friday, everyone is trying to get things wrapped up for the week before leaving the office.
The only problem with this is… if everyone is scheduling their webinars on these same three days, there’s going to be a lot of competition! This is where the details come into play.
The best time to schedule a webinar on those three days, is at 11 am. Again, with the theory of “the middle”. No one wants to attend a webinar right when they wake up or immediately when they sit down at their desk. If 11 am isn’t available, you can try for 1 pm or even 2 pm — but whatever you do, do not interfere with people’s lunch hour!
One thing to keep in mind about the timing though, is multiple time zones. What works in your time zone may not work as well in another. If this becomes an issue, you might consider making a pre-recorded webinar that you play several times in one day and then host a live question-and-answer session at the end of each recording. This method will accommodate participants in multiple time zones.
The next thing to consider when planning your webinar is when you’re going to send out the invitation. The best day to send out an email invite is on Tuesday. In general, many different surveys have shown that professionals get the most work done on Tuesdays, because they’re caught up from the weekend and they’re not quite ready for the next weekend yet.
Finally, let participants know that you plan to record the webinar and email it out once it’s over. This means you’re offering it “on-demand”. This will get people to register for it, even if they know they can’t make it. It’s not as great as having a “live” participant, but it’s certainly better than them not registering at all.
If you decide to offer your webinar on-demand, you can be a little bit more flexible with the actual scheduling day and time, since people won’t necessarily have to tune in live.
Between the day of the week, the time of day, the email invite, and all of the recording options, there’s several ways you can get on track with scheduling your next webinar. If you host several webinars regularly, it would be a smart idea to do a little bit of research on your own and make a note of the number of participants you get on certain days or during certain times. Maybe your audience is different than the general public and you can perfect your webinar schedule from this point forward!
