A primary goal of customer success teams at SaaS companies is to drive user engagement. Whether in the context of new customer activation, upselling premium features, or reducing churn, strong user engagement is a clear indicator of customers’ ongoing commitment to your product.

Of all the tools at your disposal, webinars are particularly effective at accomplishing this goal.

In this post, we’ll explain why this is true, how webinars may be used to increase engagement, and what to keep in mind when creating an effective webinar with this objective.

Finally, we’ll address what to do when confronted with the monumental task of trying to scale live webinars as a key component of your user engagement strategy by discussing the advantages of webinar automation.

TL;DR

• Webinars are very well-suited to drive user engagement. Their effectiveness stems from their video-based nature, storytelling capability, how they provide a forum for user questions, and their ability to generate real-time feedback.
• Three kinds of webinars are obvious options for increasing engagement: product onboarding webinars, ongoing product education (and upselling), and webinars announcing large product releases.
• Considering a webinar is meant to increase user engagement of your SaaS product keep these in mind when you get started: it’s important to set clear goals, use a webinar template (so you don’t have to start from scratch), make the experience interactive, and set aside time for questions.
• Webinar automation is a great way to scale your webinar strategy without sacrificing a personal touch, particularly since automated webinar software has evolved significantly in recent years to make this possible.
• The main benefits of webinar automation are that you can reach a larger audience, offer a more interactive experience, retain a personal touch at scale (with the right software), and get back your time and energy to spend on other things, like creating more comprehensive content for your users.

Note from the author:

Todd Parmely– COO eWebinar

I, the author of this guest post, am the COO of eWebinar, an automated webinar platform. While I am of course biased toward webinar automation in general and our product in particular, it is only because we struggled ourselves for years with the limitations of live webinars and are now passionate about the product we have created to overcome them.

Why webinars are an effective tool for driving engagement

When well-executed, webinars stand as one of the most powerful tools for increasing user engagement. Not only do they provide a platform to educate, update, and communicate with your users, but they also bring a human touch. This bridges the gap between a faceless brand and your audience.

Here are five key reasons why webinars are so effective at increasing engagement:

The power of video

Video has the unique ability to engender trust in users in a matter of minutes that otherwise might take days, weeks, or months.

Giving users the opportunity to meet with you “face-to-face” so you can show them around your product is invaluable in nurturing customer loyalty and a deeper understanding of your software.