Have you ever executed 120 webinars in a month? 1,000 in a year?

At BullsEye, we haven’t (yet). But Informa has.

While many organizations have just begun offering or scaling up webinars or virtual events, Informa’s Tim Stark started producing webinars nearly 20 years ago and has led the execution of thousands of webinars.

In late 2018, he shared insights in an ON24 webinar, “Lessons from 1,000 Webinars: An Inside Look at Informa’s Webinar Engine.” Here is the replay.

6 Lessons from 1,000+ webinars

In this webinar, Tim shared relevant advice for anyone putting on a webinar—whether producing 1 or 1,000, regardless of the purpose, industry, or topic.

BullsEye created an executive summary from the webinar. Here are highlights.

Six keys to Informa’s webinar success are:

  1. Form a dedicated team. Informa has digital event coordinators assinged to specific areas. They develop knowledge and relationships, and enable scaling.
  2. Create and use a well-defined workflow. Informa has developed a clear, end-to-end workflow that everyone understands and follows for every webinar. The processes are always the same, creating consistency, high quality, and scalability. Informa’s process was shown and discussed in depth during the webinar; see the graphic in the summary.
  3. Deliver engaging educational content. The right content is educational (not a sales pitch) and will attract and engage your audience. Education goes beyond information; it is thought leadership conveyed by experts. Good educational content includes exclusive research, customer case studies, and live discussions among experts. Relevant content builds trust because the audience knows they will receive value.
  4. Ensure effective promotion. Email is the biggest driver of webinar registrations for Informa, but the key to effective promotion is having relevant, engaging education content to promote. (See #3)
  5. Provide an engaging experience. Don’t just lecture with PowerPoint. Engage the audience with stories and use tools, such as polls, surveys, and video, to boost interaction and engagement. (ON24 and other platforms have good interactive tools.)
  6. Measure everything. Informa uses analytics to analyze and improve on all aspects of its webinars. It measures the effectiveness of its promotional emails, operational details, and all aspects of lead generation.

Tim said, “It doesn’t matter if you do 13, 582, or 1,000 webinars. The processes are the same. These processes have allowed us to scale this business while maintaining the quality that our brands, and more importantly that our clients, expect.”

We also know through our longstanding relationship with Informa that even when the webinar is complete, they aren’t necessarily done. That’s because Informa offers post-webinar content and lead-generation programs to extend a webinar.

The key lessons from thousands of webinars are: team, process, educational content, an engaging experience, and measurement.

BullsEye’s take: All of these steps are important, particularly the process/workflow. But beyond the execution and logistics, what really differentiates a mediocre webinar from a great one is whether the content and ideas are interesting, releveant, and engaging.

Whether you’ve done 1 or 1,000 webinars, what are some of your key takeaways? Let us know in the comments.

View and download an executive summary of this webinar.