Accounting Webinar Best Practices for CPA Firms - How to Increase Attendance and Maximize Impact

Webinars and online meetings are an amazing advancement in communication. They allow us to communicate on a live personal level with numerous people from anywhere in the world at the same time. They see what you want them to and they can hear your voice like you were sitting next to them. Done correctly, it's like you are sitting in the conference room with 50 different clients and prospects at the same time.
For accounting firms, webinars can be a fantastic way to deliver value to clients, to present ideas to prospects, to build the brand of the firm and your professionals, and to raise the awareness level of your services and expertise. In many instances, if you have the right experience, tracking, and follow-up, webinars can lead directly to client service or business development opportunities.
While webinars can be a very effective tool, they aren't free to produce. If you want them done right they require investment in time and effort from across a firm. The real cost including hard and soft costs aren't as low as you might think on first glance. Therefore, it's imperative that when the effort is made to host and produce a webinar, that your content reaches the maximum number of your target audience as possible. I've been hosting/facilitating webinars for several years both for my own firms and for current client firms.
Here's a few things I've learned from experience that will help increase your attendance and maximize the impact of your efforts:

1. Timing of the delivery of invitations - You want to be sure to send these out when your audience is most likely to be in front of their computer. If they are received during lunch/off hours, they will get buried in a pile of other more pressing emails
2. Timing of event - Always consider your audience and their schedules. I've found that Mondays and Fridays are often bad turnout days. I've always had the most success with middle of the week, late morning or early afternoon.
3. Subject line of invitation - clearly identity the event and the subject matter
4. Delivery method - Are you able to track your open rate with your current invites? We use HTML invitations that are easily customizable for the event, match branding and e-newsletter/e-blasts, and are delivered through an email address at your domain - not an address from a webinar facilitator.
5. Target audience - If you are doing one per month and sending invites to your entire database along with other communications, you could run the risk of overloading information and therefore diminishing the effectiveness.
6. Reminders - Be sure to send the invite at least twice - usually once a week or more in advance and once much closer to the event. Also, have a system in place to send an automated reminder to registrants one hour before the event.
7. Personal invitations - In order to build familiarity with these events and the value they bring, don't be afraid to invest a little time into personally inviting key clients. If you are presenting timely information that will bring value, it is often helpful to have partners reach out to their clients with a personal email introducing the webinar concept and recommending the event. Investing in getting your clients familiar with this method of value delivery will pay off down the road.
8. Leverage your investment - When you consider everything involved with webinars, including the time of your professionals to create material and deliver the presentation, these aren't as cheap as they initially seem. Maximizing the value you get is key. Record the events and be sure that your partners and managers know they are available for future use. Post them on your website so that clients can be pointed to archives. Send any registrants missed the event a link to the archive.
9. Synchronization with email client calendars - Your registration process should allow for registrants to have the event posted to their Outlook or other email client calendar. This will keep a reminder in front of them within their regular scheduling.

These are just some thoughts off the top of my head that I've learned from experience. They pertain mostly to maximizing attendance once you have already decided to host an event. I'll get back on this topic soon to speak about how CPA firms can and should use webinars in their communications and marketing programs. Beyond just filling the seats, there are other things to know about how to best incorporate webinars into your marketing and business development mix.