Your guide to webinar automation

Fighting for audience attention is hard. There's a lot of noise on the internet, perhaps made even nosier by generative AI that can create everything from entire blog posts to social posts.

One way to stand out is through video and, specifically, webinars. They're unique and can really let your expertise shine—whether you're working for a large marketing department or have a small business. 

Webinars are a lot of work: we get it. There's prep, collecting registrations, and communicating with people before and after the event. You can ease this through webinar automation, reducing the manual work you'd otherwise have to do. We've rounded up some of our favorite webinar automation workflows—what we call Zaps—for inspiration and to help you get started.

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• Create webinar registrants from a Google Sheet

• Automate webinar registrants from forms

• Collect registrants through event management platforms

• Collect registrants from Facebook or LinkedIn ads

• Add event registrants to your email service provider or CRM

• Add event registrants to forms

Create webinar registrants from a Google Sheet

If you're using Google Forms to collect webinar registrants, you can use new rows in Google Sheets to create webinar automation. You might also use Google Sheets if you collect registrants from an in-person event using a paper sign-up form (like at a booth) to collect the email addresses of interested people. 

Adding these registrants to Google Sheets and letting automation move the email addresses into your webinar platform is often easier than adding them to your webinar platform directly. These automated workflows can send new or updated rows from Google Sheets to your webinar platform of choice. 

Automate webinar registrants from forms

The tool you use to collect your webinar registrants might be different from the platform you use to host the webinar. If you're managing this manually, you have to somehow bulk-add your attendees to the webinar platform so they can access the link.

Instead, you can automate this process by sending registrants collected through a form in one platform (like HubSpot) to another platform (like Demio or GoTo Webinar). If you have additional automation in your webinar platform, this can kick off things like email confirmations or event reminders from the webinar platform itself. 

Collect registrants through event management platforms

Depending on your webinar platform, you may opt to use a separate event management platform (like Eventbrite) to handle registrations. These platforms have a lot of flexibility in managing the number of attendees, issuing tickets, or collecting payment. 

But, like collecting registrations through forms, you need to get the attendees into the webinar platform so registered attendees can join. With one of these automated workflows, you can send your registrants from an event management platform to your webinar tool of choice.

Collect registrants from Facebook or LinkedIn ads

Ads can be a great way to get your webinar in front of more people—especially people outside of your network who might be interested in your offerings. If you use Facebook Lead Ads or LinkedIn Ads, you can collect email addresses, but you have an additional step to get those email addresses into your webinar platform. 

Without automation, you'd need to first download your list from Facebook Lead Ads or LinkedIn Ads. With automation, you can send the registrants to your webinar platform of choice with no additional effort. 

Add event registrants to your email service provider or CRM

Webinars aren't just about getting in front of an audience. It's also important to focus on how you stay connected with the attendees after the webinar is over. 

Most webinar platforms aren't equipped to do anything other than send event-related emails, so you should add attendees to your email service provider or CRM (whether these are separate tools or an all-in-one platform). That way, you can reach out to attendees in the future when you announce new webinars, offer new products or services, or follow up in some other way.

With automation, you can add or update email or CRM contacts as soon as an attendee registers for your webinar. You can also add tags to your new subscribers or put them in specific segments so you know they attended this specific webinar. 

Add event registrants to forms

Within some platforms, it makes more sense to subscribe your webinar attendees to specific forms. Depending on your setup, this is another way to segment your audience within an email list, or you might have email sequences set up based on forms you've created.

If you're using an event platform like Demio or WebinarJam to collect registrations and manage webinars, you can use automation to subscribe your attendees to forms in a platform like Kajabi or Kit (formerly ConvertKit). 

Develop a repeatable process for hosting events

If you plan to host events regularly, a repeatable process makes webinars much more manageable. You're not reinventing the wheel each time—you know you'll need a way to collect registrations, send invitees the link to connect, and follow up with any email sequences or additional information.

Adding webinar automation into your process means you'll have fewer things to remember. Automation also ensures you don't make a mistake—like accidentally forgetting to add an invitee to your webinar platform. 

Webinar automation makes it possible to use your tool of choice to collect registrants, host the webinar, and send emails while ensuring that everything is seamlessly connected behind the scenes. What will you automate first?

This article was originally published in April 2020, written by Deb Tennen. It was most recently updated by Anna Burgess Yang in November 2024.