6 Steps to Grow your Audience with Webinars and Email Marketing

By Kristin MacLaughlin July 22, 2020

Freedom Digital Marketing founder Laurie Conrod helps real estate agents and other entrepreneurs grow their businesses.  She teaches entrepreneurs how to automate their lead generation using direct response marketing and social media marketing. 

She knew there had to be a better way to grow her small business efficiently and her client base than the time-consuming task of traditional prospecting. “I didn’t want to prospect people anymore for lead generation. I wanted to learn how to tap into the millions of people that are on the Internet,” said Conrod.

She needed a way to entice potential clients to attend her free training and then capture these attendees to offer her digital marketing services. This strategy would enable Conrod to demonstrate her knowledge and skills to prospects in a low-risk format. However, she lacked a reliable platform to manage her growing client database and power her online training.

Until she came across AWeber and GoToWebinar.

Here are the 6 steps Conrod followed to grow her audience without prospecting. 

Step 1: Create an engaging lead magnet

Conrod uses webinars as her lead magnet to attract prospects. “The goal as an entrepreneur is to build ‘know, like, and trust’ with people as quickly as possible in order to make sales. Letting them see me on a webinar, how I present myself and my expertise is one of the fastest ways for people to get to know, like, and trust me. GoToWebinar has been such a powerful platform for me to use,” says Conrod.

She usually offers free training on topics such as online lead generation, social media marketing, and email marketing. In Conrod’s training, she teaches realtors the basics of running Facebook campaigns and social media marketing.  

AWeber provides a direct integration with GoToWebinar, which means you can instantly add GoToWebinar registrants directly to your AWeber list.

Step by Step on how to integrate GoToWebinar with AWeber

1. In your account, click the Integrations link in the upper right corner of the page.
2. Find the GoToWebinar integration and click on it. 
3. On the next page, you will want to click the “Connect” button.
4. You’ll then be asked to log into your GoToWebinar account. After doing so, click the “Allow” button to grant access for the integration.
5. Now that the app is connected, it’s time to create your GoToWebinar automations in AWeber. To do so, click the “Create an Automation” button.
6. Using the drop down menu provided, select the webinar you would like to connect with AWeber. Once selected, click the “Next” button.
7. Next, select the AWeber list you would like your webinar registrants to be added to. Then, click the “Submit” button.
8. At this point, your webinar is connected to the previously selected AWeber list. Registrants will automatically be added to your AWeber list.

Step 2: Promote the lead magnet to drive sign ups

Conrod promotes her lead magnet through paid ads on Facebook and Instagram. The paid advertising drives prospects to a landing page to collect their contact information.

Conrod includes three additional essential elements on her landing page.

#1. A sign up form to collect email addresses

#2.  Information about what she will cover in the webinar

#3. Social proof to demonstrate how past attendees found value

Step 3: Grow an email list

When these prospects register for the webinar, they are immediately added to an email list she has set up on AWeber’s email marketing platform.  

“AWeber helps me build an email list. It is really the most crucial part of building a business. And that’s true for any business: brick and mortar, retail, restaurants, or carpet cleaning. If you’re building an email list, you can always generate new revenue from your client base and potential clients. If you’re not building your list, you’re leaving money on the table,” says Conrod. 

Pro Tip:  5  tactics for promoting your Webinar and growing your email audience.

Step 4: Segment the List

Conrod promotes webinars to her customers and prospects. 

To ensure the right messages are sent to the intended audience, Conrod segments the list to send appropriate email messages to her subscribers. 

“My mission is to help people automate their lead generation so that their potential clients are coming to them. Entrepreneurs need to learn that ‘the money is in their lists.’ AWeber is instrumental because you build your email list and then automate your follow-up with as many potential clients as possible. I help entrepreneurs learn how to do that,” said Conrod.

Need segmentation inspiration? There are 16 ways to segment subscribers in AWeber. 

Step 5: Automate email campaigns

Conrod emails her new clients almost daily with an automated email sequence. She has found that including links to watch videos is a really good practice because it allows people to know, like, and trust her much faster than just reading emails. 

Conrod likes to give a lot of value and avoid salesy language in her email and social media. “You can’t constantly be pitching people and expect them to continue to open your emails because they’ll get sick of it. We have to let people see our expertise and the value that we give so that they want to do business with us,” says Conrod.

After the training, she continues to engage with her list by sharing the video recording through AWeber.

Step 6: Create a system for success

Conrod found a winning formula: a combination of AWeber and GoToWebinar. GoToWebinar became the driver of her lead generation strategy. AWeber handled the backend of her process and allowed her to connect with her audience to create remarkable experiences.

“You don’t have to be a PhD to have a skill that you can sell online, but you do need a reliable system to do it well. Having a system is essential to build a six-figure and beyond business,” says Conrod.

Ready to grow your business?

Whether you’re starting a new business, need to grow your audience, or you run an established e-commerce business, AWeber provides a powerfully-simple email marketing solution for any small business.

AWeber’s email marketing platform includes landing pages with every plan, emails, email automation, sign up forms, and email analytics.

Start for free and quickly grow your business with powerfully-simple email marketing from AWeber.