Webinar Scheduling Survey Available
I just put up a post on Webinar Wire announcing availability of a survey designed to find out whether common assumptions about webinar scheduling are accurate or not. I urge you to go and follow the link to take the survey. It only takes one minute... maybe two if you are really detail oriented and want to add a comment.
I get the question all the time: "What are the best days and times to schedule public webinars?" Most everyone in the industry tends to give the same answer. "Mid-week. A little before lunch for the West Coast, a little after lunch for the East Coast." That's why you get so many invitations with events competing against each other in the same time slot. It forces you to pick and choose which one you will attend at the expense of others.
Now I'll tell you a dirty little secret. None of us really knows if this answer is verifiably correct or not. It's based on some common sense assumptions... People may take a Monday or Friday off for a long weekend. People are too busy getting into their work week on Mondays. People are scrambling to finish up projects on Fridays. Too early or too late a start time misses people who work flex hours.
But to test the theory is almost impossible as a statistically valid exercise. You would have to run the same event for the same audience using the same invitation at a variety of different times and see which date/time slot got the best response. Except that you'll tend to get a drop-off in registrations for whichever slots you offer as follow-on opportunities after the first show. That's because the really interested parties sign up for it as soon as they see it. And then they don't have to sign up again. I watch this happen all the time, as I'll give a public webinar with fantastic response. Then I'll offer the same webinar a month later on the same day of the week and time slot, promoted the same way. It gets fewer registrations. Because I've exhausted part of my potential audience. If I tried the second showing on a different day and time I might assume that it was the fault of the time slot, when actually that was not the determinant in response rates.
If you can't run valid experimental tests, you fall back on asking a sample of the population. And that's what I'm doing. If we get enough people responding, we'll be able to validate our assumptions and maybe get some surprises. Perhaps people are ready and willing to close out their work week with a webinar on Friday afternoon? I don't know any company willing to try running one then on the off-chance it might be successful.
If you are a webinar vendor reading this, I hope you'll promote the survey to your customer base as well. There is no branding on the survey and it doesn't mention Webinar Success, Webinar Wire, or anyone else. I do not ask for names or emails from respondents, so there's no chance of being added to a list. This is a true altruistic exercise for the public good. I'll share the findings publicly and we can all start scheduling events with more confidence that we're matching the preferences and availability of our public.
It will be very interesting to see your results. We recently surveyed our list (we have a very specific audience) to find out what time was most convenient. The group split evenly into thirds, between 9a-12a, 12p-2p & 2-6p Eastern time. So, we weren't able to get a definitive answer.
To try to find that sweet spot, I've hosting webinars at experimental times & days as you suggest. My biggest surprise was the impressive turnout for Friday sessions. I've also had very good success with Saturday webinars that are marketed to consumers.
In the end, I think it depends a great deal on the industry and target audience. What works will for one company may be a bust for another. But, by experimenting, you may well hit the jack pot.
Looking forward to seeing what your survey participants have to say.
Posted by: Leigh Strinsky | April 18, 2008 at 09:36 PM
I can't wait to see what kinds of results you get back from this. I've seen studies where they look at month of year for webcasts, or which day of the week are people most likely to register. (ON24 put out a white paper last July that has this info. I can't find the white paper directly posted anywhere, but here's a press release about it, along with a contact name for how to get a copy of the report: http://www.on24.com/press20070716.html)
However, I haven't seen any numbers on actual attendance by day of week or time of day, so this should be interesting.
As you alluded to in your post, testing would be the best way to find this out from a validity standpoint. ..because often what people SAY they'll do is quite different from what they actually do. But to your point, it's really tough to test this one.
Posted by: Michael Madej (Digital Marketing Rucksack) | April 25, 2008 at 09:51 AM