B2B

Registrations are easy. Getting people to actually turn up is the work.

Roughly half the people who register for a webinar do not attend, and the gap is almost entirely a sequencing problem. Five emails around the event — two before, two on the day, one after — decide whether you run a session or talk to an empty room.

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In short

A webinar sequence is five emails: the invite about ten days out, a reminder with the agenda three days out, a morning-of reminder, a starting-now email fifteen minutes before, and a follow-up the next day that splits attendees from no-shows. Attendance rates for registrations typically land somewhere around half, and the day-of emails are what move that number — not the invite. The follow-up matters more than any of them, because a webinar with no follow-up produces a list of registrations and nothing else. Full copy for all five is below.

~50%Of registrants attend, as a working planning assumption. Build the funnel around it

2 of 5Emails land on the day itself. This is where attendance is won

15 minBefore start. The single highest-impact email in the sequence

2 pathsIn the follow-up. Attendees and no-shows need different emails

The sequence

1Email 1 — 10 days before

Subject{{webinar_topic}} — {{date}}, and what you'll leave with45 minutes, live, with the Q&A that makes it worth attending.

Hi {{first_name}},

We're running a live session on {{webinar_topic}} on {{date}} at {{time_with_timezone}}. It runs 45 minutes, with the last 15 for questions.

What you'll leave with:

→ {{takeaway_1}}

→ {{takeaway_2}}

→ {{takeaway_3}}

It's live rather than recorded because the useful part is usually the question somebody asks that we hadn't planned for. If you can't make the time, register anyway — we send the recording to everyone who signs up.

Save my seat

Why it is shaped this way: Lead with the takeaways, not the speaker biography. People register for what they will be able to do afterwards. Naming the timezone explicitly is not pedantry — it is the most common reason a registrant misses an event, and 'Thursday at 2' is ambiguous the moment your list crosses a border. Promising the recording to everyone raises registrations and costs nothing, since the follow-up email is one you were sending anyway.

2Email 2 — 3 days before

SubjectThursday's agenda, and one thing to bringThe running order, plus a question to think about beforehand.

Hi {{first_name}},

{{webinar_topic}} is on {{day}}. Here's the running order so you know what you're getting:

{{agenda_item_1}} · {{agenda_item_2}} · {{agenda_item_3}} · Q&A

One thing that makes these much better: come with a specific question about {{topic_area}}. The sessions where people arrive with something concrete are the ones nobody regrets attending.

Reply with your question now if you'd rather — we'll work the good ones into the main section.

Add it to your calendar here so it doesn't get buried: {{calendar_link}}

Add to calendar

Why it is shaped this way: The calendar link is the point of this email. A registration that never becomes a calendar entry is a no-show waiting to happen, and three days out is when people still have a free slot to protect. Collecting questions in advance does double duty: it gives you material for the session and it converts a passive registrant into someone with a stake in showing up.

3Email 3 — morning of, around 9am local

SubjectToday at {{time}}Your join link, in case it's buried.

Hi {{first_name}},

{{webinar_topic}} is today at {{time_with_timezone}}.

Your join link: {{join_link}}

No download needed — it opens in the browser. If you're joining from a work laptop that blocks things, {{fallback_instruction}}.

Join link

Why it is shaped this way: Four lines, one link, nothing else. This email exists to put the join link at the top of a busy inbox on the busy morning, and every extra sentence reduces the chance it does that job. The note about locked-down work machines prevents the failure where someone tries to join at the last minute, hits a corporate block, and gives up rather than asking.

4Email 4 — 15 minutes before

SubjectStarting in 15 minutesJoin link inside.

We're starting {{webinar_topic}} in 15 minutes.

Join now

Why it is shaped this way: Two lines. This is the highest-yield email in the sequence and the one most often skipped, because it feels like too much emailing. It is not: it reaches people who fully intended to attend and lost the link, which is most of the gap between registration and attendance. Suppress anyone who has already joined the room if your webinar platform reports that back.

5Email 5 — next morning, split by attendance

SubjectThe recording, and the answer we didn't get toPlus the two questions that came up most.

Hi {{first_name}},

Thanks for joining yesterday. The recording is here: {{recording_link}}

We ran out of time on {{unanswered_question}}, so the short answer is {{short_answer}}, and the longer one is in {{resource_link}}.

The two things people asked about most were {{common_question_1}} and {{common_question_2}} — both are covered from about {{timestamp}} in the recording.

If it's useful to talk about your own setup, {{next_step_offer}}.

Watch the recording

Why it is shaped this way: Send two versions of this. Attendees get the above. No-shows get a shorter one that leads with the recording and does not thank them for attending something they missed — getting that wrong is a small mistake that reads as carelessness. This is also the only email in the sequence that should carry a commercial next step: put it after the value, once, and let the recording do the rest.

What goes wrong with this sequence

No day-of emailsSending the invite and a reminder three days out, then nothing, is the standard setup and it is where attendance goes. The two emails on the day are worth more than the two before it combined, because the constraint on attendance is rarely intent — it is that a link registered for ten days ago is not in front of the person at the moment it matters.

Sending the same follow-up to attendees and no-shows'Thanks for joining!' to somebody who did not join is a small error with an outsized effect, and the two groups need different things anyway: attendees want the recording and the unanswered question, no-shows want the recording and a reason to watch it. Splitting the path takes one branch.

Ambiguous times'2pm' without a timezone, or a timezone your list does not share, is the most common preventable no-show. Put the timezone in every email, and render the time in the recipient's zone if your platform can do it.

Treating registration as the goalRegistration numbers are the metric that gets reported and the one that means least. Two hundred registrations with a follow-up nobody sends is worth less than sixty attendees who received a considered email the next morning. Build the sequence backwards from the follow-up.

Letting the recording expire quietlyThe follow-up email keeps earning clicks for months if the recording link stays alive — from search, from forwards, from your own later emails. A dead link turns your best-performing follow-up into a bounce. If the recording must come down, redirect the link rather than breaking it.

Questions

How far ahead should the invite go out?

About ten days for a general audience, and two to three weeks if you need senior people whose calendars fill early. Much further ahead and the registration is made in a context nobody remembers; much closer and the diary is already full. Send a second invite to non-registrants around four days out rather than moving the first one earlier.

Is five emails too many for one event?

Not when four of them are short and tied to a thing the person asked for. Unsubscribes cluster around promotional volume, not around logistics for an event someone registered for. What does cause complaints is continuing to email the whole registration list about unrelated topics afterwards, which is a different mistake.

Should registrants join the main marketing list?

Only if the signup form said so plainly and they had a real choice. A webinar registration is consent for the webinar; treating it as consent for a weekly newsletter is what produces complaints two months later, and under GDPR it is the kind of bundled consent that does not hold up. Ask on the registration form with an unticked box.

What attendance rate should I expect?

Plan around roughly half of registrations and treat anything above that as a win. It varies enormously with topic, audience seniority and how long before the event people registered — a list of your own customers behaves nothing like a paid-traffic registration list. Track your own number across three events and use that instead of any published benchmark.

Can I run this for a recorded or on-demand session?

Not usefully. The whole sequence is built around a fixed moment in time, and the two emails that carry it stop making sense without one. For on-demand, send the link immediately and follow up once a week later with what to watch if they have not opened it.

Keep exploring

Product launch sequenceFor when the event is the launch rather than the lead-in.Email marketing for B2BLonger cycles, multiple stakeholders, and what changes.AutomationsBranching on attendance, and suppressing people who already joined.Segmentation guideSplitting attendees from no-shows without maintaining two lists.Landing pagesThe registration page, without a second tool for it.All templatesWelcome, cart recovery, launch sequences and more.

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