eWebinar Update: Webinar Series Features
Todd Parmley
Companies often use evergreen webinars for user onboarding and customer training. Their goal is to automate as much of the process as possible to free up team resources and direct their time/energy toward other things.
If you want to do the same but need the right tool to make it happen, we’ve put together a list of the 5 best evergreen webinar software platforms:
DISCLAIMER: eWebinar is our product. We are of course biased towards it, but only because our backstory has made us passionate about evergreen webinar software and the features that make it great. eWebinar is the product we always wish we had and we now use it ourselves every day!
4 key criteria to look for when choosing evergreen webinar software
We struggled for years with the shortcomings of evergreen webinar platforms. From our hard-won experience, we recommend you look at things from two points of view when evaluating your options: your needs and your audience's needs.
After all, if you've got what you need while your audience is having a lousy webinar experience, who cares?!
With this mindset, we have identified the 4 main criteria you should look for when picking evergreen webinar software:
Criteria #1: Direct private communication
Criteria #2: Interactive attendee experience
Criteria #3: Around-the-clock scheduling
Criteria #4: Great design (Easy to use + beautiful to look at)
Each of the evergreen webinar platforms in this post have been evaluated by these criteria.
For Criteria #4, however, we describe only eWebinar. We encourage you to investigate the usability and design of the other products on your own since it is somewhat subjective and tends to speak for itself. We’ve included a few tips later on for how you might go about doing that.
1. eWebinar
In this section, we’ll discuss:
- Brief overview of eWebinar (2-minute video)
- How eWebinar meets the 4 key criteria of evergreen webinar software
- Other criteria to consider for automated webinar software + questions to ask
- Testimonials & case studies
Brief overview of eWebinar (2-minute video)
Watch the 2-minute video above for an overview of eWebinar and its key features.
For a detailed overview of eWebinar, join our 20-minute demo on demand or visit the features page on our website.
At the time of writing, eWebinar has a 5-star rating on Capterra. Read our reviews.
If you already think eWebinar might be right for you, sign up for a free trial. Our plans and pricing start at $99/month.
How eWebinar meets the 4 key criteria of evergreen webinar software
In this section, we describe how eWebinar meets the 4 key criteria for great evergreen webinar software.
In doing so, we look at each criteria from two points of view: your needs and your audience’s needs.
We have worked with thousands of webinar hosts over the years. This is how we were able to specifically list their (your) needs alongside eWebinar's features that meet them.
CRITERIA #1: Direct private communication
People expect to be able to ask questions during a webinar. However, since webinar automation means sessions can happen 24/7, you won’t always be available to answer questions from your attendees in real time.
If you want to make sure people don’t feel ignored or that you never miss any of their questions, choose a webinar tool with features that allow for that, ideally something that gives you the flexibility to chat live with webinar attendees when you can or respond later at your convenience via email when you can’t.
(Spoiler alert: Only eWebinar's chat feature makes that possible.)
| Your Needs | Audience Needs | eWebinar Features |
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You want to be able to chat live with attendees so you can answer questions. |
Your audience wants to know they can ask questions and get answers. |
Ability to chat with attendees live using eWebinar's built-in live chat and third-party integrations. |
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You need to be notified of new messages so you can jump in and chat with attendees live. |
They want (and may expect) to be able to chat live with the host or a moderator during the webinar. |
Get notifications of new attendee messages through email or Slack channels. |
|
You want to be able to respond to questions from attendees via email when you're unable to respond live. |
If no one is available to respond live, attendees want questions to be answered in a timely manner. |
Ability to respond to attendees via email after the webinar ends or if they go offline while chatting.
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You never want attendee questions to fall through the cracks and damage the customer relationship. |
They want to know whether anyone's available to chat and when to expect an answer. |
Autoresponder to set response time expectations so attendees know they aren't being ignored.
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You want to chat with attendees live but can't be there to respond to questions 24/7. |
They want to be able to ask questions during the webinar but continue the conversation later. |
Enable live chat and email responses simultaneously to get the best of both worlds. |
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You want to encourage people to ask questions if anything in your presentation was unclear. |
They may not know if someone will be there to answer them if they leave a question. |
Automated welcome messages in chat when an attendee joins a webinar to start a conversation. |
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You want to give attendees a safe space to send you private/sensitive questions. |
They may want to chat privately for fear of being called out in public chat. |
Private chat (not public chat) so attendees don’t feel self-conscious about asking questions. |
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You want to respond as soon as possible so questions aren't left unanswered for too long. |
They might need their question to be answered before they can move on to the next step. |
Assign chat moderators to share the response workload with as many people as needed. |
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You need to respond to attendees who are watching webinars while you're not at your desk. |
They have an urgent question that can't wait until you get back to the office. |
Mobile chat admin that lets you respond to webinar attendees while on the go. |
PRO TIPS FOR CHOOSING COMMUNICATION FEATURES:
- Only eWebinar gives you the flexibility to chat live with attendees OR respond to them later via email at your convenience. Other software makes you choose. You can do one or the other but not both.
- If you decide to go with a platform that makes you decide, we recommend you choose only to respond to questions by email. Why? Because if you choose to chat live, you must join every single session to do it (which defeats the purpose of automation) and you risk missing questions from attendees when you can't. By choosing to only respond to questions post-webinar by email, at least no inquiries will fall through the cracks. Unfortunately, this means giving up the invaluable opportunity to chat with attendees in real time.
- There are solutions that offer simulated chat to make it seem like a webinar is a live event when it is not. We DON'T recommend using this feature — especially when it makes it seem like an attendee will be able to get a response from you when in fact they won’t.
CRITERIA #2: Interactive attendee experience
The experience of automated webinars can be much more interactive than live webinars, provided you use software like eWebinar.
Interactions like polls, questions, tips, contact forms, and special offers can be pre-programmed to appear at precisely the right moments in your presentation. They give attendees a way to participate in the webinar, so they stay engaged until your presentation is over. And they give you a way to collect valuable feedback from every customer who watches one of your pre-recorded webinars.
When comparing live and evergreen webinars, the latter also offer a greater variety of interactions.
| YOUR NEEDS | YOUR AUDIENCE'S NEEDS | EWEBINAR'S FEATURES |
|
You need your webinar to be engaging even though you’re not there, so attendees don’t leave early or get distracted by their phones. You need to be able to surface an offer to buy your program or service at the right moment in your webinar. You want to be able to ask qualifying sales questions so you know which prospects are likely to convert. You want to be able to gather feedback from attendees so you can improve your webinar. You want to learn about your audience so you can market to them properly post-webinar. |
Your audience doesn’t want to be bored! They want to feel engaged. They need you to help them stay focused by giving them something to do. They want to participate in the experience (as long as it’s private). They want to be able to give you feedback so you can better meet their needs. |
12 types of interactions to choose from, like polls, questions, tips, contact forms, special offers, and more, so you have lots of options to keep people engaged until the end of your webinar Ability to easily program interactions to appear throughout your webinar without overlapping or interfering with each other Audience reactions ("likes") that let attendees participate in your webinar Integration with your CRM or email marketing software so you can segment your audience with the data you collect through interactions and effectively automate your post-webinar follow up |
- Though we’ve discussed it already, you can’t talk about making webinars interactive without mentioning live chat. It is and always has been the most interactive element of any webinar. When evaluating automated webinar software, don’t be too hasty to choose a solution that would require you to give up the live chat feature as a trade-off for setting your webinar on autopilot 24/7. (eWebinar is the only option that allows for this.)
- If you want to hold the attention of your audience during your webinar, go no more than 3 or 4 minutes without adding an interaction. Choose software like eWebinar that offers more interactions (15 in total with more on the way) than any other software, so you can keep things interesting. Plan your webinar around your interactions. If you’re smart about it and weave them into your script, you’ll be able to increase your webinar’s watch time and capture the data you want from attendees.
CRITERIA #3: Around-the-clock scheduling
The amazing thing about automated webinar hosting is you never need to be there to present anything live. You can create evergreen webinars then make them available around the clock — at any time in any time zone — or on demand.
| YOUR NEEDS | YOUR AUDIENCE'S NEEDS | EWEBINAR'S FEATURES |
|
You want to be freed from having to host your sales webinars live all the time, over and over again. You want to scale your webinar strategy and create an evergreen sales funnel to increase your revenue. You want potential clients to be able to watch your webinar whenever it’s convenient for them, including on demand, so they actually show up for it. |
Your audience wants options: They may want to register for a webinar that fits their schedule so they can put it on their calendar. They may want to join your webinar at the spur of the moment, right when they find it. They may want to watch your webinar like they would a regular video, so they can play, pause, or watch at 2X speed. |
Recurring schedule that lets you make sessions available in the attendee’s local time zone “Just-in-time” option that lets someone join your webinar right away On-demand replay that people can register for to get a link to watch your webinar like a video Ability to enable all of the features above at the same time so your registrants have options! |
PRO TIPS FOR CHOOSING SCHEDULING FEATURES:
- There are several webinar tools that offer all the scheduling functionality listed above. However, only a small handful allow you to enable all of the options at once. If you want to give your audience maximum flexibility to attend your webinar whenever (and however) they want, make sure you choose software like eWebinar that lets you turn on all of these features at the same time for the same webinar.
- Being able to set a recurring schedule isn’t enough. You should also be able to make webinar sessions available in the attendee’s local time zone. That way, if your webinar is scheduled at 10am and 2pm, on weekdays, someone can register for it at 10am or 2pm whether they live in New York or Paris.
- On-demand webinar replays don’t always retain the interactive elements of scheduled sessions (like polls and questions) or the ability to chat. Choose software like eWebinar that still creates an interactive experience even when the viewer is watching your webinar like they would a regular video.
CRITERIA #4: Great design (Easy to use + user-friendly interface)
When we say great design, we mean two things:
- Is the software user-friendly and intuitive?
- Does it look clean, and modern?
Webinar software is notoriously complicated and hard to figure out. It also tends to look clunky and outdated, not a good look for you in front of potential students or clients. When evaluating which evergreen webinar platform to use, choose a “back office” admin that is super simple to use and a “front office” presentation you can be proud of and that reflects well on your brand.
| YOUR NEEDS | YOUR AUDIENCE'S NEEDS | EWEBINAR'S FEATURES |
|
You need software that is easy to set up, without any instruction. You need software that is super intuitive so you can jump in and out and get things done quickly. You need to be able to preview your work as you go so you can see what your audience will see. You need a product with a beautiful, modern design that can be branded to your company. You need a web-based product that is mobile-friendly, so your audience can join your webinar from any device with a click. You need your automated webinar software to work seamlessly with the other tools you use. |
Your audience needs everything to be seamless and easy. They don't want to have to figure out how anything works. They want things to look modern and fresh, like the consumer products they know and love. They don’t want to have to install anything to be able to join your webinar. They want to be able to watch a webinar from their computer, tablet, or phone. |
Simple webinar creation workflow that is 100% clear and only take minutes Intuitive UI/UX that doesn’t require you or your audience to have to think much at all Preview-as-you-go editing so you always know what the end product will be Beautiful, modern design you can feel proud of and customize to your brand Web-based product with no software to download Mobile-optimized experience for attendees Integrates with the tools you use, directly or via Zapier, so your overall workflow is unified |
How to choose a user-friendly, well-designed product
Here are two things you can do to evaluate the design and usability of any evergreen webinar system you are considering:
- Sign up for a trial and see how long it takes you to create an evergreen webinar, without any instruction. Does it take minutes? Do you get stuck? How many times do you have to click? Could you easily remember where everything was? It shouldn’t take you longer than 10 minutes to complete a basic setup or require you to click more than 10x to see all your options.
- Attend an evergreen webinar hosted using the software. Was the experience one-sided and boring? Or engaging and interactive? Could you easily get your questions answered? Was it an experience you’d be proud to have represent you and your brand? (Attend our 20-min demo if you want to experience eWebinar as an attendee.)
Other criteria to consider for automated webinar software + questions to ask
While the 4 key criteria we’ve discussed are by far the most important to consider when choosing evergreen webinar software, there are a few other features you should make sure meet your needs. Here are the ones we think you should look at along with questions to ask yourself:
Analytics
- What kind of analytics, metrics, and reporting do they support?
- Are you able to track your conversion rate?
- Are the analytics easy to interpret and understand?
- Can you actually use the data to make your webinar better?
Integrations
- Do they integrate with the products you use, like ActiveCampaign or HubSpot?
- Does the integration actually get you the end result you need?
Templates & resources
- What kinds of webinar templates do they provide for course creators and coaches?
- What are the templates made up of? Just a registration page? Or is it an entire webinar experience?
- Do they offer special resources and tutorials for course creators and coaches?
Registration pages & widgets
- Do the webinar registration pages meet your needs?
- How easy are the registration pages to customize? Can you preview your work?
- Can you customize the fields in the registration forms?
- If you would rather use a custom webinar landing page, do they support that integration?
- What webinar marketing widgets do they offer to drive sign ups from your website, blog, or landing page?
Email notifications
- Do they offer registration confirmation, reminder, and follow-up emails?
- What about SMS notifications? (eWebinar integrates with Twilio.)
- Have they been pre-written for you or do you always have to start from scratch?
- How easy are they to customize with merge fields?
Regular product improvements
- What recent improvements have been made to the product?
- Is there evidence they are regularly making improvements? Or has their product stopped evolving?
Customer support
- What kind of customer support do they offer?
- How easy is it to get in touch with someone?
- How quickly do you hear back?
Testimonials and case studies
Don't take our word for it, hear what our customers have to say about the benefits of evergreen webinars in their own words:
Read The Receptionist case study →
Read Jon Schumacher case study →
Note: Popular use cases for eWebinar include product demos and onboarding/training for SaaS companies.
Would you like to take eWebinar for a spin?
Sign up here for a free trial. Or join our 20-minute demo on demand; we’ll answer your questions, show you what eWebinar can do, and demonstrate the best ways to use it.
2. EasyWebinar
EasyWebinar is a popular option for evergreen webinars.
- EasyWebinar offers a 14-day free trial with plans starting at $78/month
- Visit easywebinar.com to learn more about their webinar features and pricing plans
- Read EasyWebinar reviews on Capterra
Schedule: EasyWebinar offers a recurring schedule (with webinar sessions in the local time zones of attendees), instant replays, and in-time registrations.
Chat: Though they do not offer live chat, you can respond to questions from attendees by email.
Interactions: They have two interaction pop-ups (polls and offers) which you can schedule to appear at specific times in your webinar.
3. Demio
Demio started as a live-only webinar platform and later added webinar automation capabilities.
- Demio offers a 14-day free trial with plans that include automation starting at $99/month
- Visit demio.com to learn more about their webinar features and pricing plans
- Read Demio reviews on Capterra
Schedule & Chat: There are two basic approaches you can take for scheduling and communication in Demio, which are mutually exclusive:
- You can set your webinar on a recurring schedule which will allow you to chat live with attendees (as long as you join each session to do it)
- You can make it available on demand and respond to attendee questions post webinar by email
PRO TIP: Since the purpose of evergreen content like a sales webinar is to sell 24/7, we recommend the second approach. You will not be able to chat live with attendees while they watch your evergreen webinar content, but you won’t miss questions from them either, which from a sales perspective is probably more important.
Interactions: Demio offers a poll, handout, and CTA, which you can pre-program to appear at specific times during your webinar.
4. WebinarGeek
WebinarGeek’s software supports live, automated, and on-demand webinars — but isn't a dedicated evergreen platform.
- WebinarGeek offers a 14-day free trial with plans that include automation starting at $67/month
- Visit webinargeek.com to learn more about their webinar features and pricing plans
- Read WebinarGeek reviews on Capterra
Schedule: When scheduling an evergreen webinar in WebinarGeek, you can either set it on a recurring schedule or offer it as an on-demand webinar replay.
PRO TIP: In the context of an evergreen sales webinar, we suggest you use on-demand replays instead of a recurring schedule for two reasons:
- In WebinarGeek, you can not offer the times of scheduled sessions in the attendee’s local time zone, which means the times you choose may not be convenient for everyone.
- Faced with the choice, in our experience, it’s better to let webinar registrants join your webinar room on demand at a peak moment of interest.
Chat: You can either enable live chat or accept questions from attendees and have them forwarded to your email.
PRO TIP: Of the two options, we suggest you choose the latter, since you won’t always be available to chat live with attendees, especially if you decide to make your webinar available on demand. Though this means giving up the opportunity to chat live, you will not risk missing inquiries.
Interactions: WebinarGeek has quizzes, info boxes, CTAs, and polls, which can be preset to appear at different times during your webinar.
5. EverWebinar
EverWebinar from Genesis Digital is the automated counterpart to its sister live webinar software, WebinarJam.
- EverWebinar offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with monthly plans starting at $99/month
- Visit everwebinar.com to learn more about their webinar features and pricing plans
- Read EverWebinar reviews on Capterra
Schedule: EverWebinar offers a recurring schedule that can show session times in the local time zone of registrants, on-demand webinar replays, and just-in-time webinars.
Chat: They do not offer live chat. However, attendees can submit questions by email from on-demand webinar replays.
Interactions: EverWebinar offers surveys, special offers, polls, stickies, handouts, and an announcement banner, which can be preset to appear at different times.
Note: Though we have listed what we believe to be your 5 best options for an evergreen webinar system, others to consider are StealthSeminar, WebinarNinja, ClickMeeting, GoToWebinar, and LiveStorm. Zoom evergreen webinars are not really a thing, as Zoom only lets you host cloud recordings of livestreams and live webinars as gated videos.
Conclusion
We hope this article has been useful in helping you decide which evergreen webinar platform is best for your product demos, onboarding webinars, and training workshops.
Whether you choose eWebinar or decide to go with something else, we are excited for you to experience what it’s like to deploy high-touch onboarding and training 24/7 on autopilot through the power of evergreen webinars.
Not only will you be able to scale onboarding, you’ll also get back a ton of time which you can spend doing other things — such as creating new content for your help center or offering 1-on-1 support to the customers who actually need it.
Once you have that “aha” moment with automated webinars, you’ll never go back!
Sign up here to try eWebinar for free and join the thousands who use it — including SaaS companies like BombBomb, Later, Travefy, Dotloop, and many more!
It’s so easy to get started.
Begin your 14-day free trial today!
