One of our clients reached out to us to run his webinar emails.
He's a big name in the SaaS capital space. Quick context over his business:
1 subscription-based platform
1 consulting/investment business that closes deals between $100k - $3m
Every month, he runs a webinar.
The goal is to get a SaaS founder to show up, and walk away qualified enough to become a deal. Before our writer Julia started working on the emails - she pulled the stats from the last month and noticed something odd:
unsubscribe rate = click rate
In simple terms, if 300 people clicked to register for the webinar, close to 300 people also unsubscribed.
Now that’s a big red flag for a business where one deal can be worth six or seven figures. (more on that in a minute)
So what did we do differently, that got us 26% more clicks, 44% fewer unsubs, and 14.5% more registrations?
In this edition, you’ll walk away with:
the 5 baseline elements every webinar email sequence needs, regardless of your business
why one unsubscribe on a list like this can cost $100k to $3m, and why almost nobody is tracking it
the 3 mistakes that were quietly driving his unsubscribe rate up, and exactly how we fixed each one
BONUS: the exact math you can run on your last launch sequence to see if your list is bleeding
First, the 5 elements that every good webinar sequence needs:
1/ a subject line and hook that earns the open, every single time.
Whoever opens it should walk away with something useful even if they never register. It's not about you or your webinar. It's about the reader and how this makes their life better.
2/ a clear promise.
The reader should know exactly what they'll walk away knowing or being able to do, stated plainly, before you ask them to register.
3/ a structure that builds, not repeats.
Each email should move the reader one step further, credibility, then stakes, then proof, then urgency, so the sequence actually goes somewhere instead of saying the same thing five times.
4/ a reason to trust you before you ever ask for anything.
Whether that's proof, credibility, or simply not overselling, the reader should believe you before the CTA shows up.
5/ urgency that's actually true.
A reason to act now that would hold up if the reader went and checked it themselves.
Running a good webinar sequence is the same skill no matter who's on the list. What changes is how much a single unsubscribe actually costs you.
We have two fundamentally different lists when it comes to webinar emails:
Info business: needs volume. Losing a few hundred subscribers a month barely moves the needle as long as new ones keep flowing in behind them.
Capital / investment space: needs proximity. One subscriber staying on the list can be worth $100k to $3m.
The problem is that most webinar advice is written for the first type, the info business.
There are 3 reasons the unsubscribe rate matters more for a business like his -
1/ his list doesn't refill itself.
Our clients email list is small, built by referral and reputation. Compare that to an info business, where the top of funnel just keeps feeding in new subscribers as fast as old ones leave. Here, every person who unsubscribes isn't replaced next week.
2/ one unsubscribe could be a $100k to $3m opportunity lost.
This client lends capital to SaaS founders.
Deals run $100k to $3m. Compare that to an info business, where a click is a click no matter who's behind it. Here, every subscriber is worth thousands if not millions of dollars - which is exactly why protecting the list matters as much as growing it.
3/ this list runs on trust, not urgency.
Founders on this list already know he can send them capital, not just information. The second his emails feel like a countdown timer instead of a straight conversation, they leave.
Anyway -
So Julia pulled up the last cycle stats & emails to see how it had actually been run.
Here's what she found:
Four emails, sent over four days. Two of his usual newsletters were going out those same days too, so his list was getting spammed.
Some of the links didn't lead where they promised. One said "grab the download," and it landed on a signup form instead.
The last reminder went out 30 minutes before start.
Here's how we fixed it:
We spread five emails across eight days instead of four in four and paused our usual newsletters to him that week entirely.
We made every link lead exactly where it said it would.
We moved the last reminder up to 10 minutes before start. We’ve learned this based on our running 15+ webinars for our clients so far.
Here are the results:
Anyway -
If you're running any kind of launch sequence, the click rate isn't the whole story.
Divide your clicks by your unsubscribes. If that number is under 1, you're losing more subscribers than you're gaining in engagement. If you're in the capital or investment space, this is one number worth watching closely.
/Nils