Over the past few months, we’ve sent our Secret Squirrel undercover, signing him up for several webinars to learn how other people run them.

As you probably know, a successful webinar is about more than the session itself. You also need to get the invite, the reminders, the social media promotion, and the follow-up right.

So, if you’re running webinars in 2026, you’re in the right place. Over the next few minutes, you’re going to learn 10 things you can easily do that’ll help you get more people to sign up and show up.

#1. Send multiple reminders

You can’t rely on people remembering to attend your webinar. Instead, you need to remind them about the benefits of showing up.

To maximise the show-up rate, the organisers of all the webinars our squirrel attended sent multiple reminders. For example, one webinar sent five reminders, including three on the day of the session; the first three hours before it was due to start, the second 15 minutes before and the third a minute after it started.

Did it feel too much? Possibly, but 700 people attended, so who are we to argue?

#2. Show people in the waiting room they’re in the right place

We’ve used Zoom’s waiting room function for our most recent Yardstick webinars, and we recommend our clients do the same. It means the presenters can do their pre-webinar checks without the fear of being overheard.

Several of the webinars we attended did the same thing, and like us, they put up a simple slide telling guests who’d arrived early that they were in the right place and the webinar would start in a few minutes.

#3. If you’re not using a waiting room, chat with early arrivals

On one of the webinars we attended, the host chatted with people who’d shown up early. This was a lovely touch, giving the host a chance to learn more about the attendees and for them to chat with someone they wouldn’t usually have the opportunity to.

#4. Make yourself accessible

As we said, 700 people attended one of the webinars we signed up for yet, on one of the early slides, the host gave out his “cell number” (he was American) and invited attendees to contact him directly. I thought this was another lovely touch and certainly made him feel accessible.

#5. Don’t overfill your slides

Most presenters had very simple slides, including a few key words which they talked around. In contrast, one host included their entire script, which they proceeded to read out so quickly that it was hard to keep up.

Our squirrel found that the less the presenter relied on their slides, the better the webinar. If you want more on this, click here to read the thoughts of Andy Bounds in one of his recent Tuesday Tips emails. You can also rewatch our webinar with Andy here.

#6. Your webinars can be longer than you think

Some advisers/planners believe that to get people to sign up, your webinar shouldn’t last longer than 20-30 minutes. I’ve even heard one adviser suggest that they market a 20-minute session, despite knowing it would last 40 minutes!

However, we’ve always believed that if your webinar is valuable, people will sign up (and stay to the end) even if the session is relatively long.

This was backed up by our experiences; all the webinars lasted at least an hour, while the longest, which had 700 people attending at the peak, was 90 minutes long.

#7. Allow questions

A couple of the webinars we attended didn’t allow guests to ask questions. This left us feeling that the presenter was more interested in saying what they wanted to, and less in the needs of their guests.

Interestingly, the more high-profile the presenter, the less interested they seemed to be in answering their audience’s questions.

#8. Avoid long introductions

One presenter’s introduction lasted 10 minutes, and another was a similar length. Sure, the presenter needs to establish their expertise, but this felt like overkill, and we could imagine some people screaming “get on with it!” at the screen.

#9. Send a recording, but think carefully about how you do it

All the webinar organisers followed up by sending the recording, but they all did it slightly differently.

After one of the webinars, guests only received the recording if they stayed to the end. We can see why they did that, but it triggered messages from people who couldn’t stay to the end, asking if they could have the recording. These messages were distracting for everyone else.

Two of the hosts sent the recording but gave a limited window of around 72 hours to watch it back. This was probably to encourage people to sign up for the product/course that was being promoted, but it felt mean.

Here at Yardstick, we want as many people as possible to benefit from our sessions, so we send the full recording to everyone who registers and make all our webinar recordings available on our website.

#10. You don’t have to be a perfect presenter

Every webinar presenter had their fair share of “ums”, “ahs”, “ers”, and filler words.

Did it detract from our experience? Absolutely not.

In contrast, it should give everyone considering running webinars in 2026 confidence that they don’t need to be word-perfect to add value to their audience. However, if you do want to improve your public speaking skills, click here to rewatch our webinar with Ed Darling.

Send out your own Secret Squirrel

If 2026 is the year you start (or keep) running webinars, consider doing what we did by signing up (and showing up) for other people’s webinars.

They might be run by your peers. They might have nothing to do with financial services.

It doesn’t matter.

What does is that you learn and improve.

So, pick five webinars and go in with a simple “scorecard”. Pay attention to what they get right and wrong for each stage of the process:

• The promotion (what made you notice it?)
• Their registration page (did it answer your questions?)
• The sign-up process (smooth or clunky?)
• The reminders (timing, tone, subject lines)
• The webinar itself (energy, structure, pacing)
• Their slides/presentation (clear, cluttered, too long?)
• The Q&A (managed well or chaos?)
• The follow-up (useful, pushy, non-existent?)
• The CTA (what did they ask you to do next?)
• The replay (easy to access, buried, or not sent at all?)

Then steal everything they’re doing better than you and incorporate it into your own process. The quickest way to run better webinars is by watching what works and what other people do.

Here to help

If you like the idea of running webinars, but you’re not sure where to start, we’re here to help. In fact, from coming up with the idea to sending out the final recording, we can do everything necessary to run a successful webinar – apart from presenting!

If you’d like to learn more about how we can support you, email abi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300.