Types of Notifications

Each webinar can have up to 10 notifications before and 10 notifications after. There are four kinds of notifications:

• Welcome message: included by default and sent immediately once the visitor registers (so they can receive a copy of the live room link)
• Pre-webinar reminders: to be used for additional information or just as a reminder. These can be sent any time before the webinar begins.
• Last-minute reminder: also included by default, but sent 15 minutes before the start of the webinar.
• Post-webinar message: used as a follow-up after the webinar ends, but timed to the webinar start time.

Add an Email

Let’s create a new post-webinar message by clicking “Add Email” (which can be seen below)

Edit Email

A window will appear (shown below) that allows you to edit the new email notification. The first thing available is the email timing. This is always timed to the scheduled webinar start time (set two steps earlier in the Schedules settings).

NOTE: If someone registers for your webinar after a notification is set to be sent out, they will not receive that email. For example, if I set an email to be sent 24 hours before the webinar and someone registers 3 hours before, they will not receive that email.

Filter Recipients

Next, in a post-webinar email (shown below), you can filter the recipients to:

• All registrants
• Those who did or did not attend
• Those who attended and did or did not order your product
• Those who attended but left before a timeframe you specify
• Those who attended, stayed to a timeframe you specify, and did not purchase

If you choose to send only to those who did or did not order your product, make sure you have installed the offer tracking codes on your product’s thank you page. Otherwise purchases will not be tracked to this system.

Shortcodes

Listed in the sidebar are what we call “Shortcodes” (shown below). These codes are contained in {curly_brackets} and can be placed wherever you want in the email.

Each code is automatically replaced with the relevant information when the email is sent. So, for example, “{first_name}” might become “John”. Available for use are:

• {TITLE} – The title of your webinar.
• {DESCRIPTION} – The description for your webinar.
• {PRESENTER} – A list of you and anyone else who may be presenters for the webinar.
• {FIRST_NAME} – The first name of the email recipient (the registrant’s first name)
• {LAST_NAME} – The last name of the email recipient (the registrant’s last name)
• {ATTENDEE_EMAIL} – The email address for the recipient of the email.
• {DATE} – The date of the upcoming webinar (not the current date).
• {TIME} – The time of the upcoming session (not the current time).
• {LIVE_LINK} – The unique live room URL for this particular registrant to attend the webinar.
• {PASSWORD} – The password to enter the room (if you have added password protection to your webinar)

In order to work, the shortcodes must not be altered in any way.

Adding a Link

If you wish to create a link with the {LIVE_LINK} shortcode, first highlight the text you want to turn into a link (1 below), then click the hyperlink icon (2 below).

In the window that pops up, you will find the text you highlighted (1 below). Choose <other> for your protocol (2 below) and enter in the shortcode {LIVE_LINK} (3 below). Click OK and your link is added!

Test Email

Finally, at the bottom of the window, you can enter in an email address to test the email (shown below).

Note: Keep in mind that shortcodes do not work in test emails. If you send yourself a test email, the shortcodes will not be replaced by the right information. This is because there needs to be registrant data for a given shortcode to use, and you are only entering your email address.

If you want to see the full system in working order, you will need to register for your webinar. We recommend registering through your test links so that your registration does not interfere with your live analytics.

WebinarJam and EverWebinar allow you to configure pre/post webinar email reminders so your registrants don’t miss your events.

By default, those reminders will be sent out using the webinar host’s first name, last name and email address. That is what’s going to be displayed as the emails’ SENT FROM and REPLY TO values. You can personalize those values by editing the webinar host’s configuration. See screenshot below:

In the example above, all email reminders will be sent out as Joe Smith <[email protected]>.

IMPORTANT: there’s one exception to this rule! If the webinar host is configured under a free email address (such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc), the system will replace the free email address for our generic [email protected]. For example: if the webinar host is configured as Joe Smith <[email protected]>, the email reminders will be sent out as Joe Smith <[email protected]>.

You see, in our experience, most mass-emails sent from a free email domain land in the spam folder. Obviously, that’s not a desirable outcome so we replace it for our own generic email address in order to improve deliverability. Needless to say, the absolute best course of action is to configure your webinar host under a non-free email address!

Your first step here is to choose a webinar, session, and event before clicking Go (shown below).

A list of registrants will become available for you to view (shown below). You can find information on their:

• First name
• Last name
• Phone number
• Email
• IP Address
• Webinar they registered for (as well as session, event, and registration date)
• Whether they attended live (and the date for that)
• When they entered the room and how long they stayed
• Whether they purchased from the live room and how much you earned from them
• The same stats for the Replay Room
• Their GDPR Status

If you click to edit a registrant, a window will pop allowing you to change the name, email, and phone number of the registrant (shown below).

You can filter the list through three criteria. The first is Live Room Behavior (shown below). You can show those who did or did not attend the live session, or specify a time frame for their attendance.

Next, you can show those who did or did not attend the Replay, or specify a time frame for their attendance (shown below).

Finally (shown below), you can filter by purchase behavior (whether they purchased any products or not).

Once you have filtered your list down to what you want, click “Export” in the upper corner (shown below) to save the list as a csv file.

A window will pop up with a few options:

• Export the currently selected filters (this will export the list of registrants you were just viewing)
• Export all registrants (you will select a webinar and all registrants to that webinar will be exported)
• Export all attendees (you select a webinar to export all attendees to that webinar)
• Export all buyers (you select the webinar and all attendees, live or replay, who purchased will be exported)

Both WebinarJam and EverWebinar allow you to send the webinar email reminders to your registrants via any of your integrated autoresponder platforms. The benefit is that you have far more control over the email branding, styling and scheduling that if you simply use our built-in notification system.

Setting it all up

At the configuration wizard, step “Notifications”, choose “Your own autoresponder”. Note that this option will only be available if you have, at least, one autoresponder already integrated. Furthermore, you will see below the list of autoresponder you’ve integrated so far.

• • NOTE: Due to the limitations in their APIs, autoresponders Maropost and Constant Contact are not supported for this feature.

The next step is to hover your mouse over your autoresponder and select “Custom Fields”.

That will pop the actual Custom Field configuration window:

In this window, you will need to bind each parameter used by WebinarJam/EverWebinar to one unique Custom Field in your autoresponder platform. Via those dropdown selectors, you will need to assign a unique Custom Field to each parameter.

How do Custom Fields work?

Custom Fields are unique fields you create inside your autoresponder in order to assign custom values to your contacts. Every autoresponder comes, by default, with the usual suspects: first name, email address, phone number, etc. However, sometimes you might need something outside that standard list, such as “shoe size”, and that’s what you’d create Custom Fields for.

Well, you’re going to need a few of those Custom Fields created inside your autoresponder before you can bind them to the WJ/EW parameters are explained above.

More specifically, WJ/EW needs you to create 6 Custom Fields:

• Live_Room_Link
• Replay_Room_Link
• Webinar_Date
• Webinar_Time
• User_Timezone (mostly for EverWebinar, if configured as “User’s own time zone“)
• Room_Password (only required if the webinar room is password protected)

If you’re running multiple webinars simultaneously, you might want to create a different set of Custom Fields for each webinar:

• Live_Room_Link_1
• Live_Room_Link_2
• Replay_Room_Link_1
• Replay_Room_Link_2
• Etc, you get the idea.

If you only run one webinar at a time, you don’t need to create multiple sets for each webinar. Instead, if one of your repeat users re-subscribe to another webinar, the Custom Fields values will simply be overwritten with the information from the newest webinar.

• NOTE: when you create the Custom Fields in your autoresponder of choice, make sure they’re created as plain TEXT input fields. Don’t give them any special format such as dropdown, check boxes, or date, or anything like that. Just plain text input fields 🙂

Anyway, now that you have created your Custom Fields inside your autoresponder account, you may now bind each WJ/EW parameter to each specific Custom Field. See screenshot below:

That’s it! Your webinar parameters and your autoresponder Custom Fields are now linked!

IMPORTANT NOTE: It’s crucial that, once you have linked the webinar parameters to your Custom Fields, you keep those Custom Fields operational at all times. That means that if you delete a Custom Field inside your autoresponder, or you change its name, or you make any other modification, you must go back to the webinar configuration wizard and update the integration. Otherwise, the link will be broken and the whole thing will fall apart.

As your users register for the webinars, WJ/EW will pass the corresponding information to their user profile inside your autoresponder. Here’s how those Custom Fields would look like in Kartra:

Mailing the webinar links to your users

The first thing is to make sure that your users are indeed passed to your autoresponder upon registering to your webinar.

In order to do that, at the “Integrations” tab of the configuration wizard, set up a simple automation rule based on webinar registration. For example: IF they register to the webinar, THEN subscribe them to my mailing list.

See screenshot below:

Now that your registrants are passed to your autoresponder and they’re fed with all the necessary Custom Fields, you can finally send them email notifications related to your webinar straight from your autoresponder.

Here below is how it’d look like in Kartra, but every autoresponder would be similar:

Your autoresponder will dynamically switch each tag code for the appropriate value, and your users will have all the information they need.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that, since you’re now sending all email reminders through your own autoresponder, there’s no need to configure any email notification inside the WJ/EW configuration wizard.

Design your own webinar funnel!

A cool byproduct of using your autoresponder to send the webinar links to your users via Custom Fields is that you will be free to design and code your own custom webinar funnel from start to end:

• Custom registration page
• Custom registration form
• Custom thank you page (finally!)
• Custom email notifications
• Etc

Now, you don’t need to use WJ/EW’s default registration forms or Thank You pages anymore! Instead, if you have the design and technical chops, you can customize the entire registration funnel, add them to your autoresponder of choice, and simply send them their unique links to the webinar room via your own autoresponder.

Effectively, this allows you to bypass pretty much the entire WJ/EW default setup except, obviously, the actual live/replay rooms. For anything else… well, the world is your (and your web designer’s) oyster!

WebinarJam and EverWebinar allow you to, instead of using our built-in system, plugin a 3rd party SMTP provider to send out your pre/post webinar email reminders.

Note that, in order to be able to track analytics such as opens, clicks, bounces, etc, we only support advanced API-based connections with the major service providers, not old school, manual, TCP port-based connections.

Establishing the connection

The first thing you need to do is to establish the connection between WebinarJam/EverWebinar and your SMTP provider. Open your profile window, a navigate to the Integrations -> SMTP Integrations tab. There, you will be able to select your provider and enter the corresponding parameters. See screenshot below:

Each provider asks for different parameters, but usually it is your API Key, Sender Email and, for some providers, your Domain Name. All those parameters must be obtained from within your provider’s console, so make sure to input them exactly as provided by them.

Changing your webinar configuration

Once your integration is completed, now you need to configure your webinars to re-route the outgoing email notifications to your SMTP instead of our internal mailing system. You can find that option at the Notifications -> Your Email Gateway section. Once there, switch from “Our in-house mailing system” to “Your own SMTP gateway”. See screenshot below:

You will need to make this switch for every webinar you configure in the system.

The Sent-From and Replay-To values

Every email you send through your own SMTP will be delivered from the “Sender Email” address you configured a few step above, and therefore that’s the address that will be displayed as the Sent-From and Replay-To headers of your email notifications.

As far as the sender’s name goes, the system will pick up whatever name you’ve configured as the webinar host. See screenshot below:

Run tests!

Please note that WebinarJam/EverWebinar does not check the status of your SMTP account or the validity of the API credentials you’ve provided.

It’s your responsibility to keep your SMTP account in good standing and to make sure your API key is correct. Our platform will simply send an outbound API instruction to whatever provider you’ve configured, using whatever API credentials you’ve provided, and ask them to deliver the corresponding email notification at the appropriate time. At that point, if they fail to deliver it, we will not re-attempt to send it again, nor we will alert you in any way. For that reason, make sure to run a few tests to make sure your configuration is properly set up.