How SafetyWing built a sales system using webinars

Publish Date

Feb 1, 2022

What does the company do?

Remote Health by SafetyWing is the first global health insurance built for remote teams. A distributed company can have their entire team on one insurance plan, no matter where in the world they live or travel to. Remote Health is the second product from SafetyWing – the company on a mission to build a global social safety net.

👨‍👨‍👦‍👦 Target Audiences

Remote Companies (B2B) and teams who are distributed around the world (decision makers are Startup founders, HR leaders, Heads of Ops, etc).

📝 Briefly describe the growth channel

How to use webinars to generate leads

After the pandemic hit and lockdowns started, SafetyWing began hosting webinars to help remote companies and teams with the transition. Lona and her team wanted to create something that genuinely helped their target audience deal with difficult topics that don’t have an easy solution. Most of the companies weren’t “remote-first” pre-pandemic, and were figuring things out as they went.

Each webinar brings together a panel of experts to share firsthand knowledge that helps remote teams be healthy, happy and productive. Think topics like the best benefits to offer a remote team, how to build a great remote culture, how to attract the best talent and more.

Promotion from SafetyWing’s January 2022 Webinar

Lona hosts 1 webinar a month with 2-3 experts on a panel who she interviews. The panel consists of a 30 minute question session from Lona, followed by 30 minutes of live questions from attendees. At the beginning of each event, Lona gives an intro on herself and a 1-2 minute pitch on SafetyWing and the product with a CTA on how to book a call. In addition, every communication that is sent out from registration to sending the recordings after the event has the CTA to book a call.

How did they get people to know about the webinars?

Experimenting with SafetyWing’s existing email list

SafetyWing had an existing email list from current and past customers, although not entirely within the same market.

Promoting to other mailing lists from vendors to amplify reach

Spam rates will be inevitably higher here. The team took precautions like setting up a new domain, and carefully selecting the most relevant lists.

Utilize partners that are on the panel.

Ask them and their company accounts to share the event.

Kindly remind them each week by letting them know how many signups they got using UTM links

Give them EVERYTHING they need to share (graphics, link, text, etc.)

Put resources behind boosting your events on relevant social media channels

Lona uses LinkedIn and Taboola

😍 Why is this a good growth channel?

Using this webinar method grabs someone’s attention by solving their problem. So when they hear about your product, they’ll already have this in mind. As long as you choose the correct target market, those who are interested in your webinar will also be interested in your product.

This webinar model works great for B2B products where you need to capture the attention of high level decision makers like founders and executives.

🤔 Downsides to using webinars

While hosting webinars themselves have little downside (they don’t cost anything to produce), there are downsides from tactics around promoting webinars. Buying email lists can be risky if they aren’t relevant. Similarly, you have to get high quality guests in order for them to work.

Running ads might be a good way to get more signups, but it lowers the authenticity of the event and runs a risk of losing money and hurting the brand.

Like any growth or marketing channel, you want to stay clear of spamming people. If you are worried about this, send emails from a different domain to protect your email reputation.

📈 How has it gone so far for SafetyWing?

Leads coming in from webinars have accounted for roughly half of all sales in 2021 for SafetyWing’s Remote Health product, resulting in millions of dollars in revenue.

🏗 How to build your own webinar system

Identify your target audience

Brainstorm problems that group has, preferably that are difficult to solve with a simple article

Create a list of ideal guests who can speak about how to solve that problem, and would benefit from appearing on your panel

Setup a landing page to promote your events. Lona used Drift

Setup your webinar using a tool like Go-To Webinar

Create an email flow (and make sure you have a way for them to book a call with you easily)

Reach out to your ideal guest list

Focus on people with a large following so they can share the event and amplify the reach.

Reach out from someone in the company with a high title like “Founder” or an executive title. Don’t outsource this!!

Once you have guests finalized (2-3 per event), start making marketing materials to promote it

Email, graphics for social media, copy text for partners to post, etc.

Promote the webinar ahead of time any way you can

Owned and purchased email lists

Sharing on social media

Boost events on social media

Post in relevant groups and communities

As your panelists to share!!

At every point of contact with attendees (announcements, event pages, email flows, etc.), make sure to also include a link to book a call with you

The day of the webinar...

Make sure everything is working and tested

Remind people a couple hours ahead of time that it’s about to start

Begin with an intro on yourself (or the host), the company and product so they understand who you are. This is your chance to make a product pitch, but make it quick! That’s not what they came for.

After the webinar...

Send a follow up email with the recording (and of course a CTA to book a call)

Send a thank you email to your panelists with the recording in case they want to share that as well

Ask your panelists if they know other experts who may want to speak

📈 How to scale a webinar system?

Fortunately, webinars are self-scaling in many ways. Much like a blog or podcast, once you have held successful events and start to have more people joining, it will be easier to get larger guests to access larger audiences.

Similarly, once you know the program is working, you can put more money into promoting the events. Start experimenting with things like sponsoring newsletters and having industry influencers mention the events.

Ideally you get so good at the events that people start sharing them organically.

💡 Advice for someone trying to build something similar?

Don’t get too crazy about system or tracking early on. You can improve it as you scale. To start, just make sure you can attribute sales to coming from webinar leads

Try your hardest to get fantastic guests. Then put a lot of energy into having them promote the events. This will make or break the growth channel

You can get email addresses of potential guests through using LinkedIn and tools like AmpleMarket
In your email pitch to guests, make sure they know it will be VERY easy for them and require little to no preparation

This is a lead generation channel, so make sure you have the appropriate systems to convert those leads to sales after the events

If you are using bought email lists, send outbound emails from a new domain so that your own domain reputation doesn’t get damaged by possible spam reports

Send all the communication from the main organizers email so people feel important