# Webinar Benchmarks

Use these as planning assumptions, not promises. Always tag numbers derived from these as 🟡 (benchmark) vs. 🟢 (the user's measured data). Ranges vary widely by industry, audience temperature, and list quality.

## Table of Contents
- [Funnel Stage Benchmarks](#funnel-stage-benchmarks)
- [By Audience Temperature](#by-audience-temperature)
- [Show-Up Rate Factors](#show-up-rate-factors)
- [Conversion Benchmarks](#conversion-benchmarks)

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## Funnel Stage Benchmarks

| Stage | Typical Range | Notes |
|-------|---------------|-------|
| Landing page registration CVR | 20-50% | Higher for warm/owned traffic, lower for cold/paid |
| Registration → live attendance | 25-45% | The most variable and most neglected stage |
| Registration → eventual viewing (incl. on-demand) | 50-65% | Counts recording watchers |
| Live attendee average watch time | 50-70% of runtime | Drop-off accelerates after ~30-40 min |
| Attendee → offer click/CTA | 15-30% | Depends heavily on the live-to-close |
| Attendee → SQO/opportunity (B2B) | 5-15% | For sales-led motions |
| Attendee → trial/signup (PLG) | 10-25% | For self-serve motions |

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## By Audience Temperature

| Audience | Reg CVR | Show-Up | Convert | Implication |
|----------|---------|---------|---------|-------------|
| Existing customers | 30-50% | 40-60% | High | Best for expansion/adoption webinars |
| Warm pipeline / engaged leads | 25-45% | 35-50% | Medium-high | Best for pipeline acceleration |
| Owned cold list | 15-30% | 25-40% | Medium | Needs strong takeaway + show-up sequence |
| Paid / net-new cold | 10-25% | 20-35% | Lower | Volume play; expect heavier follow-up reliance |

The colder the audience, the more the value must be obvious up front and the more the follow-up carries the conversion.

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## Show-Up Rate Factors

What moves registration → live attendance, roughly in order of impact:

1. **One-click calendar add** in the confirmation — large lift.
2. **The 1-hour and "we're live" reminders** — the biggest single-email contributors.
3. **A live-only incentive** (Q&A, bonus, build-along) — gives a reason not to "watch later."
4. **Short gap between registration and event** — the longer the wait, the more forget; same-week registrants show up at higher rates.
5. **Time of day / day of week** — mid-week, mid-morning in the audience's primary timezone tends to perform; always confirm against your own data.

A webinar with a single reminder email typically sees show-up in the low 20s%; a full sequence with a calendar add and live incentive can push it to 40%+.

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## Conversion Benchmarks

"Good" depends entirely on the goal. Pick the metric that matches the business objective and ignore vanity:

- **Lead-gen webinar:** cost per qualified registration and registration→SQO rate matter more than raw registration count.
- **Pipeline acceleration:** influenced/accelerated opportunity value, not attendance.
- **Adoption/retention:** feature adoption lift or churn reduction among attendees.
- **Brand/authority:** attendance quality, engagement, and downstream brand lift — accept that direct conversion will be lower and that's fine if it's the goal.

Always reconcile the webinar back to revenue or its true objective. 800 registrations and zero pipeline is not a success.
