In 2019, webinar platform ON24 handled 86,802 webinars, roughly equating to an average of 7,200 webinars a month. But in April 2020 alone, they hosted 19,294 webinars—roughly more than 640 webinars a day. Remote work has meant more watching and some new rules.

This is the first in a series of articles on SIPA member companies that are dealing with some part of the frontlines of the pandemic. Today, it's Coleman Publishing,   Joseph Coleman is very proud of the job Coleman Publishing is doing with their daily online show—Coleman Report Live—serving SBA lenders, bankers and small business financing experts. And he should be. It's a hit. Hundreds of small-business lenders—and, he's told, the #2 at SBA—and more are tuning in every day to hear the latest news about the trillions of dollars that the government has earmarked for loans.   "For the most part, people are so thirsty for any spot of normalcy," Coleman told me at the end of last week. "We start at 1 pm Eastern time every day, no matter what. I think it's comforting for people to log in for 30 minutes. It's a ritual now." And it's leading to lots of goodwill and record revenue for Coleman webinars. "We cater to a not-really-talked-about segmen ...

According to GoToWebinar's benchmark report last year, 36% of registrations occur between 8-10 am. So if you're sending out a marketing email, early might be best. They also note that 59% of registrations occur less than a week before the webinar. The problem is that we get nervous when not that many people are signed up.

On a recent webinar titled Podcasting for Publishers: How Podcasts Can Deliver Qualified Leads and Bottom-Line Revenue for Minimal Investment, Lynn Freer, president of Spidell Publishing, told about running into a tax accountant listener at one of her events. He kidded her about his wife wondering who that woman with the great voice is who he's conversing with every Sunday morning.

"When a sponsor does a webinar, we'll repurpose that information in multiple ways. There's live, then we'll post the video, then take out excerpts, breaking it down into 7-minute chunks. We can do repurposing in multiple platforms. There are also nice tools out now to get a transcript off voice recognition... We do analytics on who attends. What topics did they go to? How long did they sit in? Do they leave early? Some might bail when it's not of interest."

An industry survey from BrightTALK of B2B decision-makers just confirmed that webinars still rule in the B2B space. Here is some analysis from the numbers in the survey:

Two years ago, the Book Industry Study Group, with all of its 138 members, had to make some money. So Brian O'Leary, BISG executive director, decided to do webinars—more specifically sponsored webinars. 33 of them. In one year. All sponsored.

According to ON24's Webinar Benchmarks Report, the average webinar in 2018 was 58 minutes long—two minutes longer than in 2017. But with all the multitasking that takes place today, engagement and interactivity are crucial.

Although he began by saying that the new California Consumer Privacy Act is an "extraordinarily complicated and poorly written statute," Chris Mohr, SIIA's VP for intellectual property and general counsel, wants to make one thing clear.

Restate the key value proposition of your webinar in reminders, writes Ken Molay on The Webinar Blog. Never send reminder emails that just say, "Your webinar is tomorrow." Add a sentence that reinforces why they were interested in the first place: "'Just a reminder that tomorrow is your chance to learn ways to improve the efficiency of your operations.'"