Why don't webinar registrants turn up? (And what to do)

The problem every webinar host knows You spend weeks on the slides. The ads go out. Three hundred people register and you feel brilliant. Then the room opens and you're presenting to a fraction of them, wondering if the link was broken.

One coach summed it up in a community post: "Today I had another no-show on a consult call. That makes five out of seven no-shows on my booked consult" (Stacey Boehman). Same story, different event. Across the coaches and consultants I speak to, well under half of registrants usually turn up live.

The usual response is to blame the time slot, the tech or yourself. Writer Jennie Nash described it perfectly after an event nobody attended: "Did I miss something? Did I get the time wrong?" (Jennie Nash). Usually, you didn't.

Why registrants don't turn up

Registering is easy. Turning up is a commitment. Clicking a button takes three seconds. Blocking out an hour and a half on a Tuesday evening, with the kids' tea to sort, is a different decision. Plenty of people register with good intentions and then life happens.

Your reminders aren't being read Most reminder routines look like the one another coach described: "I send three reminder emails. I send them 48 hours, 24 hours, one hour." Sensible. But if those emails land in a promotions tab next to 40 others, the reminder never really arrives. More of them won't fix that.

Some of them were never going to watch This is the one most people miss. In every list of registrants, some people already know they want to work with you. They don't need 90 minutes of teaching. They need a conversation. Asking them to sit through the webinar first is asking them to wait for something they've already decided.

Some of them were never a fit And a few registered for the freebie. That's fine. You don't need to win them all.

The real problem: one journey for three types of people Most webinar funnels send everyone down the same route. Register, get reminders, watch, get the replay, get the offer. That route was designed around what the business wants people to do, not around what each person actually needs.

Registration is a signal, not a commitment. It tells you someone is interested. It doesn't tell you how ready they are.

What one client did instead Ben Knight from The Trade Tribe wanted more people at his webinars. When we looked at his registrants, some were already ready to buy, and they were never going to sit through 90 minutes. They didn't need a webinar. They needed a conversation.

So we used WhatsApp to offer those people a call before the webinar even happened. Webinar attendance went up 60% and sales calls booked doubled, from roughly the same number of registrations and no extra ad spend. That's one client's result, not a promise for yours, but the principle travels: give each person the next step they need.

What to do with your registrants 1. Ask one question at registration. On WhatsApp, straight after they sign up: what made you register? The answer tells you who's curious, who's stuck and who's ready. 2. Offer ready buyers a conversation now. Don't make them wait for the webinar. A short call or a WhatsApp chat before the event often converts better than the pitch at the end. 3. Send reminders where they're read. In my experience, people open WhatsApp messages far more readily than marketing emails. Keep reminders short, useful and personal, and make sure they've opted in. The cost per reminder is pennies.

1. Follow up no-shows as people, not as a list. "Sorry we missed you, what got in the way?" starts a conversation. "Here's the replay" usually doesn't. 5. Measure the right thing. Attendance matters less than sales calls booked and sales made. Track those from registration, not from attendance.

Speed matters here too. The sooner someone hears from you after registering, the warmer they are. I've written about how fast you should reply to a new lead and why WhatsApp vs email for lead follow-up isn't really a contest for this job. And if you run live events as well as webinars, what 98% of a room scanning a QR code taught me about event follow-up shows the same principle in a room.

What this won't fix If your offer doesn't sell to the people who do turn up, better follow-up won't change that. And if your registrants come from cold, untargeted ads, no message sequence will make them a fit. Fix the offer and the audience first.