Looking for the definite answer on what time to pick for your webinar?
Look no further 🛑.
When I was still at GoToWebinar my team and I pored over more than half a million webinars¹² hosted on the platform to figure out the best time to run a webinar.
We found three time windows that stand out, regardless of where in the world you are.
The caveat: there’s no one time that fits all audiences. You’ll still have to experiment a little.
But first, let’s have a look at the data…
The Best Time To Host A Webinar
(Based On 600,891 Events)
For this analysis, we looked at two sample data sets. The first is a random set of 350,891 webinars hosted in 2016. The second is a representative set of 250,000 sessions run in 2018.Â
Between the two reports, we changed up the way we looked at the data.
In 2017 we looked primarily at registrations. The rationale: you’re looking to drive maximum awareness, so a sign-up is valuable regardless of whether that person does or does not attend.Â
Then we normalized the data for local time zone to determine the time that attracted the most registrants.Â
Here’s what we found:
When we reviewed the data based on the location of the attendee’s we found this to be a reflection of how webinars are scheduled in the US.
The majority of 11am attendees were on the west coast. The majority of the 1pm and 2pm attendees on the east coast.
Next, we built an index that looked at registrations per webinar.Â
Through that analysis, we found another good slot and an outlier.
It turned out that while few webinars are hosted at noon, the number of registrants per session is slightly higher than at 11am.Â
As for the outlier: By far the highest number of attendees per session showed for 5pm. Just after work.Â
When we looked into the types of sessions run at 5pm we found that they were often in the categories of personal finance or personal development. So if you’re a life coach or financial advisor, 5pm might be your ticket.
If your main goal is to drive a high number of registrations, this map shows the best times of days for holding webinars in the US:
The Best Time For Webinar Attendance
For the analysis of the 2018 sample we looked for the webinar start times that led to the highest attendance instead.
Globally, the times that attracted the highest percentage of total attendees were 10am and 11am.
The Best Day To Run A Webinar
This one’s easy. Both our 2016 and 2018 analysis show three strong weekdays for scheduling your webinar: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.Â
This, again, is consistent with pretty much every other report I’ve ever read on the topic.
Thursday might have a slight edge in terms of per session metrics, but either of the three days will work.
Conclusion: Middle of the Week, Middle of the Day
The conclusion is straightforward: For a B2B audience Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday between 10am and Noon local time are the best times to host a webinar.
If your audience is distributed across the US go for 10am to Noon Pacific time and you have the best chance to attract a large crowd from the east coast as well.
If you’re audience mainly consists of consumers you stand a better chance outside the typical office hours, with 5pm your most likely bet.
Wondering what else you can do, apart from picking the right time and day? Read my tips on how to increase webinar attendance rate.Â
One Last Word of Advice: Test Everything
If you follow the advice above you can’t go far wrong but you’ll also find yourself competing for attention with every other webinar out there.
So go experiment and keep track of your findings in your webinar analytics reports. Retail is a good example. If you’re targeting the employees of retail chains you’ll see the best results at 8am, before the stores open. So don’t throw out your own experience and common sense for best practices based on averages.
The optimal times for your webinars might also differ by segment. Take our own customer webinars. We frequently see best results on Friday’s. Traditionally a horrible day for webinars but it works for us because our own customers are busy hosting webinars mid-week.
What Time Works Best In Your Experience?
What’s your own experience? What time works best for your audience and why do you think that is?
And what’s your favorite time to attend a webinar and why?
Let’s hear it in the comments below.
