How to Set Up a Zoom Webinar Campaign

This article walks you through creating and launching a Webinar Campaign in Act-On for a Zoom Webinar, from the initial Zoom setup through scheduling your final message.

The six steps

1. Create the webinar in Zoom
2. Import to Act-On and create the Webinar Campaign
3. Create a registration form
4. Add panelists (optional)
5. Create and customise your messages
6. Schedule and send your messages

Create the webinar in Zoom

Before you do anything in Act-On, create the webinar event in Zoom. A few settings on the Zoom side matter:

• Create a single-session webinar. Recurring and multi-session webinars are not supported.
• Configure all of your Questions and Custom Questions for registration before you build the Act-On form. Changing these in Zoom after the form is built can cause registrations to fail. See Handling Required Fields for Zoom Webinar Registration Forms.

Import to Act-On

1. Sign in to Act-On and go to Automation > Webinars.
2. Find your webinar in the Upcoming tab. If it is not there, click Refresh.
3. Click the webinar title.

Act-On imports the webinar's details from Zoom and opens the Webinar Campaign. From here, everything else happens in Act-On.

Create a registration form

In the Webinar Campaign, the registration form is the first asset you build. You have two options:

• +Generate Form creates a brand-new form that automatically includes all of the registration fields from your Zoom webinar, including any custom questions and picklist values. This is the recommended option.
• +Copy Existing Form starts from a form you already have. You will see a list of your existing forms: click one to preview it, then click Copy to use it. The new form is named after the webinar.

When you create your form, Act-On also creates a matching Landing Page and a Signup List. If you plan to embed the form on your own site, you will need to point people at the right URL for your embed instead of the default landing page.

Add panelists (optional)

If your webinar has panelists, add them from the Webinar Campaign. Click Add Panelist, enter their name and email, then click Add. Once they are listed, you can click Send Invite to send them their panelist link, or Delete to remove them.

A few things to know about panelists:

• The panelist invite is sent by Zoom, not by Act-On.
• If your Zoom webinar has Send invitation to all newly added panelists immediately turned on, Zoom will send the invitation automatically. That send will not show as sent in Act-On.
• If you add panelists directly in Zoom, click Sync at the top right of the Webinar Campaign to import them into Act-On.

Step 5: Create and customise your messages

Act-On's Webinar Campaign supports four types of messages. The exact list of messages available depends on whether your webinar requires registration approval.

*Registration Accepted and Rejected messages are only available when your Zoom Webinar requires registration approval.

Default Registration Responses are created automatically. For every other message, you can start from Blank Message (which gives you a basic starting design) or from an existing message, draft, or template.

What each message type should contain

When you start from a Blank Message, Act-On pre-fills some content. Here is what it includes by default, and what you should include if you design a message from scratch:

• Promotion Messages: webinar name, date, and time; Add to Calendar links; link to the registration form.
• Registration Responses: webinar name, date, and time; Add to Calendar links; Webinar ID, passcode, and dial-in phone number; meeting link (also called Join URL).
• Reminders: webinar name, date, and time; Add to Calendar links; Webinar ID, passcode, and dial-in phone number; meeting link.
• Follow-ups: blank by default. Add whatever is relevant to the segment you are sending to.

Add a meeting link (Join URL) to a custom message

If you are not using the default Blank Message, you will need to add the meeting link yourself. Use the {{Join URL}} personalisation token as a hyperlink, so registrants can click it. If you use a button, put {{Join URL}} in the button's URL field.

Attach the registration form to your invitation

Your invitation email needs to link to the registration form. There are two ways to do this in the message builder:

• Hyperlink text or an image. Add or edit a rich text block, highlight the text (or click the image) you want to link, click Insert Link to Act-On Form, and pick the form you created for this webinar.
• Insert a Form Link. In the message builder, select Insert Form Link and pick your registration form. Act-On adds a centred button that links to the form. If you do not provide a button image, the button is a dark blue rectangle.

Follow-up content and segments

Follow-ups are usually sent to different segments depending on what people did (attended, registered but did not attend, did not register). You can create those segments in advance.

1. In the Webinar Campaign, click Follow-Up Segments.
2. Click Create Segments.
3. Tick the segments you want to create, then click Create Segments again.

A couple of things to keep in mind about follow-ups:

• Act-On cannot automatically insert a post-event survey or a recording link. If you want to include the recording, wait until after the event, grab the recording URL from Zoom, and paste it in manually.
• For more advanced segmentation, go to Lists > Other Lists > Webinar Lists.

Schedule and send your messages

Choose or change your invitation list

If you skipped the list step when creating your invitation, open the unsent invitation from the Webinar Campaign and move to Step 2: Address. You can send to entire lists, send to segments, and suppress lists or segments.

Whenever an invitation goes out, Act-On automatically suppresses anyone who has already registered for the webinar, so you do not need to build that suppression yourself. Registered contacts are also suppressed from Last Chance messages by default.

After your webinar

Once your webinar ends, Act-On syncs with Zoom automatically every hour for up to 48 hours to pull in attendance data. Attendance is usually available within 24 hours. If you want to pull it in immediately, open the Webinar Campaign and click Refresh or Import From Zoom.

Once attendance data is in, go to Webinar Reports to review attendance, registrations, and message performance.

For common setup problems and how to fix them, see the Zoom Webinar Campaign FAQs.