Skip to content

Webinar Registrations / Attendance

Definition

Webinar Registrations / Attendance measures the percentage of webinar registrants who actually attend the event live. It helps assess the effectiveness of webinar promotion, topic relevance, and engagement follow-through.

Description

Webinar Registrations / Attendance Rate is a key indicator of audience follow-through, event timing, and content pull, reflecting how many registrants actually show up live to your webinar.

The relevance and interpretation of this metric shift depending on the model or product:

  • In B2B SaaS, it highlights event timing and nurture quality
  • In Partner or co-marketing, it reflects speaker pull and brand authority
  • In Lifecycle education, it surfaces topic fit and urgency

A low attendance rate suggests drop-off in perceived value or poor reminders, while a high one reflects topic resonance and strong event-market fit. By segmenting by timezone, channel, or audience type, you can improve promotion, reminders, and post-event conversion paths.

Webinar Registrations / Attendance informs:

  • Strategic decisions, like event calendar design and speaker sourcing
  • Tactical actions, such as reminder sequence optimization
  • Operational improvements, including event timing and follow-up content
  • Cross-functional alignment, enabling PMM, demand gen, and sales to drive qualified engagement at scale

Key Drivers

These are the main factors that directly impact the metric. Understanding these lets you know what levers you can pull to improve the outcome

  • Topic Relevance and Timing: Right topic + wrong time = low show-up.
  • Reminder Cadence: One invite = easy to forget. Multi-touch = higher attendance.
  • Live vs. On-Demand Balance: Not everyone can attend live — offering replays lifts overall value.

Improvement Tactics & Quick Wins

Actionable ideas to optimize this KPI, from fast, low-effort wins to strategic initiatives that drive measurable impact.

  • If attendance is weak, test time-of-day and day-of-week performance by segment.
  • Add 1-hour + 5-minute reminders with calendar syncs built in.
  • Run teaser videos or speaker highlights before the event.
  • Refine registration page to focus on outcomes, not agenda.
  • Partner with CS or sales to invite accounts personally — high-value, high-show rate.

  • Required Datapoints to calculate the metric

    • Number of Webinar Registrants
    • Number of Live Attendees
    • Event Date + Reminder Strategy (for context)

  • Example to show how the metric is derived

    750 people registered for a webinar 345 attended live Formula: 345 ÷ 750 = 46% Attendance Rate

Formula

Formula

\[ \mathrm{Webinar\ Attendance\ Rate} = \left( \frac{\mathrm{Live\ Attendees}}{\mathrm{Registrants}} \right) \times 100 \]

Data Model Definition

How this KPI is structured in Cube.js, including its key measures, dimensions, and calculation logic for consistent reporting.

cube('WebinarEvents', {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM webinar_events`,

  measures: {
    numberOfRegistrants: {
      sql: `number_of_registrants`,
      type: 'sum',
      title: 'Number of Webinar Registrants',
      description: 'Total number of registrants for the webinar event.'
    },
    numberOfLiveAttendees: {
      sql: `number_of_live_attendees`,
      type: 'sum',
      title: 'Number of Live Attendees',
      description: 'Total number of attendees who attended the webinar live.'
    },
    attendanceRate: {
      sql: `100.0 * ${numberOfLiveAttendees} / NULLIF(${numberOfRegistrants}, 0)`,
      type: 'number',
      title: 'Webinar Attendance Rate',
      description: 'Percentage of registrants who attended the webinar live.'
    }
  },

  dimensions: {
    id: {
      sql: `id`,
      type: 'string',
      primaryKey: true,
      title: 'Event ID',
      description: 'Unique identifier for each webinar event.'
    },
    eventDate: {
      sql: `event_date`,
      type: 'time',
      title: 'Event Date',
      description: 'Date of the webinar event.'
    },
    reminderStrategy: {
      sql: `reminder_strategy`,
      type: 'string',
      title: 'Reminder Strategy',
      description: 'Strategy used to remind registrants about the webinar.'
    }
  }
});

Note: This is a reference implementation and should be used as a starting point. You’ll need to adapt it to match your own data model and schema

Positive & Negative Influences

  • Negative influences

    Factors that drive the metric in an undesirable direction, often signaling risk or decline.

    • Inconvenient Timing: Scheduling webinars at times that are inconvenient for the target audience can lead to lower attendance rates, even if the topic is relevant.
    • Single Reminder: Relying on a single reminder email can result in lower attendance as registrants may forget about the event.
    • Lack of On-Demand Option: Not offering an on-demand replay can discourage those who cannot attend live, reducing overall attendance value.
    • Poor Topic Relevance: Selecting topics that do not resonate with the target audience can lead to low interest and attendance.
    • Technical Difficulties: Frequent technical issues during webinars can deter registrants from attending future live events.

  • Positive influences

    Factors that push the metric in a favorable direction, supporting growth or improvement.

    • Topic Relevance and Timing: Choosing a relevant topic at the right time increases the likelihood of registrants attending the webinar live, as it aligns with their interests and availability.
    • Reminder Cadence: Implementing a multi-touch reminder strategy significantly boosts attendance rates by keeping the event top-of-mind for registrants.
    • Engagement Follow-through: Engaging with registrants through pre-webinar content and interactions increases their commitment to attend the live event.
    • Promotional Effectiveness: Effective promotion strategies that clearly communicate the value of attending live can increase the percentage of registrants who show up.
    • Speaker Reputation: Featuring well-known or highly regarded speakers can enhance the perceived value of attending live, thus increasing attendance rates.

Involved Roles & Activities

Funnel Stage & Type

  • AAARRR Funnel Stage

    This KPI is associated with the following stages in the AAARRR (Pirate Metrics) funnel:

    Awareness
    Acquisition

  • Type

    This KPI is classified as a Lagging Indicator. It reflects the results of past actions or behaviors and is used to validate performance or assess the impact of previous strategies.

Supporting Leading & Lagging Metrics

  • Leading

    These leading indicators influence this KPI and act as early signals that forecast future changes in this KPI.

    • Trial Sign-Up Rate: As a key early-funnel metric, a higher Trial Sign-Up Rate acts as a strong leading indicator for Webinar Registrations / Attendance. Increased trial sign-ups signal heightened interest and engagement with the brand, often leading to increased webinar registrations and attendance as these prospects seek more information and value.
    • Content Engagement: Greater Content Engagement demonstrates audience interest and value perception before the webinar. Highly engaged users are more likely to register for and attend webinars, making this a valuable leading metric for predicting future attendance rates.
    • Unique Visitors: A surge in Unique Visitors to the website, especially to event or webinar landing pages, often precedes increases in webinar registrations and attendance. This metric signals top-of-funnel interest and potential webinar audience growth.
    • Open Rate: A higher Open Rate on webinar invitation emails or related campaign emails indicates effective messaging and audience interest, directly leading to more registrations and, ultimately, higher attendance rates.
    • Activation Rate: A high Activation Rate (users reaching a key milestone in product adoption) often correlates with increased engagement in brand activities, including webinars. This suggests that users who become activated are more likely to seek further value through webinars, impacting attendance rates.

  • Lagging

    These lagging indicators confirm, quantify, or amplify this KPI and help explain the broader business impact on this KPI after the fact.

    • Conversion Rate: Conversion Rate (especially for webinar-specific CTAs) is a lagging metric that confirms how effectively webinar attendance translates into deeper engagement or business outcomes, such as sign-ups, purchases, or trial starts. It quantifies the downstream impact of webinar attendance.
    • Customer Engagement Score: This score aggregates multiple engagement behaviors, including webinar attendance, and helps quantify the overall impact of increased attendance on customer health and retention after the event.
    • Customer Downgrade Rate: Tracking Customer Downgrade Rate after webinars can reveal if improved attendance correlates with reductions in account downgrades, providing a lagging measure of how effective webinars are at retaining or upselling customers.
    • Net Revenue Retention: Net Revenue Retention, measured after webinars, can help quantify whether increased attendance leads to better expansion, renewal, and reduced churn, providing insight into the broader revenue impact of webinar engagement.
    • Average Revenue Per User: Changes in Average Revenue Per User following a successful webinar program can confirm whether webinar attendance is associated with higher monetization, retention, or cross-sell/upsell outcomes, serving as a lagging indicator of business impact.