Home › Designing › Designing Registration and Marketing Materials

Designing Registration and Marketing Materials

Back

With all of the preparation that you have done so far, you are now ready to invite participants to your session. This module will walk you through the steps necessary to create informative, engaging flyers and publicity materials, and build an online registration form for participants to let you know that they’re coming.

Creating Content for Marketing Materials

Double check to make sure that the content of your marketing materials contain all of the key information necessary to inform your audience of what they will do, what they will learn and how they can sign up.
One mistake that people may make when writing technical instructions is that they often neglect to use plain language in communicating goals and expectations. In the book “100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People”, Susan Weinschenk explains that “people expect online interactions to follow social rules.”  [1] Think about your flyer as an invitation to a party. What would people commonly expect to find out about the party from an invitation? Just as you would with an invitation, you’ll want to include the following in your marketing materials:

  • When and where the webinar will be held
  • What participants will do at the webinar
  • What participants will learn at the webinar
  • What participants will need to bring (or know) beforehand
  • Where they need to go to sign up (if necessary)

Be clear about the deliverables promised and the expectations of all participants so that everyone is on the same page and ready to go on the day of the session. In Allison Rossett’s presentation “Strategies and Techniques for Engaging and Retaining the eLearner,” she explains that learner motivation is built by informing participants of the value of the content to be presented. By showing learners the change that will occur over the process of the webinar, they will see how the program can advance their mutual goals. [2] This harkens back to the importance of community – Weinschenk states that “most people, most of the time, are more influenced by time and experiences that produce a personal connection than money or possessions.” [3] Letting participants know beforehand that their work in the webinar is essential to meeting communal learning outcomes will result in stronger participation.

Last but not least, make sure to give your webinar a strong name.  The title of the session should give the viewer an overview of what will be covered and entice them to learn more.  One of the biggest missteps of many webinars is that the title is misleading in terms of the content that is actually offered.  You want the user to understand whether or not the content is for them from the very beginning.

Designing Marketing Materials

Making promotional materials for your session is the same in terms of designing your presentation – make the most important information the focal point and keep everything else clean and simple.
In terms of the actual design of the flyer, the usability rules previously covered in the section on presentation design follow here as well. Keep your flyer short, focused, and engaging. If you don’t have access to design software such as InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop, consider using templates available on Microsoft Office or iWork for Mac. For more help with designing marketing materials, you can take a look at the resources listed below:

Consider offering your flyer in multiple formats – as a data sheet, a postcard or an embeddable graphic for email – so that you can reach a wide variety of users in print and on the web.

Building Registration Forms

In that your registration form is asking participants to complete an action beforehand, you want to make sure that it is as brief as possible while also collecting all pertinent information necessary for the presenter. If you have questions from your audience assessment or pre-assessment items that you would like to include on the registration form, make sure that they are to the point and easy to answer. You can even break up your pre-assessment questions so that some are included on the registration form, and more detailed questions are included at the beginning of the webinar session.

Registration Form Fields
Consider including the following items in your registration form, collecting only the information that you need so as to keep the form lean and mean:

  • Participant name
  • Email
  • Phone number
  • Affiliation
  • Question(s) to highlight prior knowledge
  • Question(s) to highlight learner needs

Upon completing the registration form, make sure to let users know what the next steps should be. If you haven’t done so already, give them information on how to access the webinar and test their connection and computer beforehand. This information can be emailed to participants once they have registered, or can be offered online near the registration form or on a separate dedicated website.

Most importantly, let participants know that if they have any questions or comments, they can reach you at a specific email address or phone number. Conclude by thanking them for their willingness to participate in the session and impart your enthusiasm on the topic to be presented. Enthusiasm is infectious, and letting the audience know of your excitement beforehand will set the tone for the entire session.

To keep things organized, make a simple timeline of the order of communications that will be sent out:

  • Email, pass out and tweet/post the flyer advertising the session and the registration link
  • Send an email confirming the registration and offering login information (in the email or online)
  • Send a reminder email shortly before the webinar
  • Send a thank you email to participants (or to all that signed up, including the no-shows) with links to the recorded session and additional resources

Posting Registration Forms and Information

Creating a custom website to hold your registration form gives you a location to post resources, takeaway activities and forums that users can take advantage of after the webinar.
Although much of your correspondence will be by email, you may want to consider setting up a dedicated location to hold information about the webinar, and further engagement activities after the webinar has concluded. If you are simply looking to have a registration form posted on the web, consider using the following applications:

You may also want to have a dedicated website created for this webinar and for future sessions that you plan to hold. The following list highlights applications that will help you build a website for free, some of which even feature free form elements built-in that could be used to handle your registration form:

The good of having a dedicated website is that after the webinar has completed, if you would like to put up additional resources or activities for the community to participate in, your learners are already familiar with this web location and will be able to easily return.

Regardless of whether you have a fully-fledged site or a link to a registration form, be mindful of the URL that you give to people. Choose something short and memorable, and if you can’t control the link, create a short URL with a program like bit.ly so that users can easily get to your content. Not to mention the fact that your flyers will look a whole lot better with a clean and concise URL.

Registration Worksheet

UP NEXT: PRESENTING
Believe it or not, all of the heavy lifting has been completed at this point. From here, it’s on with the show!

Presenting

References and Further Reading    (↑ returns to text)

  1. Weinschenk, S. (2011). 100 things every designer needs to know about people. Berkeley: New Riders.↑
  2. Rossett, A., Douglis, F., & Frazee, R. V. (2012, August). Strategies for building blended learning. Retrieved from http://dimadele.org/platform10/blended_learning/Blended Learning.pdf↑
  3. Weinschenk, S. (2011). 100 things every designer needs to know about people. Berkeley: New Riders.↑