Live, on-demand and simulated live
Three things get called "on-demand webinar", and they're worth telling apart:
| Kind | What it is | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Replay of a live session | The recording of a webinar that happened, on its page after it ends | Almost every webinar: it's free reach |
| Recorded on-demand | A session recorded to be watched any time, never live | Evergreen training and product tours |
| Simulated live | A recording played at a set time, as if live, often with a host in the chat | Repeating a popular session in other time zones |
This guide is mostly about the first: making the replay of a live webinar keep working after the day.
Keep taking registrations after it ends
The webinar page keeps getting visits after the event: from search, from posts that are still circulating, from colleagues forwarding the invitation. If it says "this event has ended" and nothing else, all of those visitors are lost. Instead, let them register to watch. They get the recording by email, you get a registration, and the page becomes an asset rather than an archive.
Count these registrations separately from the live ones, so your attendance rate isn't muddied, but count them: they're people the live date alone would have missed.
Gated or open?
Gating the replay behind a form gets you registrations. Leaving it open gets you viewers. Which matters more depends on what you'll do next.
- Gate it if you'll follow up with each person: a sales conversation, a course, a community invitation. Ask only for an email and a name.
- Leave it open if the goal is reach or reputation, or if the content is already public elsewhere. An open replay is easier to share and can be found by search.
- A middle path: the first few minutes open, the rest after an email. Or open on YouTube, gated with slides and extras on your page.
Replay best practices
- Send it fast. Within a day, while people still remember registering.
- Trim the start. Cut the "we'll wait a couple of minutes for people to join". Start the replay at the first useful sentence.
- Add chapters. Viewers of a replay skip around. Chapters let them jump to the part they came for.
- Add captions. Some people watch with the sound off, at work or on a train, and some can't hear it at all.
- Put the slides and links beside it, not only in the video.
- Give it a title that says the outcome, not "Webinar recording, 14 March".
- Point to the next step: the next live session, a related recording, a way to ask the speaker a question.
Captions and chapters
Captions are an accessibility requirement as well as a convenience. WCAG's Captions (Prerecorded) criterion, at Level A, the lowest level, asks for captions for all prerecorded audio in synchronized media. Automatic captions are a start; check speakers' names and technical terms, which automatic captions can get wrong.
For chapters on YouTube, add timestamps to the description. YouTube's rules for video chapters are that the first timestamp starts at 00:00, there are at least three in ascending order, and each chapter is at least 10 seconds long. Other players read chapters from a WebVTT chapters track or show a list of links beside the video.
The emails
Split the follow-up in two: one email for people who came, one for people who didn't. Those who came want the slides and the links mentioned; those who missed it want the recording and a reason to watch. Our follow-up email guide has templates for both.
For someone who registers after the event
Subject: Your recording: [webinar title]
Hi [first name], Here's the recording of [webinar title]: [link] It's [length] minutes. If you're short of time, [the most useful chapter] starts at [time]. The slides and links are under the video. And if you have a question for [speaker], reply to this email and I'll pass it on. [your name]
Build a library, not a pile of links
One recording is a follow-up. Twenty recordings are a library, and a library brings people back. Put your replays on one page, sorted by topic or series, with a short description, the speakers and the length of each. Make it searchable. Embed it on your own website, so the recordings live where your visitors already are.
A library also makes each new live webinar easier to promote: "join live, or catch up on the last five" gives people a reason to trust the next one.
Measure it
Track three numbers per recording: registrations to watch after the live date, how many of those opened the recording, and what people did next (registered for the next live session, replied with a question). Keep it to counts. You don't need to watch each viewer's progress through the video to learn which recordings are worth promoting.
Doing this in Programmable Talk
After the event, the page can keep taking registrations for the recording through the same registration path as before, and the recording is fetched by itself from where it streamed: your YouTube channel, Cloudflare Stream or Mux account, or your Zoom cloud recordings. Captions come from the transcript, where there is one, and you can make chapters and translated captions on your own AI key. Your on-demand library lists your past events with a replay at your own page, filterable by topic or series and searchable, and you can embed it on your site. The follow-up goes separately to those who came and those who didn't. See the on-demand library and captions and chapters.