Maybe a guest speaker got sick, or life happened? And you need to reschedule your webinar. Follow the 2 steps below to make sure it's a smooth process for both you as a host, and your registrants.
Update the existing webinar vs. have people sign up again
You need to make the call - either you I. update the existing webinar, or II. have people sign up again. This depends on how big of an update you are making.
Pushing the webinar start time +- 1 hour? -> likely keep the existing webinar.
Or pushing the date several weeks? -> probably have people sign up again.
Also it depends on the nature of your attendees. Is it a community that regularly attends your webinars - they are probably OK with still being signed up for the webinar even if it's a completely new date. You know your audience.
Let people sign up again? If you want to cancel the webinar, and send out a new link - read more about cancelling your webinar here.
Update existing webinar? If you want to proceed and update the existing webinar - follow the steps below.
1. Update the date or time of the webinar in Univid
First, you need to update the scheduled date and time of the webinar in Univid. This will do a few things:
The countdown before the webinar starts will correctly reflect the new time
Your schedule emails will be sent out in regards to the new time
To update the time: Simply navigate to the left sidebar - in the top section press "Edit".
Input your new time and press "Save".
Note: when updating the date or time, no email will automatically go out saying that the time has been updated. You have to communicate this yourself. Follow the cases below depending on where you are at in the process.
2. Communicate your new date
How you communicate the new date depends on how far you are at in the webinar journey - ie. how close to the original date and time of going live are you?
Below are three scenarios to help you, depending on where you are at:
(A) We do not have any registrants yet
This is the easiest case to manage. As no one has signed up, you can simply update the time in Univid. That's it!
If you manage your own reminder emails, make sure they reflect the new time. If you are using Univid:s reminder emails they will automatically be updated to the new time.
(B) We have registrants signed up
✅ Handling new registrants:
As long as you updated the webinar to the new time in Univid - reminders from Univid will automatically get updated and be sent out to reflect the new time. Meaning new registrants will get the correct date and time from the start.
✅ Handling existing registrants:
If people already signed up. Registrants will likely have:
received the confirmation email when registering
added the webinar to their calendar
Note: reminder emails that have already been sent out, will not be able to be sent out again.
Well, you cannot change things you have already sent to the registrants inbox - whether it's emails, or calendar invites they added to their calendar. So you will have to work with sending out updated information to existing registrants.
Send out a clear email regarding the updated time and date
If you have people signed up already, we suggest sending out an email to these people - the email should contain:
Clearly state the new time for the webinar.
The reason for updating the time - be personal and transparent.
A CTA to ask them to update the time and date of existing webinar in their calendar.
Also, include a small note on what they can do if they can't make it on the new time. For example: answer this email if you cannot make it to the new time - and we will make sure you get the webinar recording afterwards.
Reminder: Often, rescheduling and reaching out to people can feel like a burden. But it's often an unexpectedly good opportunity to show authenticity - showing that you care and are human. Which often sparks great conversation.
If it's the day before the webinar, or you make a big update to the date - you might want to consider cancelling the original webinar and send out a new link to register.
Want to cancel the webinar instead?
If you simply want to cancel the webinar, and create a new one. Read more on how you do this here.