How to Do a Webinar with HubSpot and Zoom

A while back, I wrote a blog post on how to do a webinar with HubSpot and GoToWebinar. I am a huge fan of GTW, and given its native integration with HubSpot, it is always my first choice for webinar technology.

However, if budget is an issue, my recommendation would be Zoom Webinars. It’s pretty easy to set up and easy to use. Just follow the steps below!

1. Establish accounts at HubSpot and Zoom.

It’s always good to start at square one. You’ll need accounts at both HubSpot and Zoom to make this work.

If you have multiple Zoom accounts at your company, your internal Zoom administrator will need to assign the webinar plan to the person setting up the webinar (probably you). See this article.

2. Set up the integration.

(You only have to do this once.)

• Log into HubSpot and click the “Marketplace” icon in the main navigation bar and go to the "App Marketplace." 

• Click the “Install app” button. Enter your Zoom login credentials and sign in.
• You’ll be asked to give permission for HubSpot to access your Zoom account. Click “Allow.” You’ll be redirected back to the HubSpot, where you’ll see Zoom under “Connected Apps.” 

Now, if a contact registers or attends a Zoom webinar, they will be created as a contact in the HubSpot account, not just in Zoom. If a contact already exists in HubSpot, a new contact will not be created; their contact record will just be updated to reflect the webinar sign-up. 

• If you click “Actions” under the Zoom tile and select “Go to settings,” you can review your integration settings.
• There is a checkbox to “Sync data from newly scheduled webinars” automatically, or you can check a “SYNC” box next to each webinar individually, which will appear here after you schedule it in Zoom (the next step).

(Image from HubSpot.)

• If you want to exclude all registrants from your company, this option is available under the “Settings” tab.

3. Create a new webinar in Zoom.

OK, now it’s time to schedule your webinar in Zoom. Log in to Zoom, then click on “Webinars” on the left-hand side and then the blue “Schedule a Webinar” button at the top.

Enter the title of your webinar, the date and time, the duration, and the timezone. You’ll likely want to require registration and turn off the passcode.

At the bottom is an option to enable a Practice Session, which I always recommend doing. Hit “Schedule,” and you’ll be redirected to the Manage page. (This Zoom support article has more information on the options in Zoom.)

Quick question: Do you want to manually approve registrations as they come in? (Most marketers don’t want to manually approve registrants, but some companies want to do this extra step to weed out competitors from the attendee list.) 

This option is under the “Invitations” tab—next to “Registration Settings” is an “Edit” button.

You’ll get a dialog box like this:

All options will work with HubSpot; you just need to pick which one you want, and then click “Save All.”

While you’re in Zoom, be sure to turn off the Zoom notification email (unless you want those to go out via Zoom instead of HubSpot). Click on the “Email Settings” tab and turn off “Confirmation Email to Registrants.” You may want to send out the one-hour reminder email via Zoom; if so, you’ll turn that on here as well.

(You can add panelists under the “Invitations” tab. You can resend or cancel attendees under this tab as well, under “Manage Attendees.” Polls are under the “Polls” tab. Branding doesn’t matter because we are using HubSpot to register attendees.)

Pro tip: The “Practice Session” option will allow you to log into the webinar an hour early to practice right before the webinar. It will not allow you to practice the day before; to do that, you’ll need to create a separate webinar in Zoom for your practice session.

Before you leave Zoom, write down or copy the Webinar ID under the calendar buttons at the top:

4. Create your registration form and landing page.

Time to hop over to HubSpot!

If you already have a HubSpot form you want to use to have people register for the webinar (such as a general one for awareness stage offers), you don’t need to create a new one. If you have specific questions you want to ask for webinars, you’ll need to create a new form in HubSpot.

Then create your landing page and thank you page in HubSpot as you would any other offer.

5. Make a workflow to connect HubSpot and Zoom.

Now it’s time for the magic. Publish the landing page and thank you page, and then go to workflows in HubSpot. The enrollment criteria is when someone fills out the registration form on the landing page you just created.

Then, you’ll want to add an action before the next step. This action is called “Add contact to Zoom Webinar.” In the next prompt, fill out the specific Webinar ID.

Pro tip: You can see if the integration is working by using the “Test” functionality on your workflow and then going over to Zoom and seeing if the test contact is under “Manage Attendees.”

After you run this workflow the first time, HubSpot will be able to use “Last registered Zoom webinar,” which is the person’s unique link to join the webinar. This field populates from Zoom automatically when someone registers for a webinar, if you selected “Automatically Approve” or “Manually Approve” in Zoom.

6. Create the follow up email.

If you want the confirmation email to come from HubSpot (so it can have your branding) and not Zoom, you need to also create that email. Note that this email needs to be an “Automation” email. Learn how to do this here.

Pro tip: It’s easier and requires less setup to have the confirmation emails come from Zoom instead of HubSpot, and the Zoom emails have calendar invites, which HubSpot does not support. However, the Zoom emails do not have your branding, so that’s the drawback.

When drafting your confirmation email, you’ll want to include the user’s unique join link by inserting the “Last registered Zoom webinar” personalization token.

Note: It’s important to understand that this field updates when someone registers for their second or third webinar with your company. Practically, this means that the unique join link only works if you only have one webinar going on at a time. If you’re running concurrent webinar promotions, people can’t register for both. If you are promoting two webinars at once, I recommend using the Zoom emails instead of HubSpot, or not requiring registration to attend.

Pro tip: I have seen the API not work on just a couple of contacts out of nearly 1,000 registrations so that the unique join code field is blank. If this makes you nervous, use the Zoom emails. Another option is to make the default value of the Webinar Join Link be something like: “ERROR—your join link could not load. Please contact us ASAP.” 

If registration isn’t required for your webinar, you’ll want to get the generic join link from Zoom to include in your email. This is under the “Invitations” tab.

Publish your follow-up email. Then, head back over to your workflow from Step 5 and add a delay of five minutes (for HubSpot and Zoom to sync) at the bottom. Finally, add an action to send this email confirmation.

7. Create your email invitation.

You can now create a promotional email in HubSpot with your branding to invite people to the webinar. Simply include a link to your landing page, and you are good to go.

8. Manage registrations.

To see who has registered for the webinar, simply create a Smart List in HubSpot with the criteria of anyone who filled out the form on your landing page. Use this list to exclude people from future webinar email promotions (because they already signed up).

You can also see this list in Zoom under the “Invitations” tab, which is where you can cancel a registration or send a confirmation email on a one-off basis directly from Zoom.

9. Conduct the webinar using Zoom.

You’ll need to log back into Zoom in order to start the webinar on the day of the event. Zoom has most of the features you’d expect in terms of Q&A, polling, panelists, and so on. Learn more about Zoom webinars here. (P.S. Zoom has an option to livestream your webinar on Facebook!)

And learn more about how to put together a kick-butt webinar in our e-book, The Marketer’s Guidebook to Hosting a Webinar.

10. Create lists in HubSpot and access extra info in Zoom.

You can create a list in HubSpot to see attendees (although this information is also in Zoom). When creating an “Active” list, under “Add filter,” scroll to the bottom to see the Zoom integration filters. You will then have options for “Zoom: Webinar Registration Event properties,” “Zoom: Webinar Attendance Event properties,” and “Zoom: Recording Available Event properties.” 

Select “Zoom: Webinar Attendance Event properties” and you’ll have options for “Attendance Duration(s),” “Attendance Duration Percent,” “Occurred,” “Webinar ID,” and “Webinar Name.” You can use the ID number or the webinar name to pull your list of attendees.

Pro tip: Zoom also loads four custom properties for each contact by default, including: “Average Zoom webinar attendance duration,” “Last registered Zoom webinar” (poorly named custom join link described above), “Total number of Zoom webinar registrations,” and “Total number of Zoom webinars attended.” Any of these fields can be used for “Active” lists or segmentation.

Zoom does collect some data that is not available in HubSpot, including questions that an attendee asked as well as any poll and survey responses. If you would like to upload these values into HubSpot, you’ll want to go over to Zoom and navigate to “ADMIN” (left-hand menu), then “Account Management,” and then “Reports.” You’ll select “Webinar” under “Usage Reports” and then select a report type of “Q&A Report,” “Poll Report,” or “Survey Report.” 

Click the radio button next to the name of the Webinar and then the blue “Generate CSV Report” button. Save the file somewhere you’ll remember. Repeat for other reports.

Once you export the CSV file(s) from Zoom, you can import this information into custom fields in HubSpot (use “Asker email” as the unique identifier).

11. Follow-up email and recording

You recorded your awesome webinar, right? If so, you’ll want to make that recording available on a thank you page and make a new landing page (or modify the old registration page) to let people access the recording.

Then, you can send out follow-up emails to all attendees and non-attendees. Check out our blog post on doing this using smart content.

And don’t forget to set up a lead nurture stream for the leads your salespeople say need a bit more nurturing!

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Whether you’re using Zoom, GoToWebinar, or BrightTALK, webinars should be a key component of your content marketing strategy. Getting the logistics working is just one aspect. Make sure your event is an attraction magnet by determining the right topic(s) for your webinar. Then you’ll have all the pieces needed for a successful virtual event!

This blog was originally published on December 7, 2017 and has been updated since.