The Complete Webinar Checklist: From Six Weeks Out to 48 Hours After

Most webinars do not fail on the day. They fail six weeks earlier, when nobody wrote down the goal, or two weeks earlier, when the invitation email slipped because a speaker had not confirmed. By the time you go live, the outcome is largely decided.

This webinar checklist breaks the work into seven checkpoints, from six weeks out to 48 hours after the session. Copy it into your project tool, give every line an owner, and adjust the timings to suit your team. If you are hosting for the first time, read our step-by-step guide on how to host a webinar in Nigeria alongside it.

Before You Start: Assign Owners

Even a two-person team should agree who owns what. A typical business webinar needs five roles, and one person can cover more than one of them.

• Owner: accountable for the goal, the date and the final call on content.
• Host: opens and closes the session, keeps time and introduces speakers.
• Speakers: one to three people delivering the content.
• Moderator: watches questions, runs polls and handles technical problems so the host does not have to.
• Marketing and sales: promotion before the event, follow-up and lead hand-off after it.

Six Weeks Out: Decide What Success Looks Like

• Write down one goal and a target number, such as qualified leads, demo bookings or customers trained.
• Choose the audience: new prospects, existing customers, partners or employees.
• Pick a specific topic and a working title that states the outcome for attendees.
• Shortlist speakers and invite them in writing, with the audience, running time and expectations spelled out.
• Choose a date and time in WAT, checking public holidays, industry events, Friday prayer times and, for diaspora audiences, UK and US time differences. Our guide to the best time to host a webinar in Nigeria helps here.
• Choose your webinar software and confirm it covers registration, reminders, the live room, recording and follow-up.
• Agree the single call to action you will make at the end of the session.

Four Weeks Out: Build the Registration Page and Plan Promotion

• Confirm speakers and collect their names, job titles, short bios and headshots.
• Turn the content plan into three to five "What you'll learn" points.
• Build the registration page: title, subtitle, cover image, date, time, time zone, duration, agenda, speakers and a short form.
• Write the marketing opt-in wording so people know exactly what they are agreeing to receive.
• Decide whether to set a seat limit, and only use one if capacity is genuinely limited.
• Plan the promotion calendar: emails, social posts, partner posts, community groups and personal outreach.
• Create a tracked link for every channel so you can compare sources afterwards.
• Draft your invitation emails. Our webinar invitation email templates are a quick starting point.

Two Weeks Out: Promote Hard and Prepare the Content

• Send the first invitation email to your main list and post the announcement on social.
• Add the webinar to your link-in-bio page, team email signatures and website.
• Ask each speaker to share the registration link with their own network.
• Brief sales and customer support so they can mention the webinar in conversations.
• Collect first-draft slides and check they match the agenda you promised on the registration page.
• Prepare two or three poll questions and a few seed questions in case the audience is quiet at Q&A time.
• Check registrations against your target and adjust promotion if you are behind.

Promotion is the task most likely to be squeezed when the team gets busy, so protect the time for it. For channel-by-channel tactics, see how to promote a webinar with email and landing pages.

One Week Out: Rehearse and Confirm

• Send the second invitation email with a speaker or takeaway angle, excluding people who have already registered.
• Hold a full dry run with every speaker on the devices, rooms and networks they will use on the day.
• Time each section and cut content if the run-through overshoots.
• Lock the slides and keep the final versions in one shared folder.
• Confirm backup power for each speaker: inverter or UPS, a charged laptop, and a plan if the grid goes off.
• Confirm a second internet connection on a different provider for the host and main speaker.
• Write the follow-up emails for attendees and no-shows now, so they are ready to go.
• Agree with sales how fast they will contact engaged attendees and what they will say.

The Day Before: Tech Check and Final Reminders

• Send a last-chance invitation to people who have not registered.
• Confirm registrants are receiving reminders and that join links open correctly on both a phone and a laptop.
• Charge every laptop, power bank and wireless microphone.
• Buy or top up data on the backup connection.
• Check each speaker's room for noise: generators, traffic, construction and echo.
• Share the running order with speakers and the moderator, with phone numbers for everyone.
• Save a copy of the opening and closing script where the host can see it.

Day Of: The Countdown and the Live Hour

On the day, work backwards from the start time. The countdown below assumes a one-hour session, so stretch it if yours runs longer or has more speakers.

Webinar day-of countdown

1. 90 minutes before: power and network. Switch the presenting laptop and router to inverter or UPS power, run a speed test on both connections, and pause updates, backups and other apps.
2. 60 minutes before: audio and slides. Test every microphone in the actual room, load the slides, and check that any videos and links play.
3. 30 minutes before: speakers backstage. Get all speakers into the studio, confirm who opens and who closes, and check that names and titles display correctly.
4. 15 minutes before: open the room. Open the room so early arrivals can join, put up a holding slide with the start time, and have the moderator welcome people.
5. Start time: go live. Start within two or three minutes of the advertised time, cover housekeeping in under a minute, and tell people a replay will be shared.
6. First five minutes: run a poll. Ask a simple poll question early to get people interacting and to learn who is in the room.
7. Final 15 minutes: Q&A and call to action. Take moderated questions, then close on time with one clear next step.

During the session

• The moderator watches Q&A and notes standout questions and the people who asked them.
• The host keeps time and moves to Q&A even if a speaker is running over.
• Someone watches the stream on a phone over mobile data to see what attendees actually see.
• The recording is running from the first minute.

After the Webinar: The First 48 Hours

• Within an hour: upload the recording wherever you host video and add the replay link.
• Same day: send the replay to attendees with a thank-you, and to no-shows with a "sorry we missed you" message. Our webinar follow-up email sequence has the copy.
• Same day: correct any attendance records that look wrong, such as someone who joined from a colleague's link.
• Within 24 hours: hand engaged attendees to sales with notes on what they asked.
• Within 24 hours: send a short feedback survey of three to five questions.
• Within 48 hours: review attendance rate, registrations by source and opt-ins against your goal.
• Within 48 hours: hold a 30-minute debrief and write down three things to repeat and three to change.

For what happens after the first two days, read how to turn webinar attendees into qualified leads. Our guide to surveys for event management has ideas for the feedback form.

How Medivot Helps

Medivot Webinars takes several lines off this checklist. The registration page carries your agenda, speakers, calendar buttons, an optional seat limit and an opt-in in your own wording, and UTM parameters are captured automatically. To invite people, select contacts in the CRM or your email contacts and choose "Launch webinar": Medivot builds an email list for the webinar and drafts an invitation campaign from a template for you to review and send, with a personal join link for every recipient.

Confirmation emails include a calendar invite, reminders go out automatically 24 hours, 1 hour and 10 minutes before the start, and the room on Medivot Stream opens 15 minutes early. If you reschedule, the same calendar entry updates for everyone.

After the event, Medivot marks each registrant as attended or no-show, lets you correct attendance by hand, and sends replay emails to attendees and no-shows once you add the replay link. Every registrant sits in your CRM, tagged and ready to segment.

Frequently asked questions

How far in advance should I plan a webinar?

Six weeks gives you comfortable time to confirm speakers, build the page and promote properly. You can run a smaller webinar in three weeks if the speakers and topic are already settled, but promotion is the first thing that suffers when time is short.

What should be on a webinar tech checklist?

Backup power for the presenting laptop and router, two internet connections on different providers, a microphone tested in the actual room, charged devices, loaded slides, a recording that starts on time, and a phone on mobile data to check what attendees see.

When should I send webinar reminders?

A common pattern is one reminder the day before, another an hour before and a final one about 10 minutes before the start. Medivot sends these three reminders automatically to everyone who registered.

What should I do in the 48 hours after a webinar?

Send the replay to attendees and no-shows with different messages, hand engaged attendees to sales, send a short survey and review the results against your goal. Move quickly, because interest fades fast once the session ends.

Do I need a moderator for a small webinar?

It helps even with small groups. A moderator lets the host focus on presenting while someone else handles questions, polls and technical problems, and they can step in if the host loses power or connection.

A checklist will not make your speaker more charismatic, but it will make sure nothing obvious goes wrong and that every registrant is followed up properly. Use the timeline above for your next session, refine it after each debrief, and run your next webinar on Medivot so registration, reminders, the live room and follow-up all live in one place.