The AI webinar strategy that every partner should replicate
It may sound too good to be true, but the following story is completely, 100% real. I promise.
A few months ago, our team was on a call with a Microsoft partner who lives and breathes nonprofits.
They said: “We want more Copilot work, but it’s been a tough sell for nonprofits.”
My immediate reaction? “Cool, let’s do a webinar!”
Their reaction? Eye rolls and hesitation. Another AI webinar? “We’ve already done several of these.”
But here’s where we refused to do the usual thing.
We didn’t do “Copilot 101” or “AI is the future” or any of that generic noise that makes people delete your email immediately.
Instead, we went back to a different type of basics: The foundational marketing tools that will be there no matter how advanced the technology gets.
Working with them, we honed in on pain points, and built a quarterly webinar series around four things nonprofits lose sleep over:
Fundraising that never stops
Grant writing that eats up your time (and soul)
Volunteer management that feels like herding cats on fire
Redundant reporting that distracts from actual mission work
That’s it. Nothing else.
We titled it something painfully specific (think “How to Write a Six-Figure Grant in Half the Time with Copilot: Real Examples from Real Nonprofits”).
No tech jargon. No buzzwords. Just something that promises survival and gets to the heart of what the nonprofit audience cares about.
The results were shocking. I still laugh in disbelief.
1,100 registrations for a niche nonprofit audience… during the holiday season… on a Wednesday morning
820+ showed up live (A 75% show-up rate, which is virtually unheard of)
20 people literally raised their hand to “Book a call right now” before the recording stopped
Regardless of if those hundreds of new contacts attended the webinar or signed up for a follow-up call, they were now sitting in our clients’ nurture funnel
I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I have never seen numbers like that from a single webinar. Ever.
So what actually happened?
We stopped trying to sell AI and started speaking human.
Most Copilot marketing still sounds like this: “Harness the power of next-generation AI in the Microsoft 365 apps you already own…”
People don’t wake up dreaming of “next-generation AI.”
Nonprofit people wake up at 3 a.m. thinking: “I have 47 open grants, our annual report is due next week, and our development director just quit.”
So we led with their reality and framed the whole webinar around it.
Every slide, every demo, every story started with those pain points and ended with how our client could provide specific relief.
“Here’s the grant narrative you spent 18 hours on last quarter… watch Copilot rewrite it in 6 minutes while making it better.”
“Here’s the monthly donor report that used to take two weeks… now it takes 22 minutes and your board actually reads it.”
“Here’s the fundraising email sequence that raised 42% more because Copilot helped you sound like an energized human again instead of an exhausted one.”
The webinar wasn’t about teaching everything you could do with AI. It showed ways that it could give them permission to breathe in their day-to-day lives.
And something magical happens when you do that: Trust shows up instantly.
Microsoft’s logo on the invite already gets people in the door. (A huge advantage, by the way. Use it)!
But when you pair that credibility with empathy for your audience’s actual struggles? That’s when people lean in instead of zoning out.
The biggest lesson we’re taking into every single partner conversation now:
Step 1: Stop explaining the tech.
Step 2: Start providing relief.
I’m now seeing the exact same pattern play out with partners in healthcare, education, government, manufacturing: Anywhere people are exhausted and understaffed (so… everywhere).
The partners who are making the most headway with selling AI right now aren’t the ones with the flashiest demos.
They’re the ones who know how to say: “I know you’re drowning. Here’s exactly how Copilot pulls you to the surface, and here’s the proof from someone whose job is just like yours.”
If you’re a Microsoft partner staring at Copilot pipeline that could use some help, try this.
Pick one industry or vertical you know well. Don't try to boil the ocean.
Think of your ideal customer, and pick the single most painful, repetitive, soul-crushing process they have. If you need, to call up some of your close customers. Ask them: What's hard right now? What do you wish you had more time for?
Build a webinar (or a demo, or a workshop) around those specific pain points. Make it practical. Make it real. Show how you can cut their pain in half.
Use Copilot to solve one or two of those problems live. We find this approach works better if you show, don't tell.
Then watch what happens when you finally speak to the exhaustion instead of the algorithm.
You don't need a massive budget to accomplish this, and you don't need flashy production. You just need to tell a story with something useful and true.
If you’re looking to build a webinar that weeds out the jargon and floods your sales pipeline with qualified leads, let’s brainstorm. Contact me at abbie@emminc.com.