I have done both automated and live webinars to sell my products and services to my and other people's lists (affiliates). I wanted to find out which one do you prefer and for which reasons? Thanks in advance for your feedback.
In my honest opinion, automated webinars are not the way to do proper marketing. I don't mean it does not work, because it does, but if you are a professional marketer, owning a serious business and marketing it with your personal tools and weapons, you will need to show your face live for your audience, to prove yourself as a good and serious character. I've seen many webinars in my history online, and I can tell you, as a marketer, that I really enjoy when the presenter makes his magic live, and that presence is much more valuable than a recorded one, where you have the chance to leave everything perfect before you launch it.
I do both sometimes the JV partner wants me to do automated sometimes live. I have both it depends on what they want for me to do for their list.
Automated are good, but live webinars are obviously more convincing. Although live webinars have to be arranged, and you have to prepare for them, you could just leave automated ones as it is, and they'll yield you result. So the best practice is to use combination of them.
If you organize it carefully you can do evergreen launches that include a series of emails with timed launch pages. On top of that you could also setup automated webinars that look just like they are live. Sort of a very advanced and well thought out sales funnel. Optimize Press has some of this functionality I believe - not sure about the webinar bit though.
I recently attended a live webinar from 2 guys( forgot their name but one of the guys was called Lance something), about a new product for Facebook they had created, and the execution was amazing, never seen anyone "sell their shit" better in my life. Live webinars are the way to go.