Do your marketing efforts ever feel like they’re just not connecting with audiences enough? What’s the solution? Webinar Marketing.
Over the last ten years, webinars have grown to be an integral part of many organizations marketing plans. In fact, Forrester has reported that upward of 80% of Marketers rate webinars as one of their top 3 marketing tactics for reaching leads.
There are a few logical reasons to consider:
These three factors lead to a Return on Engagement (ROE) for marketers. And yes, ROE can improve your marketing program’s ROI. (Niiiiice!)
At MeetingOne, we’ve helped produce webinar with customers as well as conduct our own, and we’ve certainly seen these efforts help progress prospects in their Buyer’s Journey.
Are webinars on your radar? You may be wondering what platform features help marketers successfully conduct webinars?
There are certain platform features that are essential for webinar marketing.
First of all, you need a platform that will accurately capture and store lead information and activity. Minimally, you need advanced landing and registration pages that can track who visits what pages and who registers. Such stats are ideal for tracking conversion rates. Of course, you need the registration information of attendees so qualifying leads can be later contacted – that’s a pretty basic requisite.
Tools for MarketersSecondly, let’s consider factors that help marketers. A desirable feature is email automation. With hundreds of people potentially registering for your events, it’s helpful having a system automatically send out reminder emails to those registrants.
Another functionality many marketers want is the opportunity to design and clone webinar templates. Cloning a webinar template provides you the ability to quickly creating one-off or recurring webinars that will use the same format. (Shared formats simplify design work, which lends to greater ease developing presentations in the long run.)
Advanced AnalyticsLastly, it’s always beneficial to have a platform that tracks the analytics of your session so you can later revisit the information to determine if the content could be improved upon. Additionally, the leading platforms will give you information on which participants interacted with what material. That resource can help Sales Teams better address a prospective client’s needs. (That’s pretty high-level analysis!)
So, the real question becomes, which webinar platform best serves the needs of marketers? Well, according to Gartner, the top platform is Adobe Connect.
Adobe Connect marketing tools represent a full package for the needs of anyone getting into webinar marketing. In the following sections, we will outline the features and functionality that separate Adobe Connect webinars from competitors. In turn, you can justify your marketing program efforts because you will be able to competently point to the ROI of your webinars (and get that Sales Manager off your back).
Adobe Connect’s profile of built-in marketing tools is so broad, I have to break them into two sections: pre-and post-webinar.
As we mentioned above, the minimal requirement you should have of a webinar platform is the offering of landing and registration pages. Adobe Connect provides “microsites” for each event that serve just that purpose.
These microsite pages are entirely customizable. From background color to information included, you have complete control.
The features you can add, include:
What’s really cool is that Adobe Connect utilizes drag-and-drop functionality when you create a registration page. Want a chart on your page? Simply select it and drag it to where you want!
A registration page template can be designed in a few minutes and is then ready for any future event you hold!
Once you create a template, it’s easy entering the fields, texts, and forms you want on your event pages. As you create an event, you’re prompted through a series of questions and fields. You fill them out, and Adobe Connect places the information within the pages you designed. The result is branded registration pages unique to your organization and to the topic being presented.
Not only do you get these streamlined pages, but Adobe Connect tracks who moves from the initial “Event Info” page to Registration. It then, of course, tracks who has registered. The flow between the pages is perfect for tracking conversion rates. Just how accurate are we talking? Check out the “Conversion Funnel” described below!”
Lastly, the Microsite pulls together all the pending events you offer into one separate page, the “Event Catalog” page. Visitors to the microsite can then peruse all the events you have going from one place!
Adobe Connect allows you to design email templates for your events from within the admin portal. Email marketing remains the most effective marketing tool at a marketer’s disposal, so it’s quite helpful having a platform that readily gives you the option to send emails regarding the event. The types of emails include:
Drag-and-drop functionality is also available when creating email templates. Depending on the type of email, you will have the option to include: tables, pictures, texts, etc. If you don’t like a picture you included, right-click and delete. There’s also the functionality to annotate changes to templates if you’re working with others to design the templates. Simple and effective.
Even if you already use a platform that helps you design and distribute emails (like Hubspot or Emma), Adobe Connect helps manage reminders and follow up emails – so you don’t have to! Event information is automatically imported into the templates you created, making them ready for distribution whenever you see fit.
Emails and registration page templates aren’t the only things that can be cloned. Entire events can be cloned within Adobe Connect. That means the registration pages, the emails, and the virtual room you’ve designed in the past can be used again in any future event.
The conversion funnel is one of those features of Adobe Connect webinars that really puts the platform on a higher playing field. The feature compiles all the tracking information of Microsite visits and displays how leads have moved along the conversion funnel.
The conversion funnel accounts for:
When you sort out all the people at these various stages, Adobe Connect presents those final, Qualified Leads.
Being able to see how visitors moved from one stage to another is a huge boon as a marker! It’s great being able to track where people dropped out. We use that information to plan content for future events.
In this same area of the Adobe Connect webinar admin portal, you have the ability to download a report on all who registered. The list pulls in the registrant info initially captured, as well as info on each leads’ participation with polls. At MeetingOne, then filter this list through SalesForce to ensure we only distribute new leads.
For the Marketing Team here at MeetingOne, we love the conversion funnel. It gives us the best insight on how well we’re driving registration. If we didn’t have this tool, we’d have fewer insights into the ROI of our webinars.
The conversion funnel is only one part of the larger platform analytics. Adobe Connect provides some of the most comprehensive reporting on webinars in the industry.
Adobe Connect reports on a ton of information. Like many other platforms, it compiles who and how many people responded to registration questions and answered poll questions. They also track the total number of chats during a session, and the questions asked vs. answered.
The reporting of Adobe Connect webinars really come back to their Engagement Report, though. Their engagement report far surpasses that of other platforms, which only track the time a webinar room is the primary window on a computer screen (like WebEx & GoToMeeting…Zoom doesn’t track squat).
After your webinar, you receive an insightful report comparing the levels of engagement and attendance with the presentation time. Adobe Connect gives a minute-by-minute breakdown of engagement. The specificity provided allows you to know when engagement dips and content may need to be refined.
MeetingOne uses all of this information to better determine how our content is being received. If we see a surprising dip in engagement, we may plan to incorporate an interactive feature to buoy interest at that point.
When it comes to identifying ROE, these reports are critical!
Although Adobe Connect covers all of the above functionality, the real game-changers are its rich environment, its persistence, and its “immersive-ness”. Sure, it’s hard to characterize such functionality as a hard-and-fast “marketing tools.” But it may be the most important aspect. Think about it. Back-end administrative features are only as valuable as the interactivity of the virtual room!
If your participants don’t have a good experience in a virtual room during your webinar, those leads may not be as thrilled to work with your organization. A bland webinar that only features a PowerPoint doesn’t attest to an organization’s dynamic abilities to solve a prospect’s complex needs. (Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge.) It may seem like a stretch to think the appearance of a webinar can impact the outcome of Sales negotiations. From personal experience, though, I can say I’ve been put off by a few businesses that held bad webinars.
Perhaps the most important Adobe Connect marketing tool is the platform’s customizability. Every component of the virtual room can be shaped and designed to meet the needs of your presentation. You, more or less, have the power to shape the experiences attendees will have in the virtual space. (At the end of the day, the presentation is the most important, of course. A rich environment to host a presentation in, though, is a close second.)
Adobe Connect rooms can be tailored to drive conversations, interactions, and engagement. (Or provide a sense of calm…) Enhancing an attendee’s experience through engagement can improve a webinar. Can you say, Return on Engagement?
Webinars offer an ideal tool to help markets bridge that gap between interest and serious consideration. Reflecting on MeetingOne’s experience, we can honestly attest to the value each webinar brings to our audiences. And how that translates to improving our Sales cycle.
More importantly, webinars help marketers translate a Return on Engagement to overall increased ROI for their programs.
Check out Adobe Connect Webinars in action! Our webinar “Mastering Online Events with Adobe Connect’s Event Module” gives you a close-up look the features discussed above, and more! We also offer tips for making the most of your webinars!
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