Marketing Insights

Webinar, webcast, virtual or online event… whatever you call them, they are still being used by marketers and they are still working. As I shared in my “Where Do You Start” post, webinars are “one of the top two lead-generation tactics for B-to-B marketing”. As well, a recent report “looks at the expected decline in attendance at trade shows this year and the expected increase in attendance at virtual shows.”

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The Marketing Insights team recently did some short marketing best practice videos and one was on four key areas you need to focus on to drive registration and drive attendance to your online event.

They include:

1. Multi channel promotion
2. Landing page conversion
3. Confirmations
4. Reminders

Take a moment to view some good tips for driving registration and attendance in this
short 3 minute video.

For those of us who have been doing online events for years I want to highlight one tactic I mention in the video that you should try… if you haven’t already. This works not only get your target audience to register, but more importantly to actually view your event.

I’m talking about ‘reminders’. Don’t rely on a single email reminder the day before your event! MarketingSherpa has tested their own approach and seen significant results on email reminders sent ‘one hour before’ the event, as well as the ‘day after’.

Lastly, don’t forget to leverage your call center or call-on-demand technology to remind registrants the day of the event. This has shown an average increase in attendance of up to 20%.  Remember, online events provide an interactive experience that will energize your marketing efforts. Take the opportunity to fully leverage them, they connect you with people you wouldn’t normally see and when you archive them they provide an asset you can use time and time again.

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According to MarketingSherpa, webinars are “one of the top two lead-generation tactics for B-to-B marketing”. That, with the current economic climate, gives you a great reasons to include webinars in your marketing strategy. So… Where do you start?

• What should your topic be and who should present it?
• When is the best day to host the event?
• Who should you invite?

WHAT
First you need to determine your topic. You may know exactly what your prospects and customers are looking for in an online event, but if you don’t… surveys can help discover content they are seeking. Post a survey on your website or include in your newsletter to help you identify topics your audience finds significant.

Once you have your topic, you need to find speakers. We all know that using a 3rd party expert will add credibility to your event. But in addition to inviting industry experts or analysts to speak, consider inviting your customers as thought leaders – they can share how they’ve been able to drive success, what lessons they’ve learned, as well as discuss where they stand on critical issues.

WHEN
Now, what is the best day to have your online event? In Bulldog Solution’s Marketing Watchdog Journal, Ken Molay, President, Webinar Success, shared results from his survey on Best Webinar Times. When asked, Ken’s typical answer is Tuesday through Thursday, a little before lunch or a little after lunch depending on your time zone. The results of his survey, when people were asked to pick a single day they would most likely attend a webinar, showed that he was right for the most part. Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s were clear winners… but Friday came in a surprising third at 18%. Timing may be different for your audience, so test various days and times to determine when is most effective for you.

WHO
Once you’ve determined what and when, you need to figure out who. Who is your target audience? Consider the relevancy of the content as you develop your list. Is it focused on a specific industry, or product, or role within an organization? Is it more relevant to someone who has attended a previous event or downloaded a white paper on the same topic? Does it align to where an individual is in their buying cycle?

In the end, the quality of your list will affect the results of your online event attendance, so don’t BATCH AND BLAST, be relevant!

WHAT’S NEXT
Once you’ve figured out WHAT, WHEN and WHO, you’ll need to focus on driving registration. Check out Steve Wood’s recommendations in his post on Four Practices to Increase Webinar Effectiveness.

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I have a client whose company attends about 25 trade shows per year and up till now the follow-up for these events has been a little haphazard. We’ve begun working on ways to provide a series of automated post-show emails for these events. We want to come up with something scalable that can work for all of the events, but at the same time has a personal touch and features some show-specific elements. Here’s the direction we’re heading right now – but we’d love to hear your ideas to helps us improve:

• Email One will be sent to the show attendee approximately one week after the show — that gives the attendee time to come back to the office and sift through all the email they missed while they were away so our message won’t get lost.
  • The From Name is the company name at this point since the relationship with the prospect is just getting off the ground.
  • The Subject Line mentions the fact that the attendee stopped by the booth. We will run an A/B test on:  “It was nice to meet you last week” and “Thank you for visiting our booth”.
  • The Design mirrors elements of the trade show booth graphics. (This one can be tricky, especially if your company has multiple booths that don’t all look alike. In that case, you should just rely solely on company branding.) TIP: Another thing I’ve seen work well is to include an image of your booth giveaway item if it’s unique and memorable.
  • The Content is short and to the point. A quick thank you, a link to the online Flash demo of the company’s product, a toll-free number, and a “I want someone to call me” button that drives them to a form. We also use this chance to introduce them to the name of their salesperson and include all the necessary contact details. (In case you’re wondering, we’re using the Signatures feature of Eloqua to make this happen.)
• After one week we check to see if the recipient clicked through the email to the demo or the contact form. If they did, we know that they’re now being followed up by the salesperson because of some other cool features we have in place. If they did not click through, we send them a plain text version of the initial email with a different subject line. 
• After two weeks we check again to see if they clicked through and if not, we add them to the educational nurturing program.

This may seem like a very simple (overly simple?) solution and I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a lot of room for growth. However, this ties back to my previous post (Don’t Be An Overachiever) in that we’re starting small to get something off the ground. For the past two years the client hasn’t had anything in place for consistent event follow-up. Now that we have this small solution in place we can focus on building out more complexity going forward.

How are you following up with your events? Do you have any ideas we should consider adding into the next round of edits in this program?

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I hate not getting confirmation for an event that I have registered to attend – or worse, not getting any pre-event details at all. So, trust me, I was disheartened to hear from attendees of an event that my team hosted last fall that they hadn’t received any email confirmation details.

 Attendee: “We never received instructions on where to go?”

 Me: “You didn’t get an email two days ago from us? We didn’t get any bouncebacks?”

 Attendee: “Who was it from?”

 Me: “Our SVP of Marketing.”

 Attendee: “Who is that? Never heard of him, must have deleted it.”

Big lesson learned. In email marketing, the FROM line is important. I would argue that it is the single most important element in building trust with the recipient of your email message. In fact, your email FROM line could be preventing you from even getting in the door. Consider the following about your FROM line:

• Opportunity to build loyalty. Always have your brand represented in the FROM line no matter what. People will recognize your company or product brand before they remember an individual person’s name. When in doubt on what to do with your FROM line – just make it your brand – it is familiar.
   
• Match follow-up communications. If a human being will be following up on the email communication, the FROM line is a great opportunity to build affinity to that person’s name and warm up receipt of the phone call or message. Again, ensure the brand is represented.
   
• Consider your relationship. Who are you talking to? Is it someone who you just met? Is it a customer you are currently doing business with? Is it a strategic partner? The relationship could be a big determining factor for your FROM line. For example, if they just opted-in to receive communications from your company and you are sending a welcome message – trust me – they probably don’t know any of your sales reps. But, they are more likely to remember your brand at that point in time. If they are further along in the evaluation process or business relationship – they may be more responsive to an individual that they know.

• TEST, optimize, and then be consistent. Of course, there are never any absolutes. Testing your FROM line can give you a big lift in open rates and click through rates. One client saw a 37% increase in open rates alone by adding the brand to the FROM line. Formats to test out:

From: Eloqua

From: Jennifer Horton, Eloqua

From: Jen, Eloqua

From: Jen with Eloqua

Consider this –  I got this email last week: 

It was from Apple iTunes Store…I immediately right-clicked to get those images to see what the latest offer was…

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