What Happens After the Webinar? Valuable Tips on How to Get the Most ROI from Your Virtual Event

May 2, 2015

Sabrina George

Sabrina George is vice president of marketing at Onstream Media & Infinite Conferencing, divisions of Onstream Media Corp., a leading provider of webinar, web conferencing and streaming media solutions. 

You’ve just nailed it: a flawless hour-long webinar. But, now is not the time to mark the project a success and move on. While the leads are still hot, it’s critical to pounce on the information supplied by the webinar attendees to drive your sales and ensure your ROI.

Sure, a webinar is designed to distribute valuable insight about your products and services, but just as important is obtaining information from customers before and during a webinar. Buried in those nuggets of information are insights into who is interested in your products and services, and sometimes even why.

Thank Them:

So, how do you get started with this critical step in the webinar process? First, it might sound obvious, but be courteous and thank your attendees for taking the time to sit through your event. Send an immediate follow-up email, making sure to include the following information:

·         Incentive fulfillment: If you promise a certain asset to an attendee as a gift for participating in your webinar, you need to follow through on your promise. This often includes distributing content like white papers or free service trials.

·         An archived link to the webinar: Make it easy to access your webinar following the event by providing a link to the archived version. If it won’t be available for a few days or a week, let your attendees know that first as well as when it will be posted online. This will prevent them from having to troll the Web looking for it.

Just as important is thanking those who were registered and didn’t attend. You might send them a message with a sound recording and slides from the presentation, along with a registration link for an upcoming Webinar they might enjoy based on their preference.

Analyze the Data:

Now it’s time to analyze the webinar feedback and metrics to create a list of leads. To do this, sort through the information supplied by your customers in presentation polls, chats, direct messages and Q&A sessions. Make sure your webinar services provider offers the ability to export this data into spreadsheets and other tools following your webinar.

Follow-up Again:

A few days after the Webinar, consider the following tactics to keep the sales conversation going.

Post slides from the Webinar via social media to remind the attendees of key highlights from the webinar.

If someone had technical difficulties during the event, reach out to them personally to see if you can offer your assistance.

Yes, there might be a lot of legwork to get the most out your webinars. But with an advanced webinar services platform, the process to achieving optimal ROI is simple.

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