Download The Combined Power of Marketing Automation and

The Combined Power of
Marketing Automation and Webinars
Audio & Web Conferencing
Introduction
What makes marketing a science today? It used to be an art form, didn’t it? Marketers used to spend a significant
amount of time on the look-and-feel of a message or campaign, but not much time on the delivery or subsequent
actions required to facilitate a sale.
Marketers can no longer give anecdotal stories about the reported “success” of a campaign or program. Today it is
all about the results – measurable, reportable results.
With this shift in focus from the look-and-feel of a program to honest, reliable metrics, the tools you use to
deliver your message as well as the technology you use to track success have become quite a hot topic. Experts in
marketing, advertising, content development as well as technology providers are all working closely to integrate all
the components that help maximize results throughout the funnel.
The Value of Webinar Programs
There are many tools available to move prospects through
the funnel faster, but few are more efficient lead qualifiers
than webinar programs. In fact, in MarketingSherpa’s 2011
B2B Marketing Advanced Practices handbook, 92 percent
of respondents indicated that webinars were one of the most
effective means of generating high quality leads (second only
to website design and optimization).
While effective, webinar programs require a commitment
of money and time. To justify the investment, you will need
reliable metrics to measure the success of your webinar
program:
· The number of prospects registered for your webinar
· The attendance rate for your webinar
· The number of qualified leads identified for follow-up
· Revenue and ROI associated with your webinar program
Managing your webinar program through your marketing
automation platform has the potential to improve these
metrics and lower costs, but your marketing automation
solution doesn’t automatically “talk” to the tool you use to
conduct your webinars.
The Problem: Disconnected Tools
While webinars are a valuable part of the marketing mix,
your webinar platform (and the valuable data it captures)
is inherently isolated from your marketing automation
system. This disconnect presents a number of challenges
for marketers running webinar programs, including:
· Confusing participant experience
· Less accurate attendance data
· Delayed webinar follow-up activities
· Manual export and import of webinar data
Confusing participant experience + less accurate
attendance data + more manual work + delayed follow-up
= less effective webinars and decreased ROI
CONFUSING PARTICIPANT EXPERIENCE
When using a webinar platform that is not integrated with
marketing automation, marketers are forced to choose
between two not ideal solutions:
1. Using their webinar platform’s system for registration and confirmation emails; or
2. Including a generic “join meeting” link in confirmation emails from their marketing automation system
Neither option provides a great experience for prospects or
for marketers …
With the first option, marketers are forced to sacrifice
the branding and tracking capabilities of their marketing
automation platform and prospects may be confused by a
look-and-feel and registration experience that is inconsistent
with their other interactions with the company.
While the second option allows marketers to maintain a
consistent look-and-feel across their programs, it requires
attendees to complete the webinar platform’s registration
form when joining the live event.
LESS ACCURATE ATTENDANCE DATA
Requiring two registrations not only creates a poor experience
for prospects and risks decreasing attendance rates, it also
compromises the accuracy of webinar attendance data. For
example, an attendee may have provided their business
email on the initial registration form, but entered a personal
email address (or even bogus data) when joining the
webinar. Capturing accurate data on who attended your
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webinar is crucial to measuring engagement, scoring leads,
and moving prospects through the pipeline. And, isn’t that
why you invested in the webinar program in the first place?
MORE MANUAL WORK
Without an integrated solution, webinar attendance and
interactivity data is trapped in the webinar platform and
marketers must manually move it into their marketing
automation system. At a minimum, this process involves
downloading CSV files from one platform, uploading them
into the other and doing the necessary field cross-mappings.
Very often it can mean copying and pasting items from fields
in one open window on your computer screen to fields in
another — or even manually keying items one at a time.
Clearly, this process is time-consuming, error-prone and
tedious — with continual pressure to do more with less,
marketers don’t have time to waste manually moving data
from one platform to another.
DELAYED FOLLOW-UP
A lack of integration also delays time-sensitive follow-up
activities after the webinar. Without an integrated solution,
valuable webinar data is trapped in the webinar platform
while time ticks away and leads grow stale.
Not following up fast enough — for example, to someone
in a webinar who requests a sales call — could result in a
missed opportunity to qualify and close a sale. And, missed
opportunities to win business mean less effective webinar
programs and lower ROI for marketers.
The Value of an Integrated Solution
To make the most of webinar programs, marketers need
a webinar platform that seamlessly integrates with their
marketing automation system. The ideal integration allows
marketers to use the right tool for each part of the process
and solves the challenges outlined above.
THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS:
BRANDING + ACCURATE ATTENDANCE DATA
Marketers no longer have to choose between consistent
branding and accurate attendance data. With an integrated
solution, they can have the best of both worlds: the branding
and tracking capabilities of their marketing automation
system plus their webinar platform’s ability to provide
each registrant with a unique “join meeting” link to more
accurately capture attendance data. In addition to giving
marketers the best of both worlds, this approach ensures
that prospects have a seamless and familiar experience.
AUTOMATIC IMPORT OF WEBINAR DATA
When their webinar platform can “talk” to their marketing
automation system, marketers don’t have to waste time,
and possibly make errors, manually moving data from one
platform to the other — webinar data is automatically
captured in the marketing automation system.
FASTER, MORE TARGETED FOLLOW-UP
With an integrated solution, webinar data is immediately
available in the marketing automation platform, allowing
for timely follow-up actions to leverage an opportunity that
resulted from the webinar. Integration also allows for more
targeted follow-up — decision rules can be extended so
that, for example, prospects receive a different follow-up
email not only based on whether or not they attended the
webinar, but also on how long they attended the webinar
or other engagement metrics.
More Effective Webinars with ReadyTalk + Eloqua
Because best-in-class solutions are often developed by
different vendors, integration between them was once
manual, cumbersome and costly. To address this challenge,
Eloqua has developed Cloud Connectors — cutting edge
solutions that enable fast, hassle-free integration between
Eloqua and other key business systems.
ReadyTalk was one of the first webinar platforms to
seamlessly integrate into Eloqua. By building the
ReadyTalk Register Attendee Cloud Connector and the
ReadyTalk Query Attendance Cloud Connector into your
Program Builder workflow, you enable ReadyTalk to “talk”
to Eloqua – automatically incorporating valuable webinar
data into your revenue-driving machine.
This integration allows you to:
· Leverage the branding and tracking capabilities of Eloqua for webinar registration and emails
· Improve the attendee experience by only requiring prospects to register once
· Run an engaging live webinar for an audience of up to 3,000 people
· Increase attendance data accuracy with registrant-
specific “join meeting” links
· Save time and speed follow-up by automatically capturing webinar data in Eloqua
With an integrated solution, there is no delay in getting
the data associated with your webinar campaign into the
hands of your sales team. The rules you put in place for
lead scoring and nurturing are already active. You can even
build more sophisticated follow-up workflows driven by
audience engagement metrics such as the duration of time
a prospect spent on your webinar.
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What does this mean to a marketer?
Summary
· A seamless experience for prospects
· More accurate webinar data
· No manual upload of attendee lists
· No manual scoring of webinar leads
· No delay in follow-up
· Better webinar program results
Webinars provide a compelling option for moving prospects
through the funnel faster, but — as with any other marketing
program — measuring effectiveness and maximizing ROI
are critical. By choosing a webinar platform and a marketing
automation system that can “talk” to each other, marketers can
make the most of the time and money they invest in webinar
programs. An integrated approach allows you to use the right
tool for each part of the process, resulting in: a seamless and
familiar experience for prospects; freedom from the tedious
task of manually moving data between two systems; and
immediate access to accurate webinar data to speed lead
scoring and follow-up activities. These benefits have a positive
impact on key metrics like number of registrants, attendance
rate, and number of qualified leads – ultimately driving more
efficient webinar programs and better ROI.
Streamlining Your Webinar Program with the Eloqua
Cloud Connectors for ReadyTalk:
Set Up Webinar in ReadyTalk
(Pre-Registration)
Send Invitations through Eloqua
Learn More
Learn more about how the Eloqua Cloud Connectors for
ReadyTalk can help make your webinar programs more
efficient and effective. Visit: www.readytalk.com/eloqua
About ReadyTalk
Take Registrations through Eloqua
Send Confirmation and Reminder Emails
through Eloqua
Receive Back Unique “Join Meeting” Link from
ReadyTalk (Cloud Connector)
Pass Registration Data to ReadyTalk
(Cloud Connector)
Receive Back Attendance Data from ReadyTalk
(Cloud Connector)
Send Follow-Up Emails and Drive Workflows
through Eloqua
Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Denver, Colo.,
ReadyTalk delivers audio and web conferencing services
that empower customers to successfully conduct audio and
web conferences of all sizes – from ad hoc meetings to large
webinars. ReadyTalk combines ease of use with sophisticated
marketing tools to increase audience engagement, event ROI
and meeting productivity. Unlike other services, ReadyTalk
gives customers a full suite of tools for training, collaboration,
webinars and more. You’ll always have access to the right
features when you need them, no need to upgrade to another
product. Please call toll free 800.843.9166 or visit
www.readytalk.com for more information.
About Eloqua
Eloqua helps clients dramatically accelerate revenue growth
through Revenue Performance Management. Eloqua
provides powerful business insight to inform marketing and
sales decisions today that drive revenue growth tomorrow. The
company’s mission is to make its customers the fastest growing
companies on Earth. Thousands of sales and marketing
professionals rely on the marketing automation power of
Eloqua to improve demand generation and lead management
while driving more qualified leads. Eloqua’s customers
include Adobe, AON, Dow Jones, ADP, Fidelity, Polycom,
and National Instruments. The company is headquartered in
Vienna, Virginia, with offices in Cambridge, San Francisco,
Austin, Toronto, London, Brussels, Frankfurt and Singapore.
For more information, visit www.eloqua.com,
subscribe to the It’s All About Revenue blog, call
866-327-8764, or email [email protected].
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