Leaving money on the table
Many organisations are using webinars as an additional channel to keep in touch with customers and prospects and to open up new markets. But they don’t always follow up properly after the event. And that means missing potential sales and wasting ROI.
Our MD, Andi Catt, talks below about how we help our clients to maximise the ROI from their webinars.
It is a sad and unavoidable fact that a good percentage of those who register to attend a webinar are not actually able to attend on the day, mainly due to shifting priorities. We have always believed that if a prospect was sufficiently interested to register in the first instance, this is a buying signal. We always recommend that any webinar follow up includes not only those who attend but those who register but don’t attend. This would include both cancellations and ‘no shows’.
It’s vital to have good data capture at the point of registration to enable effective follow up. This includes an opt-in for communication, an email address and a telephone number.
In most cases, webinar platforms can be configured to report on the time that delegates spend on the webinar and this is really useful intelligence to have when making the follow up calls. We can then manage the conversations differently between those who sat through most or all of the webinar and those who dropped off very early.
It’s great if recordings of the webinar can be made available so that anyone who didn’t manage to make it or wants to share the content with a colleague can do so.
It is also very helpful in the follow-up calls to be able to offer participants a PDF copy of the webinar presentation deck in case they missed any key points or would like to share it with colleagues.
From the list of those who attended, it is worth filtering out existing customers so Sales Managers can call them, and it is worth reviewing the list to exclude any competitors or channel partners. This generally leaves us with the prospects and lapsed customers to call.
It is important to take a different approach depending on whether we are calling someone who attended, someone who attended and dropped off or someone who didn’t attend:
If they attended, we call to establish whether they got all of their questions answered, and whether they would like a copy of the deck. We ask for feedback on the content. We engage with a few questions around their role and how the topic of the webinar relates to their role. And we find out whether they would find it useful to have a brief one2one with a Sales Manager, or if they have technical questions, one of the Technical Sales Managers.
If they dropped off early, we politely ask why, checking to see if there were connectivity issues or if there was an issue with the content. We offer copies of the presentation and/or a link to the recorded webinar. As always we try to find out how the topic relates to their role and responsibilities and offer a one2one with a sales or technical colleague. If it transpires that the topic is not relevant to them, we ask whether there are other colleagues to whom it would be relevant and get a referral.
If they didn’t attend we ask whether this was due to a change in diary priorities or if the topic is no longer of interest. And then proceed as above.
Always treat technical questions and pricing requests as buying signals.
Where the audience is international, even if the webinar was delivered in English, where possible, we follow up in the native language. Our team is global, with native speakers of over 20 languages working in all time zones. At the early stages of building engagement with prospects, we find that it is more effective to speak with prospects in their native language if at all possible.
If you would like to find out more about the services we offer and how we can help your business grow, please give us a call on +44 1489 669500 or drop us a line to info@thecallbusiness.com.