Demand Generation for Webinar Registration

Overview

SmartAcre® helped our client, BioDiscovery, increase the demand for webinars, a crucial piece of their overall marketing strategy, by effectively managing campaigns through their marketing automation platform (HubSpot) and webinar platform (GoToWebinar).

Challenge

• Low number of average webinar registrations to start with
• Challenges promoting to the right persona
• Lack of overall strategy in place for promotion of webinars

Approach

SmartAcre reviewed the client’s past webinar trends to develop a marketing strategy best suited for BioDicovery’s audience. The goal was to acquire additional registrations and convert the registrants to Sales Qualified Leads post-event. We increased the amount of time spent on pre-webinar promotion, personalized email messaging with the applicable company and lead information, and added an additional follow-up stream of messages after the session. As a result, the number of registrants drastically increased, as did the number of attendees and SQLs. Crafting social messaging to promote the webinar session, including the creation of a new hashtag now associated with all BioDiscovery webinars, generated additional registrants from new and existing leads. Post-registration, SmartAcre added sharing options to the registrants’ confirmation emails for additional visibility.

Webinar Registration Landing Page

All of these tactics were strategized based on SmartAcre’s research to ensure messages were being sent on the most optimal day at the most optimal time, allowing for the best open and click rates using HubSpot reporting, email personalization, and workflow capability.

Email Invitation Strategy

The emails used to invite prospects to the webinar not only utilized Smart CTAs to display personalized information, for example, including the recipient’s department or company name, but the email subject lines were optimized, too. We analyzed previous emails sent by BioDiscovery to identify the two most optimal times to send emails within the work week, in order to maximize the open rate of these webinar invitation emails. For the first time slot, we emailed everyone with “Invitation Email Round 1: Subject Line A.” Then, anyone who did not open that first email was emailed again during the second most optimal time slot during that week. The email we sent them contained the exact same copy as the first one but used a different subject line – “Subject Line B.” This helped to increase overall invitation open rates.

Invitation Email Round 1
Subject line A = “New Webinar, Just For You!”
Subject line B = “Efficient Reporting Within ACMG Standards Is Key”

For later rounds of invitations being sent to contacts that still had not registered for the webinar, we styled the email to appear as though it was being sent directly and personally from a member of the BioDiscovery team and appeared to be a forwarded version of the first invitation email.

Invitation Email Round 2
Subject line = “FW: Webinar Tomorrow”

Social Media Tactics

After working with our design team to put together graphics promoting the webinar and using a consistent hashtag for all webinar-related tweets, we saw an increase in social media interactions and followers. Overall, BioDiscovery’s Twitter audience tripled through webinar-related promotions and similarly styled tweets.

Webinar Promo Tweet (One Example)

Webinar Follow-Up Strategy

Immediately following the webinar, an automated thank-you message was sent to all attendees and included personalized content based on the individual’s in-webinar survey responses. Due to the short time frame between the webinar ending and the email being sent, the recording was not yet available to share. Therefore, we offered a trial request of the software that the attendees had just seen for any lead ready to take the next step in the buyer’s journey. On average, these emails received a 7% click-through rate.

Once the webinar recording was available, we emailed all registrants the landing page link to access the video. The landing page was shared on social media and in the monthly newsletters sent to all opted-in contacts, regardless of their webinar registration status; however, the landing page utilized HubSpot’s smart content. Based on the individual viewing the landing page, the experience would slightly differ. Someone visiting the landing page who did not register for the webinar would be prompted with a form to provide their information before viewing. Once they submitted the form and could access the video, these visitors would also see a call-to-action to download a related piece of content. Registrants would skip the form since we already had their information and would instead see a call-to-action to download a trial of the software. We used HubSpot Smart CTAs so that attendees would see a different call-to-action based on whether or not they had already requested a trial from the previous email.

Outcomes

Want more? Learn how SmartAcre redesigned BioDiscovery’s website to improve traffic, conversions, and user experience with HubSpot!

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