How ActivePipe trains 40k agents with over 80 webinars every month
Leading a fast-growing email marketing platform that helps real estate agents and brokerages realize their full potential is time-consuming work – just ask Cameron Brown. He’s the Director of Customer Success at ActivePipe, and he knows how it feels when there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done.
That’s why he turned to eWebinar, which allows him to create interactive presentations that ActivePipe’s customers and employees can watch whenever they want – without sacrificing quality or engagement. Cameron sat down with us to talk about his journey with eWebinar, explaining how it frees up his time so that he can focus on other things.
Hi, Cameron! Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. Can you tell me about the problems that ActivePipe encountered before adopting eWebinar?
Sure. I was the first CSM in the company, and there just weren’t enough hours in the day. We had tons of customers in the beginning, and we were limited on how much time we could devote to hosting webinars, talking to customers, and training them on how to use the product.
“Before eWebinar, we were running at capacity.”
We were running at capacity; we couldn’t get in front of everyone as they came on board. Our business grew a lot over the first year or two, with individual agents and then smaller brokerages coming on board, so we needed a way to get in front of all those people because we couldn't sit down with all of them individually as they signed up with us.
With eWebinar, we can build an automated repeatable process that allows us to show customers how to use ActivePipe from a lot of different vantage points – from the standpoint of an agent, marketing team, etc. It allows us to get in front of more people without scheduling webinars that would take up an entire day on the CSM calendar.
It allows us to replicate the training we used to do in-person with our agents. We can scale that out and do it in a way that’s meaningful not only for our strategic customers, but also for individual agents. We want the experience to be fantastic for everyone, and eWebinar makes that possible. It also opens up the ability for us to be more strategic with our webinars.
It’s great to hear that you’re doing in-depth, dedicated customer training. Did you offer that previously, or is that something you’re able to do because of eWebinar?
That’s definitely a new offering that we’ve been able to add through eWebinar. Before, those trainings would be one-offs and we would do them on Zoom. We needed a way to have that sort of education within the app, but we also needed the additional avenues of having it over email, having it as a video. With eWebinar, we’re able to incorporate all of that together and direct people to that resource. We’ve been able to add in tool tips, callouts, and takeaways that people can use after the training, so they’re not just joining to hear someone talk about how to use ActivePipe; they’re joining because of the extra resources that they’re going to gain by spending an additional 30 minutes with us.
What are all the different ways that you use eWebinar today?
We’ve expanded from our first use case, which was to basically train agents, teams, and marketing teams on how to use the product.
“We also use eWebinar for internal training.”
Now we also host our internal training within eWebinar, and host webinars specially for our larger customers because they have unique needs and setups. This lets those customers continuously invite new agents and teams to the webinars as they join their brokerages, and that evergreen content is always available to them. We also do a lot of new product releases; we’re hosting one this upcoming week on a new feature that we’ve been working on, so I’ll be leading a webinar talking about that, which we’re going to pre-record.
How are your enterprise customers reacting to this offering?
Our customers love it because they understand their agents and what their training needs really require. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach where people have to make an in-person training or they have to make a Zoom class that you schedule each month. We needed a way to reach beyond the 20-30% of agents who were actually going to join those things.
“Even though the webinar is recorded, we can still engage with customers in an authentic manner – just like we would if we were there with them in person and answering their questions.”
eWebinar is a fantastic way for us and brokerages to collaborate on training programs. We actually have a couple that we’ve partnered with on content.
How do you determine what content you automate with your webinars and what type of content you do live?
We like to automate trainings that have to do with the early adoption of ActivePipe – how you get contacts, how you build an email, how you send that email, how you interpret reports, how you see who the people are that are perhaps new buyers or sellers that we’re identifying in your account.
“People who join our eWebinars are sticking around until the end because of the engagement provided.”
We automate those things because they're relevant to everyone. We like to make sure that if multiple people are asking the same question, we’re automating that because it’s going to be a common occurrence. That frees us up to be more strategic in the webinars that we do run live. Those are more what I would call “best practice at the moment.” For example, a lot of questions that we get from an email marketing standpoint are around deliverability – what makes an email hit the right placement in an inbox? What causes things to go awry? We’re able to host those kinds of webinars for customers live, so that we can really provide that value and drive engagement.
What are the benefits you’ve seen from using eWebinar?
The first thing that comes to mind is that people and agents who join our eWebinars are actually sticking around to the end. That’s not always the case when you host a webinar! It’s one thing to get people to show up, and it’s another to get them engaged so they stay until the end. The nice thing about eWebinar is that we’ve been able to do that with the callouts, with takeaways, with the integration that we have with eWebinar and Slack. Our customer success team is running these every single day, but we don’t necessarily need to join every one of them because when a customer asks a question it goes directly to our internal Slack system. We’re able to answer those questions live while they’re in the training. So I think the differentiator for us is the ability to have callouts and content that’s really valuable pre-loaded into a webinar, and then the ability to answer questions for them in real-time as it’s happening.
How have ActivePipe’s employees been impacted by eWebinar?
It’s really as simple as saving people time each day.
“eWebinar has saved us tons of hours because we don’t have to host the same webinar over and over again.”
Our team is managing a pretty high customer load right now; there are a lot of requests from individual agents, teams, and brokerages. If we were to say “yes” to all of those, that would create a situation where our team would be in back-to-back trainings all day long. That’s not really feasible, because training isn’t the only thing that our team is responsible for doing. So eWebinar has saved our team tons of hours because they don’t have to host the same webinar over and over again.
What do you love most about eWebinar?
I love the experience it gives our customers, and that it lets them get trained on their own schedule. I also love that each webinar’s chat integrates into Slack. This means we don't have to have our team operating in a bunch of different apps.
“I love that each webinar integrates into Slack.”
We're constantly in Slack all day. We have someone who is assigned every other week to manage the questions that come through, but we all have access to that channel so that if someone is out of the office or in a meeting, anyone can jump in and answer those questions. That does wonders for our team internally – from a morale, ease-of-use, and workflow standpoint – and also for our customers because they can get their questions answered quickly.
Who would you recommend eWebinar to?
I would recommend eWebinar to any team or brokerage that is focused on their customers and wants to provide a high-quality training experience that really delivers.
That’s great, Cameron. I’m happy to hear that eWebinar is working so well for ActivePipe!
Are you a real estate professional who wants to take your business to the next level? Be sure to check out all of the amazing things that ActivePipe can offer you!
…And if you’re a business leader looking to offer presentations, training, and onboarding around the clock – all while offering a personalized interactive experience – click here to get started with eWebinar!
