"Before eWebinar, I was doing one webinar a week. It was like a full-time job – even with an assistant."

Why SurveyConversation believes eWebinar is the 'unicorn' of software

The key to every successful business is happy customers – and a great way to measure customer happiness is through surveys. Although that might sound simple, not all surveys are created equal. 

Business owners and leaders are constantly asking themselves what the optimal number of items in a survey is, how they can improve their response rates, how to battle “survey fatigue,” and how to know they’re asking the right questions. 

It’s a lot to think about, but that’s where Matt Champagne of SurveyConversation comes in. We’re delighted he took time out of his busy schedule to speak with us about how he uses eWebinar. 

Hi, Matt! Thank you for joining me today. Can you begin by telling me about yourself and your company?

Sure, my name is Matt Champagne. I’m a psychologist and former professor, and I was an entrepreneur for many years. I’ve been involved in the digital marketing world for the last nine years or so. My gig has been applying everything that I’ve learned as a professor, scientist, and researcher to digital marketing to help entrepreneurs who are starting their own companies and trying to sell their product. I do this by using the psychology that we know works when it comes to getting an audience, engaging an audience, and keeping customers forever. That’s my moniker – how do you keep your members, clients, patients, and attendees focused on you forever? 

What problems were you struggling with before you found eWebinar?

My main struggle was finding something that was authentic and consistent with what I was teaching. I teach what I call “good psychology,” and a lot of that is missing in the sales process. There are a lot of sales methods that feel icky because they’re used incorrectly.

Even Robert Cialdini, who wrote the great book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” has said digital marketers are using influence principles incorrectly. That's why they not only don’t work, but they feel wrong. They don’t feel like the way in which you’d want to be sold to. 

“I wanted a platform that was honest, and I finally found it with eWebinar.” 

So I'm teaching people how to authentically sell using good psychology. I was looking for a platform which was consistent with that, and it was hard to find because there’s a lot of fakery on a lot of platforms and everyone kind of ignores the fact that you’re sort of tricking people by implying your webinars are live. 

I didn’t want that. I wanted a platform that was honest, and I finally found it with eWebinar. 

People are also very savvy now. The fakery used to work, and the digital marketers still teach those methods because they worked 10 or 12 years ago. We all know “authority, scarcity, reciprocity, social proof,” and they pile those tactics on to try to drive home a sale – I'm sure that worked in the early days like a lot of things did, but it doesn’t anymore. If people don’t trust you, you aren’t going to be able to sell to them.

You’ve used a lot of other webinar platforms in the past. Can you talk about your experiences with those?

I’ve been doing webinars since around 2003. I think GoTo Webinar was the first tool I knew was out there, but as a professor I used that mostly as an informational tool. I moved to Zoom around 2017 when I started selling, and then experimented around with Webinar Ninja, WebinarJam, and some others. 

“When I found eWebinar, I found the true unicorn of software.” 

But when I found eWebinar, I thought, “wow, this is a true unicorn.” Not only among webinar platforms, but just among software. Probably like a lot of your audience, I’ve tried just about everything. I think I first began looking at email platforms and online course platforms in 2012 and there were just so many restrictions. I was banging my head against the wall all the time. Why couldn’t I send the message I wanted to send at the time I wanted to send it? I couldn’t. Those platforms didn’t let me do that; I had to send it two hours or 24 hours or 48 hours later. And why couldn't I send the exact message I wanted? I first had to load it with their branding and then customize it with a little line of text which was placed where no one would see it. Every step of every platform was like that! I finally got over it when I realized that all of those platforms are built by the creator – and in the creator's mind, they think that's the way it should be. So I wasn’t going to change that. 

“When I started using eWebinar, I was amazed. It was exactly how I would build a webinar tool.” 

But when I started using eWebinar, I was so amazed because it was exactly how I would build a webinar tool. Everything was there and I'd say, “I wonder if they have this…” and then I would see it. And even a couple times when I thought I stumped you, I hit the chat box and was directed to where that feature was! So I haven’t stumped you yet! Every single thing I would want, where I would want it, is there. So to me it’s incredibly intuitive and makes a lot of sense.  

How do you use eWebinar today?

This past spring, I kicked off a single message that I'm trying to get out – it’s about the Cialdini principles that I mentioned earlier. The point is to get it out to the world that everyone is taught “authority, scarcity, reciprocity, and social proof,” but the original author of those tactics says people are teaching those wrong. And when you teach those wrong, you drive people away. You don't get the sales, you don't get the outcomes. But if you do it the way he taught, the opposite is true – you attract people, you get more sales, you build more trust. I wanted to get that out to as many people as possible, so that was the first webinar. I do have an offer at the end for an extended course where I go through all eight principles. So that’s been our first foray into this and I'm working with some partners to promote it. It’s easy to promote because it’s something they want to get out there. I can give them a link to the show and they can send it to their audience as well. It’s getting tremendous response, so I'm very happy. 

What did you do before eWebinar?

I was doing one-at-a-time webinars on Zoom mainly, and it took a lot to do that. People say “well you can just put a webinar together.” But it takes a lot to set up a webinar! Once you have your content and animations and bulk, that’s one thing. But then you have to set it up within Zoom and fix the settings and make sure apps are connected correctly and everything is integrating, and you test it, and then there are breakdowns in the middle of the show and connectivity problems. So even though it sounds easy to just do one webinar a week, it was like a full-time job – even with an assistant who was busy doing that as well.

Then I realized I just didn’t have time for that anymore, so I wanted to do it in a way that made sense. I didn’t need to be live because I was just providing some information, and eWebinar filled in all the gaps with the interactions. In my webinars I always ask my audience questions beforehand, like what’s the biggest reason they came today, what content do they want to learn, etc., and I can do that now with eWebinar during the event, and get them to interact. So it’s just been a really great fit. 

What are the benefits you've seen from using eWebinar?

There are plenty! I guess off the top of my head is the way of talking one-on-one with people. Because that’s what I wanted to do. I was a former university professor, so I'm used to the office hours and one-on-one interactions and the small group dynamics. 

“Real learning and help happen at the one-on-one level – not in big group settings. eWebinar allows me to have those individualized interactions with my audience.” 

Even though I’ve taught classes as large as 500 people, I know that not a lot of learning or help happens there. That really happens at the one-on-one level. So this is just incredible.

I didn't even know there was technology where someone could register for my event and join, and I get a note saying that the person is in the webinar. I click a button and all of a sudden I'm there with them, answering their questions and helping them along. That’s exactly how I want it to be. I want to present the information – not repeat it thousands of times – and then I want to be there with them so I can answer their questions and listen to their examples. It's just been a lot of fun. 

“eWebinar allows me to connect with my audience. I’ve talked via email with many of them, shared stories about college days. That would never happen in a regular webinar.” 

I can't tell you how many times I’ve been in there when people just start up a conversation and get connected. I’ve talked via email with many of them, shared stories about college days and such. And that would never happen in a regular webinar. That's made possible by the one-on-one interaction. Of course some people don’t want to interact, you’ll ask them a question and they just want to learn. And that’s fine, people are different. They just want to be left alone with no distractions, they aren’t there to make friends. That's fine. But some people do want to reach out and I’m able to be there for those people. 

How do your customers feel about the hybrid format?

They've been universally positive. My own team and JV partners are all enthusiastic about it as well, I think for the same reasons. 

“Cold calling and talking to clients one-on-one is challenging, but eWebinar makes the sales process fun.” 

They see it as an authentic and easy way of selling.  Picking up the phone and cold calling or talking to clients one-on-one is kind of challenging, but this way is a lot of fun. 

You’re also giving the power back to the consumer, which is great for them.

Yes. You give them options right off the bat. They can choose to watch a replay which they can watch at 1.5 speed or skip around, they can watch it live, they can schedule ahead of time. You’re giving them choices, and people love choices. In fact, I don’t know why other products don’t do that. Then you’re giving them the choice to answer questions or not answer questions, etc. There are so many choices for the hosts, but also for the viewers. 

How do you think you’ve helped yourself or your company by implementing eWebinar?

It opens up more doors to things that we hadn’t really thought about doing before. I have so much content – online courses, programs that I’ve done, my book, articles I’ve written over the years, etc. Each one of those could be a little information module that could lead to something bigger.

I have a book I wrote called “The Survey Playbook,” and it’s used by a lot of Fortune 500 companies and universities, but I can put together an evergreen webinar that introduces a few of those topics, like “here are the top 10 mistakes everyone makes on their surveys.” So it gives them something really powerful, something no one else knows, and if they use it and get more response from their customers, more accurate feedback, it could lead to a sale by saying something like “would you like to buy the book” or “would you like to buy my course where I go through all these points individually.” 

“eWebinar has opened doors to webinars I had never even thought about doing before.” 

So now I’m looking at all of my intellectual property; it’s made me realize just how much I have. I have four courses, but actually within each course there are modules. Those are key pieces of IP and I could do a separate webinar on them to then lead people to the book as well. So it’s opened our eyes that we can get this information out to many more folks in a big way. 

What do you love most about eWebinar?

Besides what I’ve already mentioned, the analytics are incredible. Again, it’s everything you could want. 

“Most software tools don’t offer analytics, you have to do everything yourself. But eWebinar provides great analytics. There’s nothing I would add.” 

Most tools don’t offer analytics, you have to do everything yourself. With eWebinar, there is absolutely nothing I would add. It’s so helpful to see​​ everything broken down – here’s how many people watched the replay, how many people scheduled it in advance, how many watched it live, how many dropped off and what they watched, etc. 

“I haven’t had to do any additional analysis because eWebinar’s analytics tool has done everything for me.” 

It saves me hours and hours of time on the analysis, I can just look at the graphs. I haven’t had to do any additional analyses, and now I know my audience and can ask myself what has been more successful – putting the question at minute three, or minute six? Are they answering the poll or the open-ended question? If I change the open-ended questions, which ones are they responding to with deeper answers?

So you can do all sorts of almost real-time analysis, changing things up to get more responses and more engagement. So it’s a great summative analysis of what's going on, but it’s also helping me to informatively improve the experience week by week. 

Who would you recommend eWebinar to? 

I'd recommend it to anyone who truly wants to sell authentically in a way to build trust, in the right way, in a way that they would want to be sold to. 

“I would recommend eWebinar to anyone who wants to sell authentically in the right way – the way that builds trust, and the way they would want to be sold to.” 

If it's all a game to you, if you’re a salesperson who is just trying to get clicks and conversions, and you don’t care if people buy now and want their money back in thirty days, then eWebinar isn’t for you. But if you really want to build relationships with people and give them your best first impression, this is for you. 

Are you a business owner looking to get the most out of your customer surveys? Be sure to check out all the amazing things Survey Conversation can offer you!

...And if you're an entrepreneur who wants to reach a bigger audience while eliminating the grunt work required by hosting repetitive live webinars, click here to get started with eWebinar!