What problems were you struggling with before you came across eWebinar?
We use webinars to educate and engage with Later customers throughout their customer journey. Before eWebinar, we were only able to reach a fragment of our customers by running a maximum of one live webinar a week, which was already a lot of work next to all the other strategies we were working on.
Time zones were often an issue too. Customers in Australia couldn't join a webinar live since our team is mostly based in Canada. We wanted all of our customers to be able to have the same interactive, live experience, but that would mean having to run many more sessions in multiple time zones, multiple times a day. It just wasn’t possible.
There were so few attendees relative to the size of our customer base, but for the ones who joined the impact was great. We knew customers were hungry for webinars because they were asking for more, but it didn't feel like the ROI was appropriate for the effort spent. I wanted to create diverse webinar content for different stages in the customer journey, but our time was being eaten up by delivering the same one webinar over and over again. We wanted to 10x our reach, but it wasn't scalable.
We are a remote team. So, when someone needs to travel and work from another city or country, the entire schedule has to change. Plus, we can't bring all the equipment with us everywhere so live webinars became even more challenging.
Finally, we wanted a better, branded user interface for our customers and not force them to have to download software to join a webinar. Zoom was not very customizable.
What finally prompted you to look for a solution?
As our webinar audience grew, I had to get other team members to help because there were hundreds of attendees and a lot of chat messages. We wouldn’t be able to get back to everyone during the live webinar and it was hard to look up who people were so we could get back to them afterwards. One live webinar a week was costing multiple people time they could have been spending doing something else.
We are a small customer success and engagement team, with limited time and resources between all of our initiatives. Webinars is just one of them, we’re not dedicated to just running webinars. These problems were costing us at least a day and a half a week. I was already thinking about how we could automate our webinars without knowing there was a solution.
Why did you choose eWebinar?
It’s super easy to use. I can create my own super sleek registration page in minutes without having to go to other busy teams, like Creative or Web. It's really nice how customizable things are. I can use our brand colors, logo, banners, and images.
Plus, everything is so much easier for our customers. It's a much nicer experience than Zoom.
But the main reason we chose eWebinar was for its interactions and chat. We didn't want to give up our live webinars because chatting and interacting with customers was the main reason we were running them in the first place.
Even if a presentation is the same, attendees are always different. The feedback we get and the back and forth we have with them in each session is super valuable. It’s how we learn how to increase the value of our product. Engaging in a two-way conversation is essential.
So posting a video of a webinar for people to watch later wasn’t an option?
Hosting a video on a landing page as a way to “automate” our webinars would have defeated the whole purpose. We already have high-quality educational videos, and our customers find those really valuable. But the kind of feedback, connections and conversations we are able to have with our customers through interactions and chat is why webinars are different from static videos. You simply can't replace one with the other as they are delivering value in very different ways. Webinars are meant to be conversational and interactive, whereas videos tend to be shorter and more instructional.
Besides, educational videos have to be scripted, planned, and can take months to produce. Webinars are instant. I can do them myself and iterate quickly based on feedback by recording another video.
How do you use eWebinar today?
We create two to five new webinars each quarter and use eWebinar to automate them. We set up the registration pages and then use other platforms and channels to get the word out to our customers via campaigns or social media. We manage the entire process without involving other teams or team members.
Once a webinar is live, one person spends about an hour a day monitoring chat. Every question is answered either live or through email, no question is missed.
We recently started to use eWebinar for demos too. If there’s a user who wants a demo of our product but we’re not available for a live one-on-one call, they can easily register for a demo when it's convenient for them. Through chat, we always know if we need to follow up and answer additional questions.
What features do you love most about eWebinar?
I love the Analytics dashboard and how easy it is to see stats right away. I love the customized welcome messages and follow up emails and how I can set expectations for when I’ll be able to respond to attendees, in chat or by email. I love how the registration pages look and how I don't need to ask anyone to set them up for me. And I love the interface! It's pretty, clean, and modern, just like other products I use every day.
What are the top three benefits you have gotten from using eWebinar?
First, we have saved so much time. One eWebinar saves up to 10 hours a week. We spend an hour a day monitoring chat across all of our webinars instead of spending a day and a half to host just one live.
Second, reduced stress! The day of a live webinar is a stressful day. A one hour webinar would take half a day for prep, then afterward I would feel exhausted. It’s mentally draining to coordinate so many things to make sure the event runs perfectly. Now, we actually enjoy the process and are eager to do more.
An unexpected benefit is we are creating a lot more content with the time and mental space we’ve gotten back, which means we’re able to reach a lot more customers because of the diversity of webinars we now offer.
The quality of our webinars has increased too. We put more effort and time into planning and producing them and are super motivated by the great feedback we are getting. We run analytics monthly to see what resources are popular, what people are asking, and what interactions are effective. Then we plan which webinars need to be adjusted or re-recorded.
Honestly, I was just hoping to get some of my time back with eWebinar. I didn’t understand how much of an effect the product would have. Before I would run two live webinars a month and get a thousand registrants, now I get six thousand registrants in a month.
