Tag Archives: webinar

Act-On Review: Demand Generation with Webinar Integration

Webinars are a proven way to generate and nurture leads. To make webinars logistics easier, I’d love to see a proper integration between Demand Generation systems and Webinar systems such as Webex Event Center or GoToWebinar (see my comment on Ken Molay’s webinar blog). Today they are separate so you are copying information back and forth, or you have to do an expensive custom integration.

Act-On logoI’ve asked around, and today some people use the webinar system to send invitations and reminders and capture registrations, others do most of that within their demand generation system.

In the first case, you have an integrated process within the webinar system, including accurate reports on attendance. But your Demand Generation system is where you want to create a complete prospect profile, including email clicks and form submits. Also, you may want to export some campaign information (such as attendance) to Salesforce.com. This is often possible, but involves a lot of manual work.

In the second case, you capture the prospect information in the right place, but the Demand Generation system is not aware of the Webinar system. Therefore it takes more work than necessary to run your webinar campaign.

Act-On Demand Generation System

Today was the first time I saw an actual solution for this problem: Act-On is a relatively new player in the Demand Generation market. However, they come with good credentials: they’re funded by Cisco (owner of Webex), the CEO and engineering team come from Responsys (a leading marketing software vendor) and they have a seasoned executive team. Currently they have about 15 customers, from smaller companies to big names like BroadVision.

Their product is focused on small to medium size companies, so they’re not trying to compete with Eloqua or similar high-end products. Act-On Enterprise pricing starts at $500 per month (professional starts at $15 per month).

Act-On Enterprise includes most of the demand generation features that you’d expect, such as:

  • Email marketing
  • Drip email campaigns
  • Form and Landing page builder
  • Lead scoring
  • Reporting
  • Integration with Salesforce.com

But the unique feature is their integration with Webex. Read on…

Webex Webinar Integration

Act-On has a standard integration with Webex. Most of their customers use Webex Event Center. You can manage the entire webinar process from within Act-On. Only the actual delivery takes place in Webex:

  • Promotion: Act-On
  • Registration: Act-On
  • Delivery: Webex
  • Follow-up: Act-On

Normally these are silos that are disconnected, and now they are integrated, including end-to-end analytics. You can schedule the webinar from within Act-on (no need to login to Webex), and create a registration page, email invitation, repeat invitation, reminders and follow-up.

Act-On Home Screen Act-On lead source report Act-On webinar attendance report

The Act-On home screen, lead source report, and attendance report

There are several cool features, such as the automatic inclusion of the webinar details in the email invitation. Also, you can generate dedicated registration page URLs to give to partners or to use in advertising, so you can see the source of the registrations.

Another useful feature is that it can update the Salesforce.com Campaign status: sent, received, registered, attended. This requires the ‘Marketing’ add-on in the Salesforce Professional Edition.

Conclusion

This is by no means a comprehensive review of Act-On, it is based on a short demo. However, I was impressed with the breadth of functionality, the ease of use, and the unique webinar integration. So take a look at it when you’re looking for a demand generation system and you do a lot of webinars. I’ve also added them to my list of Demand Generation software vendors.

My question to you:
Is webinar integration the next required feature for Demand Generation systems?

Web Conferencing and Webinar Software: Bundle or Best-of-Breed?

Most B2B tech companies use Web Conferencing software for both sales presentations and marketing webinars. Both activities use the same coreĀ  functionality: sharing a slide deck or sharing your desktop. But there are many additional features that are unique to each type of meeting. For example, a ‘meet now’ feature is important for sales presentations, and a ‘Q&A’ feature is essential for webinars.

However, it seems that many B2B companies have a single web conferencing solution, rather than a specific one for sales purposes, and a specific one for webinars. I wonder whether selecting two solutions wouldn’t be a better option.

Webinar Platforms

Ken Molay at Webinar Success has a top-3 of preferred webinar platforms:

All three include standard or optional features that are required for webinars:

  • Support for large audiences (100+)
  • Registration pages
  • Hiding attendee list from attendees
  • Collecting attendee feedback (e.g. speed up / slow down)
  • Polling
  • Q&A
  • Recordings
  • Practice-mode
  • Voice over the Internet
  • Reporting (attendance, chat transcript)

Yesterday I stumbled upon a company called BrightTALK that offers a solution specifically for webinars. Next week I will attend a webinar hosted on their platform to see what that looks like. One 30-minute webinar per month is free, while their premium package supports unlimited 90-minute webinars (one at a time).

In addition to the technology providers there are many service providers such as On24, but that doesn’t match with my DIY marketing philosophy ;- )

Web Conferencing Platforms

Ken’s top-3 vendors also a solution for sales presentations. Webex offers Meeting Center and MeetMeNow, Citrix offers GoToMeeting, and in Adobe Connect Pro you can configure a meeting room specifically for sales presentations.

In my experience sales people love simplicity: just click a button to start a meeting, and automatically provide a conference call number. Also, they prefer desktop sharing over uploading a PPT. This is how WebEx MeetMeNow and GoToMeeting work, while Adobe uses a permanent and personal meeting room URL, and does not integrate conference calling. Our sales people were much happier with GoToMeeting than with Adobe Connect Pro.

For our specific situation we need fast desktop sharing, because we are showing very dynamic demos. In our experience GoToMeeting is superior for this, with WebEx as a close second. Connect is trailing, just like a whole range of more affordable (or free) solutions. I’ve tried DimDim, and their desktop sharing was a little choppy.

After some research I came up with this list of affordable vendors:

And these companies provide a free service:

The Budget Solution

If speedy desktop sharing is not so important to you, you can save a lot of money by using any of these cheap or free web conferencing solutions and work with WebEx, Citrix, Adobe or BrightTALK for webinars. Especially Citrix provides great value with unlimited webinars for $99 per month.

The All-in-One Solution

When you go for a corporate deal with one of the top-3 providers, you often get both Web Conferencing and Webinar functionality in one package. WebEx, GoToMeeting Corporate and Adobe Connect Pro are all in the $4000+ per year range. If you spend that amount of money, it makes sense to make good use of the offered functionality. However, no solution is perfect for all needs: for example, we found Adobe Connect Pro ideal for online training, good for webinars, and so-so for sales presentations. And we found GoToMeeting Corporate ideal for sales presentations, average for webinars, and not so good for online training.

The Best-of-Breed Solution

When you have high demands for both sales presentations and webinars, it may be better to go with best-of-breed vendors. We will probably go with GoToMeeting for sales presentations, while we still have to make a choice for webinars. We like the price of GoToWebinar, but not the quality of the recordings. So maybe we’ll use Brainshark or Articulate to create stand-alone recordings, rather than posting the live event as-is.