Interactive Web Presentation

Get Them There with a little extra info.!

Monday, September 15, 2008 by joanna hamilton

Have you ever hosted an event and during your last hours prior, spent hours on the phone and email clarifying the details for the participants, when what you really need to be doing was preparing for the event, itself?

You drive customer acquisition through events, but the marketing tools you use to get them to your event or location can dramatically improve attendance and lead generation.

When you put time into a beautiful html invitation, include links that will provide an on demand presentation that explains how register, how to get there, and what's expected of them once they are there.

Don't assume that what you think is obvious will be obvious to everyone. Of course it's obvious to you--it's your event!

An email-embedded movie or short brainshark presentation can provide the "over your shoulder" instructions that can make all the difference between clarity and confusion for your customers.

Here is how I determine if my instructions have been clear: I imagine my 86-year-old grandmother reading them. If she could rsvp and/or register per my instructions, then I know it's good. Don't assume your typically technically-minded audience will make the same assumptions you do.

Another tip for getting your customers there--provide an incentive. Offer a clue word or key in the registration acknowledgement, and for all who present that clue or key at your event--reward them with something meaningful to them--a coupon to apply towards your services or products, or a handy item that complements either your services, product, or event at hand.

Our customers who have the most success in the customer acquisition process typically are more savvy with the both the information they provide to their prospects, and they way that they provide it.

For more information on how you can implement an effective lead generation process, produce a personalized marketing campaign, or turn around a beautifully executed interactive web presentation, check out http://www.webinarresources.com, or contact me directly at joanna@webinarresources.com.

Blogging in the early morning

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 by Mark Rice

It is almost 4:00 am and I have realized that I have not posted a blog lately. The wonderful thing about blogging is that you can do it at anytime of the day. It is best to blog when it quiet.

Now that I can get my thoughts together, I can start thnking about how I am going to put the presentation together on customer acquisition for my customer this week. We just created a great HTML email with an embedded Brainshark presentation that was recorded by a guest speaker for our customer's event. With this interactive web presentation we can quickly gain viewer's interest and launch a call to action for the viewer to register. We have many types of examples we have created for the customer to create effective lead generation. As I think more about it, the applications we have created are my presentation.

I will blog more as I travel this week and will be posting some interesting new technology that you might want to see and hear as you develop your marketing campaigns. Is the pen mighter than the keyboard for blogging? Stay tuned for the answer.

How To Make Backgrounds in Brainshark Presentations Match Your Web Site

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 by Carolyn Hasenfratz

When you use the "Embed" command to place a Brainshark interactive web presentation on your web site, the default background color for the introductory animation is blue, and the default background color for the slide portion of your presentation is gray. These are nice colors, but you might prefer using the background color of your web site instead.

I have made a sample page of a Brainshark presentation with the default colors on a web page with a lime green background. It takes a brave person to use lime green as a background color, but it's definitely good for demonstration purposes!

Here is a second page showing the blue and gray background colors in the presentation replaced by the lime green background color on the web page.

How is this done? First, find out the hexidecimal code for the background color on your web site. If you're not sure, see my article What the Hex?! How to Match Documents to the Colors of Your Company's Web Site for help.

Next, open the html page that contains the embedded Brainshark presentation in a plain text editor. Look for the following code snippets, and replace the highlighted six-number sequences with your chosen hexidecimal color code:

To see other modifications you can make to the code, click the link "Additional URL Parameters" when the Embed dialog box is open in Brainshark.

Reach Out and Touch Your Customers--They're More Likely to Remember You!

Thursday, June 12, 2008 by joanna hamilton

Two decades ago we used to let our fingers do the walking to find people, fast. Now the power of the web offers many effective processes for lead generation and the telephone still plays a major role in customer acquisition.

We have customers who run a series of live training events. The classes fill up fast, and always have a wait list, so every "no show" represents multiple lost opportunities. In addition to the standard email reminders, we began sending Vontoo reminder calls to all class registrants the day before the training, and the customers love it.

The participants in the classes provide a preferred phone number for the reminder when they register for the class. The director of the training series records her reminder, and through the beauty of Vontoo, we send her reminder to those specified numbers. These calls provide another layer to your personalized marketing campaign.

So, while yes, the days of the 4-inch thick "yellow pages" are quietly slipping by, you can still ensure none of your participants have a chance to forget to attend your carefully planned event or even a web presentation by putting a ring in that ping using a Vontoo reminder call.

Web Video Conferencing

Tuesday, May 27, 2008 by joanna hamilton

Having just recently re-entered the job market at Webinar Resources after a 7-year maternity leave, I have been entertained by many advances in the world of telecommunications and conferencing. Nothing has amazed me more than the advancement of video technology. I remember PictureTel pioneer and President, Norman Gaut, telling us that video would become synonymous with the telephone call, and that the day would arrive in which the technology would resemble a tv broadcast.

Well, he was correct on one front. The technology is astounding. We use interactive web conferencing on our team all the time, and it does look just like a TV broadcast. It's a simple click of the mouse, and there's Mark and Carolyn in St. Louis, while I sip my coffee in Simsbury, CT. Our team meeting is underway, and though I've never met them, I'm part of the team.

Years ago, I always loved the "sell" for videoconferencing, because the technology was so much fun, and it truly helped the customer conduct business. Now, the technology of video is just a given, and the aid to business is the way that Webinar Resources is able to drive customer acquisition by getting hundreds to attend a seminar that is webcast right to their laptop. Technology aside, the sheer logistics of assembling a crowd that large, virtual or not, is amazing, but we do it all the time.

Also amazing is how that web conference crowd is a bit fluent through time. Those who can't attend, live, at the scheduled time, are invited to attend the "webinar for one"--in which they view a video replay from their laptop, at their leisure.

We've come a long way, and who knows, in another 7 years, video may be synonymous with the phone call, but for now, I'm really stoked by the volume of people we can touch with a web presentation because of the effective lead generation we perform weeks before the event. Seven years ago I thought it was a great time to be working with the technology. Now, the technology is proven, and it's a great time to share it so easily with so many.

Embedding Brainshark Presentations

Tuesday, May 27, 2008 by Mark Rice

In the latest release of Brainshark v.16.2, Brainshark has added the ability to embed your Brainshark presentation in a web page or blog.   This is a capability that we refined while working with a joint Brainshark and Webinar Resources' customer.   Our goal was to embed a Brainshark presentation into a registration page to reduce the use of real estate on a landing page and at the same time add an engaging, interactive web presentation to create lead generation.

The early prototypes were designed to embed Brainshark presentations in different langages to support an International set of events for our customer. Customer acquisition increased significantly as the registrant could hear and view the online event communication in their own native language.

Through the use of some HTML and Javascripting, we were able to run Brainshark presentations as soon as the landing page was opened.   The ability to appeal to more than one modality at a time (hearing, seeing), gave the landing page a greater impact and increased registration.

Now Brainshark customers can embed their own presentations using an embed command that appears in the Edit Properties window.   By using the iframe code, you can easliy embed a Brainshark presentation into a web page.   We expect to see many more creative uses of Brainshark presentations using this feature.

You can see how we embed Brainshark presentations in our site by visting our website and selecting the Webinar for ONE tab.

We will have an upcoming blog that will describe how you can hide the borders of your Brainshark presentation so that it will blend in with your website. For now, try the embed link in your Brainshark sharkive or contact Webinar Resources if you are not a Brainshark customer and wish to test out this feature.

Open Rates and Lead Generation

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 by Mark Rice

There is a very good discussion regarding open rates and email campaigns in a recent edition of the DMNews. Two industry experts face off on the effectiveness of email open rates and their real value to personalized marketing campaigns.

One of the "contenders" describes the open rate as an ineffective form of measurement. He argues that open rates are not reliable as email can be opened on mobile devices that do not download images and more web client email platforms, like Gmail, are configured to display text only.

The other contender, Morgan Stewart, Director of research and strategy at ExactTarget, places open rates into a different context, His position is that open rates are a good measurement as they allow you to test the effectiveness of email subject lines and offer insight into "campaign optimization".

We agree with Morgan as we see open rates as a foundation to determine if your marketing and customer acquisition strategies are effective. Every email campaign should have a "call to action" or a click-through activity. It is not the open rate that identifies the recipient's interest, but the activity that takes place once the email is received and opened.

Embedding links to interactive web presentations that launch from the email is a very effective and reliable process to determine your recipient's interest. We have implemented very successful email campaigns that track not only the open and click through rates, but that also provide tracking and reporting through a third party application, Brainshark, that we bundle with our Agency ExactTarget licenses. The recipient's activity is then captured and married with the open and click through rates providing detailed results on not only the recipient's interest but their behavior as well.

In a recent campaign, we drove not only clicks but conversion as prospects became customers after viewing short five minute on demand presentations. The prospect's behavior was tracked while they advanced through slides. Immediate feedback was delivered to the reps that the prospect was viewing the product presentation and the reps followed up with a "warm call" to the customer.

Through our "No More Cold Calls" model, we can open new doors of opportunity for our customers and their customers and it all begins with an "opened" email.