Webinar Resources was recently recognized for our unique, personalized, Christmas Story Photo Book application at the second annual Brainshark Sharkie awards. Our application was selected and recognized at the online Sharkie awards last week among a hundred entries of interactive Brainshark presentations.
You can view a sample Christmas Story Photo Book at the Brainshark Sharkie Gallery. This presentation is a great example of the use of effective landing pages, cross media applications and on demand presentation content. We personalized the reading experience for children with personalized text, images and audio in a unique Christmas story about Santa Claus and the Lost Dog.
Readers of our blog have seen some examples of how we have implemented cross media applications to drive the customer acquisition process. Stay tuned for more creative uses of a multi channel mix of content and solutions that will bring business opportunity to your company.
The elves at Webinar Resources are busting their buttons as the MyChristmasBook Trailer on MyBrainshark is now the most viewed and most popular Brainshark presentation. Says Santa, who just read this latest update in the Webinar Newsletter from Webinar Resources, "We are very proud that this on demand presentation has received such wide appeal. Rudolph told me that "rich media" was the way to reach the masses so I thought I would give it a try."
The MyChristmasBook Trailer has been viewed across the country and across the world. Webinar Resources launched this campaign to drive lead generation for North Pole IndustryCo. Every MyChristmasBook online Christmas Photo Story Book contains personalized text, images and audio using a good little boy or girl's name and is delivered on a unique personalized North Pole web page. Says Jack Frost, CMO in charge of North Pole's lead generation and personalized marketing campaigns, "We hired Webinar Resources to produce the story of Santa Claus and the Lost Dog as they are the experts in demand generation marketing and the theme song has the reindeer tapping their hoofs."
The success of the campaign can be summed up by Mrs. Claus, "Things have gotten a lot more jolly around here now that the old man is coming home from the shop at a decent hour. Thanks to Webinar Resources launching MyChristmasBook.com with their partners ExactTarget, Brainshark, Vontoo and Compendium, Santa is much more productive and best of all, there are no more cold calls which is important in the frozen North.
Everyday we are encountering more social media tools that allow you to quickly share information with others. Today we launched an email campaign for one of our customers that contained a personalized video for the recipients. Each customer received a PURL, a personalized URL, that embedded the customer's name in the video. It was a pretty slick application.
Using ExactTarget, we launched the email movie clips through personalization strings that contained the PURLs. This was an effective lead generation process for driving customer acquisition. Through personalized marketing campaigns, you can capture your reader's interest and move them to take an action.
We are using Brainshark presentations to personalize on demand presentation content and further honing our abilities to deliver a Webinar for ONE.
While I refused to fight the crowds to be on of the first through the door to pick up a brand new Blackberry Storm, I will be going this afternoon to make my purchase.
My boss, Mark, and I have a very un-official, un-scientific experiment (aka competition) we're conducting. He has the new G1 (Google) phone from T-Mobile. I'm getting the Blackberry Storm from Verizon Wireless. We're putting the networks aside, and comparing the phones for how well they enhance our ability to conduct business.
Mark got his G1 about a month ago, and has been bragging ever since. He L-O-V-E-S it. Just for fun on the weekend, he creates a brainshark presentation from his phone, records the voice, and then sends a vontoo message over to us just to gloat.
I'm hoping that I will be able to return the favor with the Blackberry storm. I know I won't have Windows mobile, but what will I be able to do? At a minimum, I should be able to enjoy the latest and greatest in screen resolution and display options to view what our custoemrs view. At most, will I be able to operate the Blackberry Storm as a miniature laptop, of sorts, the way that Mark has been able to do with his G1?
Our whole business centers around effective lead generation and customer acquisition through managed services and internet marketing. We drive personalized marketing campaigns through interactive technologies that may include any or all of the following:
--Video Web Conferencing
--Email Movie Clips
--Variable Data embedded in html emails
--Web Conferencing
--On Demand Presentations
We are also heavy users of many interactive programs including but not limited to online calendars.
Over the next few weeks, we will be testing out these technologies with the G1 and Blackberry Storm. Maybe we'll even keep a scorecard. For now, I have to sign off to go place my order.
Stay tuned, and if YOU have a G1 or a piping hot new Blackberry Storm--please post and tell us about the SMS feats you've conquered.
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.
Every touch point with a customer or prospect should include a "call to action". A Call to Action or CTA, as some call it, invites interaction from your visitor and promotes lead generation. A CTA can be as simple as a form posted on your website, in a blog, and email or in an on demand presentation like a Webinar for ONE.
We always include a call to action in our Webinar newsletters. The simplest example is to invite your reader to subscribe to your newsletter by completing a simple online form. You are more likely to have a customer or prospect return to your cross-media communications if you invite them to take an action. Every customer acquisition program should promote interactivity.
A common error by many who produce web conferences is to post a webcast or webinar replay that does not contain some form of a call to action. Many web conferencing marketeers do not realize that there are tracking tools that can inform them when a viewer is watching a presentation. Views of your presentations can take place at any time of the day and in almost any location where online content is available - which is about anywhere in the world.
The goal of any effective customer acquisition process is to connect with your customer or prospect and move them to an action where conversion takes place. Conversion can be as simple as the completion of a subscription form or as in-depth as completing a live poll embedded in a Webinar for ONE.
As you create your personalized marketing campaigns, make sure you include several types of call to action best practices and techniques People like to give their input and like to be involved. Give your customers, prospects and partners an opportunity to interact with you online and you will produce effective lead generation results.
Feel free to post your comments and/or complete our live online poll.
I usually use my MP3 player for rocking out, but the other day I was able to use mine (a Sansa c240) to get some work done.
I needed some voice narration for an instructional Brainshark presentation I was working on. With Brainshark, you can take a PowerPoint presentation, bring it into the Brainshark software, and add things to it such as audio, questions, polls, or guestbooks, and make it into an on-demand presentation that can be launched from or embedded in web pages or email messages. If you would like to see some sample Brainshark presentations, we have several on the Webinar For OneSM landing page on our web site.
I had not used the voice recording feature on my MP3 player yet, so I decided to try using it to narrate the slides. It was very easy to record the audio by speaking into the little microphone on the MP3 player, saving the resulting .wav files, connecting the player to the computer with the USB cable, then dragging and dropping the saved files into sound editing software on my computer. After editing, I added the sound files to my presentation in Brainshark. Now that I know how easy it is, I'll be using narration this way more often!
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.
In order to use your web site to leverage your other marketing activities, you need visitors. Search engines are very important for bringing in web site traffic. Your website needs as many incoming links as possible to be competitive in the search engines, and there is no denying it's a lot easier to give yourself a link than to get other people to give you a link. It also helps to have good keywords inside hyperlinks, since text in hyperlinks carries more weight with search engines than plain text.
If you have a large web site with lots of content that is updated frequently, or more than one web site, you are in a good position to take advantage of those facts about search engines.
One way to do that is by putting a site map on your site if you don't already have one. This is simply a web page with a linked outline to all the pages on your site. Here is an example of a site map.
Another way is to add a What's New page with listings of what is new on your site and links to any new content you add. I recently started updating this What's New Page again after a long period of neglect. It was foolish of me to deprive myself of the benefits of all those links. I resolve to be smarter in the future!
So why not give your visitors a break by making your content easier to find, and give yourself a break with the gift of valuable links?
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