Webinar Resources

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.

During this time of year, people have a lot on their mind and buying that unique gift is always a challenge.   The elves at Webinar Resources teamed up with Santa to create a unique and personalized online offering for this holiday season for young children - MyChristmasBook.com.

MyChristmasBook.com brings to life the story of "Santa Claus and the Lost Dog".   It is unique as it provides personalized images, text and audio using the child's name.   The Christmas Story Photo Book is delivered through a personalized, North Pole web address with an embedded Brainshark presentation.

Deliveries started over the weekend and one satisfied customer has posted her son's personalized North Pole web address on her Facebook site.    It seems our mascot, Bella, is becoming a celebrity very quickly. 

This is the most unique demand generation marketing activity that Webinar Resources has ever engaged in and we are pleased to have our customers boast and post about their satisfied experiences.

Go to MyChristmasBook.com to order that unique gift today.

 

If you read one of our more recent blogs on re-purposing content of a Brainshark presentation, then you will understand how we can drive additional lead generation by reusing existing content.

Webinar Resources recently launched the MyChristmasBook campaign and deliveries are about to begin.   We repurposed content from a Brainshark presentation and created a MyChristmasBook Trailer on the MyBrainshark site.  MyBrainshark provides tools to create simple Brainshark presentations and it is free.  

We have been watching the popularity of the MyChristmasBook Trailer on the MyBrainshark site and are delighted to report that we are holding the number two position of the most viewed and most popular Brainshark presentation.   MyBrainshark provides social media tools for sharing presentations and a reporting dashboard that displays a world map indicating viewing activity    The MyChristmasBook trailer  has been viewed across the U.S. and in China, Austrailia, and in South America.

It is exciting to watch the popularity of the trailer grow.   Re-puposing existing content pays off.

The elves at Webinar Resources spent time last night blogging about our holiday offering, MyChristmasBook.com.   We included a lot of information about re-purposing Brainshark presentations and creating an effective lead generation campaign using ExactTarget, Vontoo, Brainshark and Compendium Blogware.

We did an organic search this evening and were very pleased to see that MyChristmasBook.com is at the top of the organic search.  We were also delighted to see the tracking results of our email campaign where many of our subscribers visited their own personal North Pole webpage to see a 2 minute demonstration.  Over 25% of the recipients selected the personalized link that included their email address.   Here is a sample personalized URL (PURL), that we call the North Pole web address - http://helper.mychristmasbook.com/NorthPole/personalizemybook@gmail.com.

We also spent time tweeting, posting content on Facebook sites and updating a Brainshark presentation.  Of all the lead generation activities we engaged in, blogging received the fastest and most desired results.   

We don't have a long-tail keyword for this campaign, but MyChristmasBook.com is unique enough that it can be found in an organic search in Google.  We know as we blog about this subject this evening, we will keep our rating up and more customers will find us as they hear more about us.  So blogs are faster than Santa's reindeer Virginia and they rate high on Google's naughty and nice list. 

1. If you use forms on your web site, test them using multiple email addresses from different domains. You might find that your forms will accept emails from some domains and not others. If that happens, contact your site's host for help.


2. On the success pages and acknowledgement messages from your forms, suggest that users add your email address or addresses to their approved senders lists (whitelists).


3. Check all the email links on your web site periodically to make sure you actually get the emails. In addition, make a list of all the email accounts you have, with login information, and keep the list in a safe place. Check the spam folders on all of them on a regular basis. Many email accounts will stop working when the spam folder or the trash folder gets full. Also some legitimate emails might be caught by your spam filter, so you'll want to add those email addresses to your lists of approved senders. Some customers will try another way to contact you if they don't get an answer from your email, but most will just give up.


4. Have your web developer program an appropriate subject line in capital letters into all the email links on your site. Although use of all caps is something I normally stay away from, in this case I do use them because it makes the emails sent from my web site much easier to distinguish from all the spam.

Consider not having your email forwarded from one account to another, but getting all of it right from the source. The article Tips to avoid getting your server blocked by Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail explains why.


5. Examine your email sendings, including acknowledgement messages from forms, for characteristics that might cause them to be mistakenly flagged as spam. The following resources provide helpful guidelines:
   • Gmail Bulk Senders Guidelines
   • AOL Sender Best Practices
   • Hotmail Guidelines
   • Yahoo! Mail Best Practices
   • Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group Sender Best Communications Practices
   • Why My Emails Get Blocked or Filtered: Causes and Solutions Inside 
   
   Some email sending software, such as ExactTarget, has a built-in content checker that will alert you to possible problems in the text of your email, such as "Click here" or "Free".


6. Only send to engaged recipients. Believe it or not, some major ISPs are starting to flag messages as spam just because the end user doesn't open them. Consider sending periodic updates to subscribers to verify if they still want to be on your subscriber list.


7. Open up other channels to help compensate for the people you're not reaching by email, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, a Webinar for One Brainshark presentation, text messaging, and voice messaging. At Webinar Resources we use ExactTarget's social forward feature to add social media links to our customers' emails to drive customer acquisition.

• Will I give or sell their email address to someone else?
• Will the newsletter be interesting or valuable to them?
• Will they be able to unsubscribe if they decide they no longer want it?
• Will they be bombarded with a lot of email?

I recently took a vacation from our customer acquisition practice at Webinar Resources.  Of all of the different modes of transportation, I have learned this Summer that taking the train across the country is a great way to meet new people.   It is also an interesting opportunity to connect with people and make new contacts.

Think of it, passengers on a train are a lot more open as they have no other place to go
other than a dining car, sleeping berth or observation car.  People just have to interact
with each other as they are captive for the many hours it takes to reach their destination.

My wife and I joined a friend of hers to travel from St. Louis to San Francisco.   Our friend was volunteering for the 17th annual Sharkfest, where 900 brave souls swim from Alcatraz to the San Francisco shore.   See the Brainshark presentation on our webinar service portal for highlights of the event -  www.brainshark.com/webinarresources.

During our ride we met many interesting people and had some good conversations.  We met one retired couple traveling to visit their sons who work in Silicon Valley.  One of their sons works for Google and another is beginning a startup company.  I wrote down the company website www.glyde.com to look at later.   Maybe I will send them a Webinar for ONE presentation.

We met more interesting people on our 48 hr trek and I spent some time jamming with a fellow musician.  Luckily I brought my traveling mandolin and it was great to wake up to the sunrise in Colorado and be able to sing some John Denver tunes.

We had a great trip when we got to San Francisco, San Jose and Aptos.  When we headed back home on a Southwest flight, my wife commented on how people were more friendly on the train and that everyone was rushed in the airport.   We had lots of luggage in tow with souvenirs and we would have loved to have a porter help us aboard a train that would take us back home.  We took the quick way, but planes have no charm, no space and provide little opportunity for interacting with others.

We will always remember our great trip to California this year.  If you want to spend some time with people, see the scenery and possibly make a business connection, plan to take a train trip across the country.   Right now I am hearing "Flight 3346 is ready for departure.  What I would rather hear is "All Aboard!

• They fear that you will give or sell their email address to someone else
• They don't know what benefit they will get from your newsletter. Do they get something free for signing up? Is the content valuable?
• They worry that that they won't be able to unsubscribe if they decide they no longer want it.

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• Do you know who in your company is in charge of the domain name?
• Does that person have the current username and password to get into the domain name account?
• Do you know what registrar your domain name is currently registered with?
• Is the email address and other contact information on your account current?
• Do you know when your domain name expires?

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.