Now why would we waste valuable email space with a sign-up link, when the people getting our emails (obviously) have already signed up?

Most senders don’t bother: Chad White recently reviewed unsubscribe practices among top retailers and found only 18% included a “subscribe” link in their emails.

There are two main reasons for adding such a link to your email template.

First, people forward and share your emails with others. Others who are not on your list.

Seeing your wonderful offer or content, they want to sign-up themselves. Seize the moment by including an appropriate link in the very email they’re viewing.

Second, people may unsubscribe from your list, then want to resubscribe later when their circumstances or interests change appropriately. They may dig out an old copy of your newsletter to find out where to sign-up.

This is how MarketingSherpa does it:

sign-up in email reminder

Now, the skeptical among you will ask why they can’t simply go to your website and find a sign-up form themselves. Well…

1. The more you make people work to find something, the less likely they are to do so.

2. Not every homepage has an obvious sign-up form or link (another issue).

Excerpted from Email Marketing Reports

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites

The superiority of HTML email to plain text email for driving response has become an accepted truth in email marketing. And not without justification.

Alchemy Worx, for example, recently demonstrated the power of images: adding a small, relevant icon to an email boosted total clicks by over 50%.

Now that nearly all marketing email is HTML email, might you try the occasional plain text message as an alternative?

Why?

First, plain text is now so rare that it could actually stand out more among the plethora of multi-colored HTML missives. Like a blank canvas in a Picasso exhibition.

Second, the success of HTML for one-to-many marketing communications means it’s associated with exactly that: one-to-many marketing communications.

Plain text still says “personal” (all my personal email is plain text) and/or “important” (much transactional email is still text-based).

This might work well where the message itself:

* needs to do something different to stand out…such as in a reactivation campaign (see this Firebox example)
* is specifically “human”…such as a message from the CEO or some other personality (see the Crutchfield email in the middle of this post)
* tackles a serious or emotional issue, such as a charitable cause, politics, or the economic crisis (see this example from the Obama Presidential campaign)

A good compromise for such emails might be a rich text approach, with a subdued HTML masthead (so logos etc. ensure recognition in the preview pane) and then plain text in the main message?

From Mark Brownlow, E-Marketing Reports

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites

While You’re At It

During the show, your goal is to collect as many new leads as possible and figure out where they belong in the sales funnel. Having a follow-up webinar to offer them provides a mechanism for evaluating their needs and interests.

There are many ways you can use the webinar to your advantage at the show. One obvious approach is to ask the prospects you talk with if they would be interested in attending a webinar after the show. This helps you gauge their interest not only in a webinar, in your products as well. For those who are interested in attending the webinar, solicit their input for what they want to get out of it. This demonstrates your regard for their needs, and the information they give you can be used to tweak the webinar for maximum effectiveness.

You can also advertise your webinar and invite people to register for it at the show. If you use on-line registration, you can set up a registration station for them to do it right then and there. Or, you can use a sign-up sheet or collect business cards to send out registration
invitations later. Again, it’s a good idea to ask them what they want to learn more about so that you can modify your webinar accordingly. A good way to do this is by customizing the registration page.

In any case, make sure your entire show team knows about the webinar and understands how to position it during the show. Remember that the webinar isn’t just something else to “hand out” at the show. It’s a powerful tool in the sales process to educate and nurture prospects.

Make It a Moving Experience

The whole idea of the follow-up webinar is to move qualified leads another step along the sales process by educating them and spending some quality time with them. Some of your show leads may not need what your webinar will provide. Others may be ready for the personal attention of a sales account manager. Try to manage your invitations to make sure everyone who attends your webinar gets something positive out of it.

So, your first job after the show (or better yet, during the show) is to evaluate your show leads and determine which ones it makes sense to invite to your webinar. This depends on the leads as well as the content of the follow-up webinar. Ideally, you’ll offer a choice of webinars, tailored to the needs of each lead category.

If you advertised the webinar at the show, some of the attendees may have already registered there or told you that they want to register. In doing so, these leads have demonstrated their interest in your product, so you definitely want them to attend the webinar. This is also true of everyone who may have registered for the webinar through any advertising you did outside the show.

Depending on the size of the show, the mix of traffic through your booth, and the content of your follow-up webinar, you may just decide to invite all your leads. If so, be sure to let them know in the invitation exactly what the webinar will cover so they can make an informed decision whether or not to register. Ultimately, they will be the ones to decide, but you want to minimize the possibility that they will attend the webinar and leave disappointed in what they got out of it.

CONTINUED

Once you’ve decided whom to invite, send out the invitations. The best way to do this is by e-mail with instructions on how to register. If possible, try to get the invitations out within 2-3 days of the show to keep the leads warm, and to give yourself time to make final preparations for the webinar. Keep in mind that some of the people you invite may be new to webinars and uncomfortable with the concept, so make it clear in your invitation how easy it is to sign up and attend.

Don’t forget to collect input for the follow-up webinar from show attendees and your show team. This is valuable information for perfecting your webinar. As you develop and refine the webinar, try not to simply “replay” the show; they’ve already been there. For example, if you gave an overview demo of a new product at the show, consider giving a detailed demo in the follow-up webinar, showing how the product solves a specific problem or meets a certain need. And, unless you advertised your webinar as a sales presentation, focus on delivering useful information and keep sales hype to a minimum.

It will take some time for invitees to register and for you to put the finishing touches on your webinar. Don’t wait too long to hold it, though. The show attendees will return to work and get busy, and their interest in your product will quickly be replaced by the pressure to get things done. Try to hold your webinar within 2 weeks of the show. If you can, offer the webinar more than once so invitees have a choice of times to attend.

During the follow-up webinar itself, make it as interactive as possible. This is another “face-time” opportunity with your prospects, and the more you can involve them, the better. Use the chat feature, encourage attendees to ask questions, and leave plenty of Q&A time at the end. Don’t, however, go over your time limit. Respect the fact that you attendees have other things to do.

Always record the webinar for later use, and follow-up with the attendees to get their feedback on the webinar. Offer a variety of ways for them to get more information and encourage them to contact you with further questions. You can use their feedback to the webinar, or lack thereof, to help determine the next step in the sales process.

And That’s Not All

With a little planning, some inspiration, and good execution, your follow-up webinars will be successful. But they can always be better, so build a continuous improvement process around them.

Work with your show team, marketing, and sales to evaluate the content and effectiveness of the webinars. Look for ways to streamline the development process. Feedback from webinar attendees is also essential for polishing the content and your delivery.

And finally, how do you show that this is all worthwhile? If you haven’t already done so, set up a process to track show leads throughout the sales process to see which ones turn into sales and how long it takes to do so. Decide how you are going to assess your tradeshow ROI, and do it. Don’t forget to include the costs of follow-up. You’ll probably also want to take into account intangible benefits from the show such as brand awareness and relationship building.

Making your tradeshows count means a lot of work before, during, and after. Following up your tradeshows with webinars probably won’t make your job easier, but they can definitely make your tradeshows more worthwhile. So while you may not totally get rid of those post-show blues, there just might be some bungee logo rockets in your future.

From Whitepaper: Using Webinars to Land Your Tradeshow Leads

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites

You Could Really Use a Good Webinar Right Now

Your goal is to convert as many of those tradeshow leads into sales as quickly as possible, at the lowest possible cost. So while you’d meet with each lead if you could, the time and cost to do so is out of the question.

Webinars are a great way to spend quality time with your leads at a relatively low cost. They provide the interaction of a face-to-face meeting at a fraction of the cost, and can be easily targeted toward different groups of leads in different stages of the sales cycle. For example, you can have an in-depth product demo for technical evaluators or
a case study analysis for buyers.

When you invite your leads to attend a webinar, you are establishing a communications channel that does two things. First, it helps qualify the leads: if they register for your webinar, they are interested. Leads who don’t register may also be interested, but require a different follow-up approach.  Second, the act of registering creates multiple, meaningful contact opportunities with prospects before and after the webinar, such as confirmation and reminder e-mails, and registration and post-seminar surveys. These communications allow you to progressively profile your leads, and collect qualifying information before and after the webinar.  Last, but not least, your recorded webinars become valuable collateral that you can reuse in other marketing contexts at no additional cost. It’s always nice to get something for free.

First Things First

A webinarr follow-up to your tradeshow is a good idea, but not if you don’t think of it until after the show. You wouldn’t wait until after the show to put together a direct mail piece to use in your follow-up campaign. So don’t wait until after the show to create your webinar.

Not only does it take time to line up your presenter and create the content, your webinar will be most effective if it reflects your show’s objectives. Are you introducing new technology  or products? Are you trying to gain or consolidate marketshare? Are you going after your key competitors? Your web seminar plan should be a part of your show plan, not an afterthought.

Create your webinar before the show, but allow yourself some flexibility to make changes to it based on input that may come out of the show itself. For instance, you may find out that the big new wonderful software release that’s the centerpiece of your show raises serious concerns about transition issues among the attendees. You’ll probably want to address those concerns in your follow-up webinar.

One webinar might not be enough. Depending on the focus of the show, the projected attendance, and the possible mix of attendees, you may need different webinars targeted toward individual audiences. You might need a detailed demo for users and technical buyers, for example, and an ROI analysis for economic buyers. More people are likely to sign up for the webinar if they think you created it specifically for them. Even those looky-loos who just stopped by to trade their business card for a bottle opener might be interested in a short product overview webinar.

Consider teaming up with a technology partner or a key customer for the webinar. Nothing builds credibility like the tributes of others. Case studies are a natural for this. For example, having a customer explain how they used your product to solve a difficult technical problem or reduce development costs can make a very powerful statement. Maybe they’ll even participate with you in the show. In any case, you’ll need time to work with these partners.

And finally, think about how you’ll promote your webinar. You may want to include it with your tradeshow advertising in pre-show publications, emails, and websites. Planning your webinar far enough in advance lets you take advantage of advertising opportunities that extend your reach beyond the boundaries of your booth at the show.

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites

Including:

Dex One, the former RH Donnelley, “Ads That Sell More: Attract, Educate & Motivate Buyers” @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/507507418

Underwriters Laboratories and “Testing of Thin-Walled Plastic Materials, and the Thermoplastics Testing Center” @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/829056546

Toolingu.com and “Train, Measure, Succeed: Using Impact on Business to Validate Training Efforts” @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/536436923

The Stockade Group and “How to Leverage Tomorrow’s Technology Today and Increase Your Student Yield” @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/783896122

Oracle and “How DigitalGlobe and Intermap Benefit from Oracle Spatial” @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/404783834

Versatrans and “Find Savings in Transportation: How to Put Your Yellow Bus in the Black” @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/788083482

and more…

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites

Back To Reality

It’s Monday morning and you’re back in the office after last week’s tradeshow. It was a good tradeshow. Your booth had lots of traffic, none of the demos crashed, and everyone seemed genuinely excited about your new software release, which is coming out…um…soon. You were finally able to get rid of that motley collection of trash and trinkets left over from previous tradeshows, so now you can finally order something fun and exciting for the next one – maybe some of those nifty logo bungee rockets.

And of course, you came back with a fishbowl full of business cards and sheaf of leadsheets to deal with – many more leads than you expected, in fact. The thing is, your email and voicemail boxes are full and you’d really like a couple of days off to recover. You’re not the only one. The whole marketing department is fried. You’ve got the tradeshow follow-up blues.

Make The Most Of It

Tradeshows cost way too much not to get the most that you possibly can out of them. How effectively and efficiently you follow up on the leads you’ve collected and convert them into sales will determine the ultimate success of your show. And that will decide whether or not you’ll get the chance to hand out those bungee rockets at the next one.
Everyone knows what you should do now. You should follow up quickly, before the leads grow stale. Some experts say you should contact all your leads within 48 hours of the show. Of course,like you, they also have real jobs that they neglected while they were at the show, so not all of them will be that anxious to hear from you so soon. In any case, the leads are going to start to go bad by the end of that first week back. After two weeks, they’ll be positively moldy.

Before you start working the leads, though, you should sort them to see who’s hot and who’s not. After all, you’re not doing your Sales organization any favors by passing off a bunch of looky-loos to them. Sorting leads after the show can be really frustrating if you didn’t take good notes and you’re low on sleep. That’s why you should have done it each day during the show instead of going to all those evening parties. Maybe next time.

After your leads are sorted, you should decide what’s the best way to follow up with each of them. E-mail? Phone call? Direct mail? Send them another trinket? Product info? A whitepaper? Pass them immediately off to Sales for cultivation? Most likely, you’ll use all of these follow up tactics. But really, how effective are they? The bottom line of tradeshow follow-up is this: how can you grab their attention and hold it to the close?

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites

InstantPresenter is continually developing new innovations for easy monetization of presentations. They now offer the ability to use PayPal to charge admission to live Webinars or access to recorded presentations. Oh that GoToWebinar and Webex did! With the integration of PayPal into the InstantPresenter feature set, presenters can monetize content indefinitely, as well as make live presentations and recorded versions available as products to sell. PayPal is integrated directly into the interface, so it’s a seamless process to sell your knowledge as products.

Everything a presenter needs to charge and profit from Webinar presentations can be accomplished with the InstantPresenter platform:

* Collect revenue for Webinars using a PayPal account
* Keep all of the revenue while InstantPresenter handles technology behind the scenes
* Receive payment as attendees register for online events
* Schedule Web conferences, Webcasts or e-learning trainings in advance
* Send attendee registration information upon successful payment only
* Create any number of custom fields, to collect any information you wish

In addition to allowing customers to sell live and recorded Webinars, they are also making it easy for presenters to implement a discount structure for Webinar pricing.

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites

If you’re a fan, and would like to sport a WebAttract hat, shirt, mug or calendar, this is the place…now available by popular demand. We’ll be enriching the offerings with publications, etc. as time passes. Visit us @ http://webattract.com/pages/store.shtml

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites

Anne Holland put up the results of an A/B comparison test between two web site navigation menus. One site used the phrase “Webinars” to indicate a page of available sessions. The second site used the phrase “Online Training.” Anne invites you to guess which navigation bar resulted in more click-throughs to the target page.

I don’t think I’m spoiling the fun when I tell you that the results are completely unsurprising. “Online Training” resulted in significantly higher clicks to the page, but also attracted more attendees to the webinars promoted on that page.

You might think that I would be dismayed or defensive about these results, writing as I am on the “Webinar Wire” and being closely associated with the word “webinar.” But not only would I predict such a result, it backs up advice I have given companies for many years… You need to promote benefits, not mechanics.

Webinar is a useful shorthand term for those of us in the industry. It takes fewer syllables and fewer characters than writing out “web seminar” or “online meeting.” But it only describes a communication methodology and conveys absolutely nothing in terms of benefits or value to the public.

When Anne tested her two phrases, one of them was a generic term for a type of communication vehicle. It said nothing about what might be found there. There is no incentive to click and see what might be present. The other indicated a specific type of content. People who wanted training would click on the phrase to see what training courses exist. And naturally it would result in more attendance at the advertised training classes… You have a self-selecting audience predisposed to be interested in the content being offered on that page.

Learn from this practical example and use the teachings in your own event promotions. The important part of your title, promotion, or even menu choice is not the fact that it’s a webinar. The important part is that you are offering a specific type of value that your targets are interested in. It doesn’t matter if you call it a webinar, webcast, web meeting, online event, or interactive audio-visual collaborative shindig. Describing the technology will never get you as much action as describing the content.

As posted on Webinar Wire by Ken Molay, President, Webinar Success

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites

Clearly the process of collaboration with clients on messaging and creative includes managing differings POVs as well as ensuring the content itself is impactful and not too “salesy”. What other thoughts would you like to share?

Bookmark this Article / Socialize It

Hide Sites