As you know, WebAttract works with as many emerging brands as it does with Fortune 1000 companies. This past Wednesday, this old dog learned that even our formidable best practices can be enhanced, and by means of a webinar effort conducted for a small but focused company.

During the course of our invitation process to the targeted audience we build for every client, we reveal registrant intelligence…that is, we provide it multiple times leading up to the conclusion of the effort where’s it’s packaged nicely in a dashboard. This data includes, of course, the contact information for those who are registerting for the event.

Now clearly, we use the data to inform our invitation strategy and to adjust content, even rhythm, of the invitations to drive optimal registration. AND, of course, as the date of the webinar approaches, we send reminders at pre-determined intervals. Given our registrant-to-attendee ratios exceed industry averages, we’ve always felt confident about our ability to deliver eyeballs to the screen, almost to the point of scientifically forecasting outcomes.

In this case, an enterprising client used that data in a new way on the way to event. 2-3 days prior to th webinar, they CALLED each and every registrant to encourage them to attend. What a concept! We knew they were doing this, but were a little skeptical about its impact.

On webinar day, with all other variables remaining according to our standard best practices, we received quite a surprise. Now let me “level set” for you before revealing that. Industry average for registrant-to-attendee ratios is 35-40% and many companies tolerate that as acceptable. WebAttract already drives 45-52% to our on average.

For this client, the registrant-to-attendee ratio was 61%! We were blown away. And, quite frankly, in our debrief after the event, we came to understand why this effort drove such a positive outcome. The CALLING was clearly an appreciated effort by most who were spoken with; our client related how often they were thanked for the reminder. And the lesson learned here is this…no matter how virtual the event, there’s no substitute for the human touch.

So, as WebAttract advances further into 2010, we are embedding this activity as a service into our offering. We have two goals: 1) deliver the absolute best value we can for our clients and 2) show the marketplace that the job can clearly be done better with a bit more ingenuity…and a bit more common sense!