How ON24 Uses Webinars to Execute and Scale Their ABX Strategy

The working world has entered a new era.

With COVID-19 came a paradox: On one hand, people feel isolated as their normal routines are disrupted; On the other, many are now connected through the common experience of working remotely.

In this landscape, ON24 VP of Marketing Tessa Barron suggests that there isn’t a marketing tactic more pressing than optimizing virtual events and webinars.

“Having meaningful, personalized, human-to-human experiences is so important,” Tessa explains in her recent session at Sendoso’s Out of the Box event. “Being able to integrate high-touch personal digital experiences into existing marketing motions can help build, optimize, and improve the customer relationship.”

Tessa shares how webinars can be used to execute and scale the ABX strategy, as well as operationalize campaign engagement and insights to create opportunities for personalization across both marketing and sales.

Tackling the #1 Challenge in the ABM World with Webinars

For most organizations, the top challenge to a successful ABX strategy is creating personalized content and experiences at scale. For Tessa, the magic of the webinar is that it’s a 1:many experience that delivers 1:1 engagement.

“Webinars give brands the opportunity to have a conversation and personalize the entire customer lifecycle,” she explains. “You are creating content as it is being delivered. That is inherently more personalized and more efficient than any white paper with a logo ever will be.”

Another advantage of the webinar is that the prospect can drive the experience, ask the speakers questions, or provide input through polls.

Creating a Customized Webinar Campaign

When executed correctly, webinars provide brands with an opportunity to build or strengthen the customer relationship.

“Much like a physical event, webinars have a lot of touchpoints,” says Tessa. “Every interaction is an opportunity to continue the conversation and pick up insights that will fuel personalization in later stages.”

For example, hosting sector-specific digital events can begin to personalize the customer journey by sending registrants to a customized landing page that has relevant content, like articles and videos. As people interact with that content, it’s possible to analyze their behavior and customize their event experience by offering session suggestions or additional resources.

“No webinar should end when it’s over,” Tessa notes. She suggests that after the event concludes, brands send attendees to a curated content library that offers relevant resources, an on-demand demo and a booking tool that allows visitors to schedule a sales meeting. This eliminates so many points of friction that are in a more traditional sales cycle.

Operationalizing Webinar Insights to Drive Personalization Across Marketing and Sales

If marketing is personalized, then sales outreach must be too. Organizations can operationalize webinar insights across marketing programs and sales outreach.

“The webinar journey is about building personalization,” she says. “The more engagement you have, the more opportunities you give your prospects to interact, the more personalized your follow ups can be.”

The data from webinar polls, web activity, content downloads, and other touchpoint interactions can be used to guide marketing and sales activity. For example, suppose a webinar attendee responds to an in-session poll about a technology failure her organization faced. In that case, the host company could use that information to create targeted advertising, formulate a highly-relevant subject line for an email campaign, or categorize the prospect in the right segment.

The company can also use this information to constantly update the user’s web experience, ensuring that site content is dynamic and relevant. Brands can also curate the onboarding experience to focus on that issue, which may in turn increase cross- and up-sell opportunities.

“Engagement in a webinar is fuel for your SDR’s fire,” Tessa says. “The more engagement, the better the follow up, the better the nurture.”

Personalizing the experience across marketing and sales doesn’t have to be an arduous process. When interactions are captured and operationalized, the business can effectively “drag and drop” inputs that SDRs can then leverage.

“At the end of the day it’s all about the prospect and customer,” Tessa concludes. “Giving people the opportunity to tell you what they need, developing the right technology to capture it, and creating the strategy to optimize the journey forever on—that really starts with digital engagement.”

To watch Tessa’s full Out of the Box session, register below, and to schedule your own custom Sendoso demo, click here.