The #webinar – technology’s gift to #marketingautomation – Part Three of Three: Segmentation and Qualification
This is the third of three posts about using Webinars in a more strategic way when pairing them with a Marketing Automation Platform. Click here for the first post in the series. Click here for the second post in the series.
Registering for the webinar is only the first opportunity to convert someone into a prospect or move them along their journey. There should be additional points assigned to any prospect that attends the webinar in real time. Lead score points should also be awarded to those that do not attend in real time, but I believe it should be less than a real time attendee. Since lead score is a measure of interest, I believe that someone who clears some time in their schedule is more interested in what you have to say then someone who views the recording at their own convenience.
Another opportunity to qualify attendees is the use of poll questions within a webinar. I was working for a company that provided tools for telecom developers. These tools were available as either an API for “C” programmers or as a collection of scripts for a specific telecom platform. By including a poll question about this, I was able to further segment the attendees so that certain attendees would receive follow-up information specific to the API, while others would get information about the tools specific to their platform of choice.
Many webinar tools also allow you to get a measurement around the “level of engagement” for attendees. You can award points for high levels of engagement or subtract points for very low levels of engagement. You can also give points to those who asked questions during the webinar.
Also, you can offer a series of webinars about a single subject or closely related subjects. Registering for or attending more than one webinar in a series can be used as a basis to add to a lead score.
Again, these opportunities for further qualification really depend upon having a Marketing Automation Platform in place that can make use of the information generated by the prospects attending the webinar.
The webinar is a powerful tactical marketing tool. But many marketers today are missing a huge opportunity to use the webinar in a more strategic way and also to pair it with a Marketing Automation Platform. With the goals of the webinar properly set, an abstract that supports those goals, and by taking advantage of all the opportunities to further qualify and segment registrants and attendees, the webinar becomes not just a platform from which you can tell your story, but one that can truly help to acquire new, qualified prospects and move existing prospects along their journey to becoming paying customers.