Generating Demand with an Online Event

THE CHALLENGE

Question: How do you successfully deliver 13 hours of webinar content, manage 21 presenters and engage 500+ clients and prospects, all in little more than a month — and live to tell the tale? Answer: Partner with Marsden Marketing to manage the event and meet your goals. As an industry thought leader, Calero had hosted annual conferences focused on education, peer-to-peer collaboration, and user training on all aspects of its SaaS Enterprise Communications Management solution. To increase attendance and access to information and discussions, in 2015 the organization transitioned its paid physical conference to a complimentary virtual experience called Calero World Online.

OUR APPROACH

Calero World Online is one of our largest marketing efforts, and is critical to us maintaining our partnerships with clients and raising our profile as a thought leader and potential provider to new prospects. It’s a huge undertaking with many moving parts, and Marsden Marketing played a critical role in making the event a successful one. They are a key part of our marketing team, keeping us on track, on message and moving ahead as a company. Scott Davis | VP of Marketing, Calero Software

THE RESULTS

Calero World Online is one of the company’s largest market-facing efforts of the year. With our partnership, Calero produced its most successful conference to date.

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• 12 virtual events • 800+ minutes (more than 13 hours) of live presentations • 21 presenters • 223 live poll responses • 500+ overall live attendees • 1300+ registrations • ~270 unique contact registrations (customers/prospects) • ~185 unique account registrations (customers/prospects)

Project Management Held in late summer and early fall, Calero World 2016 offered 12 webinars with different (and sometimes multiple) presentations and resources, with associated emails, landing pages, and promotions. Marsden began by creating an extensive project plan to identify and assign all deliverables and tasks according to the required timeline. We were accountable for managing presentations for 21 presenters, ensuring that they submitted slide decks, editing them to brand guidelines, and uploading them prior to the live sessions. Our team also was responsible for scheduling and facilitating dry runs of each presentation, including software training.

User Experience Elevating the user experience was an important goal of Calero World 2016. In just the second year of a virtual conference, it was important to Calero that the interactive benefits of in-person conferences not be sacrificed. Crafting and executing an engaging experience spanned everything from topics and content to live sessions and follow-up emails. Curating consistent branding across all touch points and tailoring messaging for each session was an important contribution from the Marsden team. Landing Pages – Marsden created a landing page on the Calero website, highlighting the kickoff and keynote sessions for the event and including a link to the webinar platform registration pages. We developed one master registration page where registrants could easily sign up for multiple sessions by checking off those they were interested in. Then, each session had its own registration page so we could promote and drive traffic to each one as needed. Emails – Marsden designed and automated personalized email communications and confirmations that reinforced the conference branding and touched on message points and offerings based on presentation content. Customized pre-event emails were sent to all registrants and directly resulted in increased attendance. After each session, follow-up emails went to two segments – those who registered and attended, and those who registered, but did not attend. While both groups received links to a recorded webinar and registration CTAs for upcoming sessions, other messaging was customized for each segment.

Webinar platform console – Marsden set up and designed each console to reinforce branding and speak to the unique audience of each session. Resources and CTAs included messaging that targeted each audience. Webinar Moderator – We also stepped in to be the voice of each session. We opened and closed each webinar with custom messaging, handled live polling and Q&A sessions, and managed Live Chat – assisting any viewers that were experiencing technical difficulty or arranging follow-up communication.

Promotions Social Media – Marsden promoted the event via Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and created a #CaleroWorld2016 hashtag to make information and updates easy to find and encourage sharing of lessons learned during the six weeks of the event. We also developed paid promotions for Twitter and LinkedIn to drive awareness of Calero World beyond the company’s network. Blogs – For Calero World 2016, Marsden wrote multiple blogs that recapped the webinars and encouraged audiences to attend upcoming sessions. We also leveraged recap blogs and newsletters to route blog readers to on-demand content, with the goal of signing them up for a session or converting them to leads.

Increased by 2

Increased by 200+ minutes

Increased by 23

Increased by 382

Many contacts participated in multiple sessions, and some attended them all. Survey feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with many attendees asking for more information and providing ideas for future topics.

For its second virtual outing, the company was interested in further increasing attendance, elevating the user experience, and generating demand and leads as a direct result of the six-week event. Calero engaged Marsden Marketing to help the organization meet those important goals and provide overall project management for webinar sessions and promotions.