Creating Accurate RSS Email Reports in Marketo

Today I'm going to walkthrough how to create accurate RSS email reports that show detailed stats for each automatic RSS-based email from Marketo.

In the past, automating an RSS email with Marketo required you to overwrite and send the same email resulting in inaccurate reporting.

FeedOtter was built with this in mind, by marketers just like you, to make sure that every email that you send can be reported on naturally inside Marketo.

When FeedOtter's automation runs, it creates a new email program and email in Marketo so you have a unique email for each send. This is the key to generating perfect reports inside Marketo.

When it's time to generate a report, open Marketo and right-click on the parent default(brown) program folder that contains your automated email sends, and create a new local asset.  Choose the type report; email performance or link performance.  This new performance report will allow you to view each email send that FeedOtter has automated.

To configure your report:

1. Choose the Setup tab and adjust the send date to include the emails you wish to report on.

Configure the Sent Date rss report parameter

Next adjust the filters to select the program that includes the emails you wish to report on. Here I've chosen the parent default program that contains all of my automated emails. You only need to select the parent default program as all emails and email programs created underneath this program will be included in the report.

Select the RSS email default program in Marketo

Having configured those settings, we return to the report tab. And here you'll see a report of each individual send happening over time, and all of the standard Marketo metrics being reported on. Sent, delivered, the bounces, the clicks, and the unsubscribes.

View the accurate rss email report

While I wish Marketo's reporting capabilities were more powerful FeedOtter has been designed carefully so that each RSS email can be accurately reported on using all the Marketo's familiar tools.

If you're into videos you can watch a full screencast of this tutorial on our YouTube channel.

9 B2B Content Marketing Tactics to Try in Q4

In a world of adblockers and content saturation, it’s getting harder than ever for marketers to reach their target consumers. Content marketing offers an authentic way to entice new prospects and nurture existing leads but how does your content cut through all the noise in the digital world?

Many marketers stick with the same old strategies and don’t go outside their comfort zones to engage consumers in different mediums and during different stages of the buyer’s journey. They figure their content strategy is “good enough” when in reality, it could be much better.

So, we’ve come up with some new content marketing tactics that you can implement in Q4 and wrap up your end-of-year marketing program with a bang!

Use Your Paid Ad Budget Spend on Downloadable Content

Now more than ever, consumers scroll past google ads and look for websites and content that answers their questions. Instead of using your paid ad budget on Google Ads that direct to your company’s website, consider allocating it for a few months on a piece of downloadable content.

Titling the content with a question or common pain point that your target consumer experiences, will appeal to your consumers and increase your chances of generating more leads if you gate your content with a lead capture form.

Write 2 Case Studies

When analyzing the decision phase of the buyer’s journey, case studies are the highest converting forms of content that can convert a lead into a sale. These documents that showcase an actual experience that one of your consumers had with your brand makes your brand appear more reputable.

Sometimes it is hard to get clients to commit to participating in a case study, because after all, it takes time out of their busy day to do a case study interview. However, we’ve had luck incentivizing clients with $50 Amazon gift cards for their time.

Be sure to distribute your case studies with a great marketing promotion plan and equip your sales team with them so that they can send case studies to leads they are working on. Make your case studies easy to find on your website as well because consumers love the ability to be self-sufficient when doing their brand research.

Conduct an Industry Research Report

Consult your buyer personas and uncover a topic that they would be interested in learning more about based on the input of their peers. Survey your clients and leads using Survey Monkey and compile your results in a downloadable report.

This type of content not only generates leads, but it also promotes thought leadership and shines a favorable spotlight on your brand.

As an example, you can refer to this report on the state of B2B content consumption complete with their lead capture form that you can replicate.

Earn 5 Pieces of User Generated Content

It’s no secret that consumers rely on their peers for brand recommendations—not your brand. So, the goal is to is to seed the web with as much content as you can written about your brand from a third party. You can do this by working with influencers or incentivizing your clients to write blog posts about their experience with your brand. User generated content is great fodder to use on your website, paid social, marketing materials, etc.

Email Out All Your Blog Posts to All of Your Contacts

Emailing out all of your blog posts promotes thought leadership, nurtures existing leads, inspires consumers and gets your awesome blog content out in the world.

75% of marketers who email out blog posts email every post they create with the other 25% emailing a weekly or monthly digest of all of their blog posts in a single summary email. Maybe experiment with both options to decide what works best for your brand.

Be sure the experiment with subject lines and A/B test your messaging to see what gets the best results and continually refine your blog post emailing strategy.

Be a Guest on a Podcast or Webinar

There are several ways for consumers to digest content and one of those ways is to listen to thought leaders share their advice from the field on a podcast or webinar.

There are plenty of podcasts and brands that produce webinars in the niche your brand falls into. Locate these sources and reach out to them outlining your expertise and ask if you can be a guest on their podcast or webinar.

This is a great way to get in front of new consumers and position yourself as a resource in your industry.

Some brands will give you the contact information of the people who attended your webinar so it couldn’t hurt to ask and gather these new leads!

Create an Infographic

Infographics are a great way to visually display a lot of data in one piece of content. Pick a topic that would be of interest to your buyer personas and track down every single point of data pertaining to that topic.

There are sites like Canva where you can create your infographic yourself of you can turn it over to a designer to make sure that it looks great and represents your brand well.

You can embed your infographic in blog posts so a great way to promote it is to include in your brand’s blog posts as well as guest posting on other sites.

Join 3 LinkedIn Groups

There are multiple LinkedIn groups that align with every industry. In these groups you can network with likeminded marketers and share the content that you produce for your brand. Sharing your content in these groups means that the group members may share the content on their own social media channels. Be sure to return the favor and work out a deal where you’ll share their content if they share yours!

Crowdsource a Piece

Sometimes it can be hard to think of great content to constantly write about. Try reaching out to industry peers and influencers and have them weigh in on a topic. Compile their advice and best practices into a piece of content albeit a blog post or an ebook. As an added bonus, this content is very sharable because the people who weigh in for your content will be sure to share it on their social channels since you’re featuring them!

Here at FeedOtter, we recently crowdsourced a piece about emailing blog posts and compiled best practices and advice from over 20 marketers who weighed in on emailing blog posts and if you’re interested, you can check that content out here as a great example of crowd sourcing content.

Final Thoughts

In the content saturated digital world that we live in, it’s more important than ever to experiment with different content marketing strategies and content types. Be sure to track and measure the effectiveness of each strategy so that each quarter you can refine your strategy based on the data you gather from your content marketing programs.

Is there a type of content that you’ve found to be more effective than others? We’d love to hear all about it on Twitter @Feed_Otter

10 Ways to Make Contacts Look Forward to Your B2B Marketing Emails

With so many emails flooding people’s inboxes, it’s more important than ever to refine and create a strong email marketing strategy for your leads and clients.

Understanding what your contacts need out of your emails as opposed to what your business needs, you can create emails that offer value to your contacts and thus produce powerful emails that actually get opened. Once you’ve identified the types of emails that appeal to your contacts, your brand will get better results from your email marketing campaigns.

With email marketing offering a potential return of investment of 4400%, it remains a powerful way to attract and retain customers so let’s explore ways to create emails that your leads and clients look forward to.

Personalization

The more personalized your emails come across the better. Contacts want to feel like your brand understands their needs and can be turned off with mass emails. However, you can’t send different emails to thousands of people so there are a few ways you can make your mass emails a little more personalized.

Use HubSpot’s My Persona Tool to learn the different persona’s that you should be targeting your emails to and you can create different email buckets to send leads based on their persona.

Using a contact’s first name in the email can go a long way and this is pretty easy to insert with the right email  marketing automation tool.

Segment Your Lists

Segmenting your email lists goes along with personalizing your emails. If you segment your contacts into different lists, you can dictate the way you write your emails and determine what would be the most relevant emails to each email lists. Here are just a few ways you can segment your lists and adapt your email strategy accordingly:

Add Value

Instead of just boasting about your brand and constantly trying to convert leads into clients, you want to send out emails that add value for your contacts. The goal of email drip campaigns is to keep your brand top of mind and establish thought leadership. So, the more resources and relevant strategies that you can provide for your contacts, the better!

If you’re dripping educational material and thought leadership strategies, your contacts are actually going to look forward to your emails. A few ideas on how to do this are ebooks, blog posts, tip of the week and more!

Special Offers

One way to definitely get contacts too look forward to your emails is to occasionally offer special offers. This can be anything from a free trial to a limited time discount or a free ebook.

When you offer your special offer be sure to put it in the subject line to convey to readers that your email is worth opening because it contains something for them.

Enticing subject lines

44% of consumers don’t open an email when the subject line doesn’t excite them. So, there is a lot of pressure to get creative with subject lines. Here are a few things to try with subject lines for your marketing emails and entice your contacts enough to get them to open your emails:

Know When to Send the Sales Pitch

Here at FeedOtter, we have a rule of thumb that each new lead gets entered into an email drip and receives a series of 5 emails. The first 4 emails establish thought leadership and offer intriguing recourses. Then, the 5th email is the one where we send the sales pitch after we’ve established trust and brand familiarity.

Once a lead makes it all the way through the initial drip campaign they are entered into a drip campaign that emails out weekly blog posts. Occasionally we will ask leads at the end of the blog post email if they want to try out FeedOtter. For clients, we ask how things are going with FeedOtter in an effort to retain them.

So knowing that the sales pitch should only come occasionally, you can plan your email drip campaigns accordingly.

Don’t Send Too Many Emails

69% of email recipients unsubscribe because they get too many emails from brands. Taking this fact into consideration, you should be really mindful of how often you send out your emails. While it might be tempting to send out emails every day, you should probably send out emails once a week.

One strategy you can implement is to ask your contacts which emails they want to receive. This way they can choose if they want to receive an email every time you publish a blog post or if they want a monthly round up of your blog posts.

Make Your Emails More Human

When writing your marketing emails, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re writing to actual people. Many brands make the mistake of making their emails too formal and robotic. You want your emails to be friendly and conversational in order to appeal to your contacts.

You can do things like use their first names in your emails and add a CTA to the end of the emails inviting them to reply to the emails if they have any questions for you. Inviting your contacts to reply with questions makes them feel like they can have an actual conversation with you and keeps them more engaged.

Automate Your Blog Digest Emails

In order to not email every blog post that you send out and turn off your contacts by emailing them too much, you can create a weekly or monthly digest of your blog posts. This way your contacts can choose which blog posts they want to read and you don’t overwhelm their inbox.

Luckily here at FeedOtter, we have a tool that allows you to automate your blog post emails whether you want to email every blog post or if you want to automate a digest of your posts. With beautiful templates, your contacts will enjoy receiving your blog post emails.

Do A/B Testing

A/B testing your emails can be done in any email marketing tool. So whichever tool you use, take advantage of the A/B testing feature. This allows you to try different messaging and subject lines to see what resonates best with your readers. Then, you can build off of what works and continue to refine your strategy so that it becomes exponentially stronger.

Final Thoughts

Your brand puts out great resources and has a lot to say in your email marketing campaigns. There are many strategies we’ve outlined here to make your strategy stronger when it comes to your email marketing campaigns. Having drips for leads and clients is great for customer acquisition and retention as long as you craft your strategy the right way.

Do you have any tips when it comes to your email marketing campaigns? We’d love to hear your thoughts on Twitter @Feed_Otter

How to Measure Your B2B Blog Posts

One of the biggest hang-ups when it comes to blogging isn’t writing content for the blog itself, but, measuring the blog and judging whether it is performing well or not. We hear from marketers all the time that they want to do a better job of measuring their blog posts, so, we created this post all about this important topic.

Before diving into this post, ask yourself if any of the 3 questions resonates with you:

  1. Do you ever feel like you’re running a company blog because you think you should but don’t know if the blog is actually lifting your brand?
  2. Do you have a weak grasp on how well your blog actually performs for your brand?
  3. Ever wish you could measure your blog to report on it’s success to your co-workers and/or boss?

If any of these questions sound like something you ask yourself, then this post will help you define and target which metrics you should measure for your blog and help you start measuring your B2B blog posts today.

Why Should I Measure My Blog Posts?

Defining metrics allows marketers to determine what components equates to success and track whether or not their blog is producing positive business outcomes.

Measuring blog posts on a weekly/monthly/quarterly basis gives marketers tremendous insights on what is working and what is not working. This allows us to constantly refine on what is working to exponentially power our blogs.

Measuring your blog posts and having data to back them up also helps marketers make the case for more budget and time to spend on the blog.

Blog post analysis is just as important as coming up with great post ideas so let’s dive right in and look at the metrics that you should be tracking when it comes to your B2B blog and how to get started.

Traffic

Traffic is one of the most basic and important metrics to keep an eye on when analyzing the power of your blog. This simply shows how many people are viewing your blog in any given time frame and how they are getting to your blog post in the first place. Luckily, Google Analytics is free to set up and offers robust reporting when it comes to your blog.

There is a lot of information you can gather when referring to your blog’s traffic but there are two main metrics to pull about your blog:

These metrics will help you identify your most successful blog posts so that you know what topics resonate the most with your readers. You’ll also be able to identify how people find your blog so that you can put more effort into those traffic sources whether it be social, guest posts, etc.

Social Shares

A social share of a blog post means that each person who shared your post on their social channels thought your post was good enough that they want to share it with their own followers. In a way, when someone shares a post, they are attaching their reputation to your post. So, it’s a big deal!

It’s the goal of a blog post to always be refreshing, new or educational. Looking at which blog posts get the most social shares let you know which topics your readers care the most about so you can refine the posts you publish.

There are a variety of tools out there to help you measure social shares of your blog posts but we recommend Nelio if you use WordPress to host for your blog.

Leads Generated

When a potential customer finds one of your blog posts, your blog may be the first time they hear about your brand. A well thought out blog post can represent your brand well and make them want to learn more so a blog is a source of lead generation.

We mentioned Google Analytics and we’ll mention it again here—you can track leads generated to their original point of entry to your site. This allows marketers to track how many leads their blog posts bring in in any given time frame.

This metric is key when showing the success of your blog to your team or boss because it shows that your thought leadership blog posts are getting the attention of potential new consumers.

Subscriber List

When someone opts into email updates whenever you publish a new post, they are telling your brand that they enjoy your blog posts. So, with each new subscriber, you should feel great about the work you do.

Each subscriber means that someone new is reading and maybe sharing your blog posts. Additionally, many brands put new blog subscribers into an email drip campaign, making a list of subscribers very valuable when paired with good email marketing.

Keeping a pulse on your subscriber list and tracking the growth can clue you and your brand into how much interest your blog is gathering.

Open Rates and Click Throughs

After you email your blog posts out with FeedOtter, monitor the open rates of your blog digest emails and links clicked.

It’s important to monitor your open rates and click throughs so that you have analytics to clue you in on your blog post strategy. Helpful hints will come in the form of how to write the most engaging emails that accompany your blog posts and to know if the topics you’re writing about make people want to click on the posts.

After monitoring open rates and click throughs, you’ll start to get a feel for what your audience wants to hear from you so these metrics should keep getting better.

Unsubscribes

When someone unsubscribes from getting emails about your blog posts, this means one of two things:

  1. That you’re sending out too many emails
  2. Your blog posts aren’t interesting to them anymore

Look and see when the spike in unsubscribes happens. Analyze your post frequency for that week and which topics just hit the blog. You may want to consider sending a blog digest of all your posts per month or changing the content you put up on your blog.

You want to keep your list of subscribers up, so, be sure to pay close attention when people are unsubscribing so you can remedy the issue quickly.

Post Popularity

Whether it’s in Google Analytics, WordPress, or a different tool, it’s easy to monitor to see how many views your posts are getting and sort out your most popular posts.

Keep track of your popular posts and try to find commonalities. Do you see common topics or industries written about in your most popular posts? Did you boost that post on social? Did you link to these posts in guest posts?

After identifying commonalities, you can create a recipe for all of your blog posts. This recipe should include producing engaging posts, a solid social share plan, a budget and a link-back plan.

Keep a running list of your brand’s top 10 posts and stick it on the wall so that you can refer to it when you’re planning your upcoming posts.

Final Thoughts

It’s hard to justify the time, let alone a budget, for your blog if you don’t have data to back up it’s existence. Whether these metrics are for yourself to refine your blog or for your boss to get more budget for your blog—measuring your B2B blog posts is crucial.

Stop creating content for contents sake and develop a data driven strategy for your blog today. Start by identifying which metrics are the most important and how you’re going to track them. After implementing this approach, it should become easier to create posts that resonate with your readers and you should start to see metrics improving after building off of the data gathered.

What metrics do you care about when measuring your B2B blog posts? Let us know on Twitter @Feed_Otter as we would love to hear from you!

 

The Dangers of Not Emailing Your Blog Posts

Consistent blogging just makes good business sense. It increases SEO, establishes thought leadership, moves leads through the sales funnel and helps consumers establish a connection with your brand. To make the most out of your brand’s blogging strategy, it’s crucial to email your blog posts to keep your audience engaged. If you don’t email your blog posts, you could lose your connections with eager consumers, and you may miss the perfect opportunity to establish thought leadership.

Many brands make the mistake of posting their blog posts on their website, sharing them on a onetime  social media blast, and calling the job done. However, emailing these posts is the most effective way to get eyeballs on your content and nurture those leads and clients.

At the end of the day, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to position your brand as a thought leader if you’re not using the latest in email marketing technology. So, let’s explore why and how to ramp up your game when it comes to emailing your blog posts.

The Impact of a Blog

53% of marketers surveyed say that blogging is their top content marketing priority. This statistic tells us that blogging is key and there is plenty of room to reap the benefits of a blog. Here are just a few ways that a blog can power a brand:

Email Statistics to Take Note of

Email marketing generates $38 for every $1 spent, making it an extremely powerful strategy when executed correctly. In case you’re not convinced that email is right for your brand, let’s look at a few statistics:

Combining Two Powerful Forces: Blog and Email

Now that we’ve established the impact of blogs and email marketing, let’s combine these forces to power each strategy. Emailing blog posts capitalizes on the benefits of a blog and caters to how consumers want to communicate with your brand.

By emailing posts, brands can have a reason to email clients and leads and offer thought leadership material to nurture them with. Consumers really do want to hear from your brand, especially when the correspondence offers educational material and resources (as opposed to self-promotional material). Emailing these types of blog posts bridges the gap between content and email marketing.

How to Build a Powerful Email List

The first step when setting up your strategy for any email marketing campaign is to build out a list. This will be an ongoing process, and, if executed well, will snowball and collect email addresses on an exponential basis. There are plenty of ways to build this list:

How Often Should Brands Email Their Blog Posts?

61% of consumers report that they enjoy weekly emails from brands, and 38% of those say they wish for more frequent emails. So, judging by this data and our own experience, we recommend that you send out an email every time you publish a new blog post. Whether your content calendar includes weekly or daily posts, it’s a smart idea to send them all out as you post them to keep your readers engaged.

If you find that your leads are unsubscribing, you can consider a weekly digest of your posts.

How to Make the Most Out of Your Blog Digests

Whether it’s a daily or weekly wrap up of your posts, you should create emails that present your readers with a teaser of what your posts are about, and how they’ll benefit from them.

You should always accompany your teaser content with an obvious link or button to read the post.

Try experimenting with different templates in your emails. A lot of brands report that sending a text only email increases open rates. You can A/B test the formats to see what works best for your readers.

In addition to A/B testing formats, you can experiment with subject lines as well. The main takeaway here is that you need to find what appeals most to your readers so you can build off of the best results.

Tools You’ll Need

To maximize the power of your blog and integrate emailing blog posts into your strategy, you’re going to have to navigate with a few tools and sync them up properly. Here are a few tools to consider:

The combination of these types of tools can help you put your email/blog strategy on autopilot. This will make your job easier while ensuring that your readers get consistent emails for all of your posts.

Final Thoughts

Emailing blog posts is a powerful way to generate and nurture leads. Consumers want to hear from your brand in a way that educates and entertains them, as opposed to sending out blatant self-promotional material.

Now that you have a handle on such a powerful strategy, you can sync up the right tools and start emailing your blog posts today. Sit back and watch your work in action!

Do you want to put your strategy for emailing blog posts on autopilot? Check out how FeedOtter can help!

8 Steps to Creating and Hosting a Webinar to Generate New Leads

You’re in a pretty good spot. Your brand has a great product or service, loads of relevant content, and a top-notch team working with you. You are well-respected in your industry, and have great relationships with other like-minded brands. You also have a bunch of current and past customers who are happy with the work you’ve done with them. Now, if you could just find a way to use all these assets you’ve worked so hard to collect to promote your brand and generate more leads, your business could explode. It’s time to host a webinar.

Webinars give you a platform to use all of those assets, work with others, and establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. It’s not a terrifically difficult event to pull off, but you certainly need to plan carefully to optimize your success. Let’s take a look at what you need to do to make your webinar perfect.

Step 1: Pick a Date

As with any event, the time and date of your webinar is important. It needs to go live at a point where you’ll get the optimal amount of attendees and participants to join, possibly across several time zones. Be aware of holidays or popular vacation times like Spring Break, when folks are likely to be away from work. We suggest selecting a Wednesday or Thursday sometime around midday, depending on your time zone. Make sure to save the date company-wide, and start blocking off prep time for your team leading up to the event.

Step 2: Choose Your Topic

This may take some time, so be prepared for that. Think of an overarching topic that extends beyond (but still includes) your products and services, in order to get maximum participation. Consider sending an exploratory survey to other brands and potential leads to get an idea of which topics people want to know more about. Once you’ve narrowed it down to two or three topics, meet with your team and pick the one that everyone feels most confident in presenting; keep in mind that other guest presenters may need to feel comfortable with the subject matter, also. Again, you are looking to establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry, so make sure there’s ample material to educate, enlighten, and motivate attendees that tune in to your webinar.

When picking your topic, you may also think of ways your topic can include influencers in your industry. Having guests in your webinar or even a panel of experts can really take your webinar to the next level.

Step 3: Set Up Your Platform

There are several different webinar platforms to choose from, so do your research, check reviews, and set up appointments to speak with representatives about what they can offer. We love GoToWebinar for its ease of use, event management experience, and incredible customer support. They offer email support, customizable templates, interactive dashboards, and engaging polls and surveys to keep your attendees entertained and present. Whichever platform you choose, make sure it has the technical support and capacity to ensure your webinar goes off without a hitch.

Step 4: Build a Landing Page

A customized landing page will serve as the nerve center for all your pre-event processes, so treat its creation with care. You will want professional design, slick graphics, ample branding, and well-worded copy. Make the registration process simple and easy to complete; too many fields to fill out can turn a lot of potential attendees off. Consider adding a countdown clock leading up to the webinar in the corner of the page to create some anticipatory excitement, and post news and updates (like a new guest presenter) to people who are checking back in.

Be sure to hook your landing page into your marketing automation platform so that registrants get emails leading up to your webinar and so that your new leads are marked properly for your lead nurturing campaigns. After all, the point of a webinar is to establish thought leadership and generate new leads.

Step 5: Promote and Invite

While these are two distinct tasks, you need to take a moment and determine the preparation and order of how you proceed. Timing matters, so we suggest starting the invitation process two to three weeks away from the live webinar. Thoughtful branding should make an appearance here in the form of hashtags, logos, and the language you’ll use in the invitations and social media blasts.

Start writing content for promotional purposes by way of blog posts, email campaigns, and social media posts. Make sure it is exciting and buzzworthy copy, but keep it concise and to the point. If you’ve seen that folks have viewed your invitation but haven’t responded, consider sending them a quick and friendly reminder as a follow up. Keep tabs on how your hashtag is performing on your social media channels, and stay flexible if it isn’t trending like you want it to.

Step 6: Create the Right Content

Now’s the time to get all your content in order. You’ll want to get a wide variety of presentations to keep momentum going throughout the event: spoken word, PowerPoint slideshows, and interactive surveys keep things interesting. If you are inviting guests to contribute, make sure you give them plenty of time and a reachable deadline, along with some friendly reminders to those who are cutting it close. You’ll also want to organize the themes and topics to make sure there’s no duplicate presentations or off-topic content. Again, you want to create a feeling of thought leadership and offer selfless resources for the benefit of all, all while motivating potential leads to sign up with your brand.

Step 7: Dress Rehearsal

As the webinar approaches, you need to make a few dry runs to ensure that all of your technical and logistical parts are working well. Keep your contact at your hosting platform on speed dial to be able to answer any last minute questions, and be certain that the entire webinar will be recorded for future viewings. Make sure all of your presenters have a firm schedule and start time, and be certain they don’t have any questions or technical issues. Send out a reminder email to everyone that’s signed up, and encourage them to share a link to the webinar with anyone they can think of. Get plenty of rest…you’ve got a big day coming up!

Step 8: Showtime!

It’s the day of the big event. Wherever you need to be to host this, make sure you’re there early, and have firm communication with the hosting platform. Make sure you have plenty of water, snacks, and other necessities nearby…it’s going to be a long haul. Having a spare microphone, webcam, or headset available is a good idea, also; you never know when life can throw you a curveball. Keep an eye on any chats, and try to personally greet as many guests as you can as they join. Most of all, be present. Avoid distractions like checking your cellphone or email inbox, as you want to be on top of all presentations or questions. When it’s all over, make sure to thank everyone involved, and double check that the recording went well. The next day, send a follow up email with more thanks and a survey on how they liked it. Carefully read through any feedback you get…after all, if this webinar was a success, you’ll likely want to do it again!

Webinars are a great way to spread your messaging, network with other industry leaders, and grab a bunch of potential leads for your sales team. So, do your research, get all of your preparations in place, and put on an amazing show!

Do you have any webinar tips? We’d love to hear them on Twitter @Feed_Otter