6 Best Practices for Following Up on Webinar Attendees & Registrants

Posted by Dan McDade

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on Jul 7, 2010 11:02:00 AM

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Note: This article was written in 2010, and while it may be outdated in some aspects, we think the underlying concepts hold true.

OK … your webinar came off without a hitch, and you’re experiencing a sense of relief. But right away you know there’s work to do around lead qualification and separating the 24 karat opportunities from the fool’s gold. The webinar “leads” are not qualified enough to be sent to the field. You also know some attendees are more qualified than others and require immediate contact—not just addition to email lists or entry in marketing automation programs.

The question arises: what are the best practices for following up on webinar attendees and registrants?

I’d like to share comments from a webinar …

Webinar Leads Demystified—Best Practices for Leveraging Both Webinar Registrants and Attendees

… my friend and colleague, Mac McIntosh, President, Mac McIntosh Inc., and I recently presented that identifies best webinar follow up practices.

Here are some of the recommendations:

1. Include all no-shows in follow up activity

With hectic schedules, a new priority may pop up and prevent attendance for a registrant. Send a follow up email with a link to the archived webinar, and include the no-show in follow up lead segmentation and lead qualification activity.

2. Segment and qualify attendees and registrants

Because some of the attendees are great prospects and some are not, it’s critical to build a segmentation and qualification model that identifies segments most likely to be qualified sales leads.

While a list of 1,000 target companies may generate a 5% lead rate, an analysis of results typically identifies segments with higher and lower lead rates. For example, let’s say there are five discrete segments of 200 companies each, and these segments have lead rates of 9%, 7%, 5%, 3% and 1% that—in total—average an overall 5% lead rate.

Following a webinar, we recommend enhancing attendee and registrant lists with data points like SIC code, revenue, employee size and growth rate. This added data helps segment the entire list into segments that range from “most likely” to “least likely” to buy. Test sample qualification calls validate the segments that have higher and lower lead rates.

Once segmented lead rates have been established through testing, a full court press should be deployed against the segments with the highest lead rates—thereby improving results and maximizing marketing dollars. Less expensive media are used to market to segments with lower lead rates, and periodic calls can be made into low priority samples to monitor buying trends.

3. Nurture, nurture, nurture

Mac noted during the webinar that about 25% of prospects bought solutions from his client companies within six months of engaging in the buying process. About 50% bought in seven to eighteen months, and about 25% bought more than 18 months out.

Lead nurturing and developing prospects have never been as important as they are now. As prospect leads move through the buying process, nurturing reinforces your working relationship, positions you as a trusted advisor, differentiates your offerings and builds a preference for your solutions.

Implementing a comprehensive lead nurturing methodology not only improves results—it assures highly compensated field resources are used efficiently and in a cost effective manner.

4. Think in multiples: multi-touch, multi-media, and multi-cycle contact

Results multiply when contact strategies are multiplied.

Multi-touch: Instead of three touches, think twelve or more contacts with a prospect. The optimal touchpoint frequency is higher than you think.

Multi-media: Successful follow up uses a smart mix of multiple media. Instead of just using the phone, integrate a number of outbound calls with voice mail messages, personalized email and direct mail.

Multi-cycle: With the largest portion of prospects buying at more than six months out, expand your planned contact from over a few days to over several weeks and several months.

5. Tailor your messaging to the reasons companies and people buy

Companies buy based on three conditions of need:

  • Perceived risk of deterioration
  • Opportunity to improve
  • Fear of loss in their current situation

Individuals have different conditions of need:

  • Recognition
  • Financial gain
  • Security
  • Self actualization

Messaging to webinar prospect leads should vary based on what conditions of need they’re in. For example, a company perceives a risk of deteriorating conditions, and a decision maker there is acting out of a position of self actualization. This makes for a good selling opportunity as the decision maker wants to do the right thing to help the company and is willing to take a personal risk.

Vary messaging based on where prospects are with their company and personal conditions of need.

6. Match your sales effort to the prospect’s stage

There are five steps that must be sequentially addressed with prospects during the buying process:

  1. Find the pain
  2. Get agreement there is pain
  3. Agree to do something about the pain
  4. Agree to a generic solution
  5. Agree to a customized solution

Sales too frequently defaults to step five. Successful webinar follow up is based on confirming agreement on each step.

I’d like to invite you to share your best practices on following up on webinar prospects.

Note: The full webinar is archived and available for listening on the Target Marketing Magazine website via the hyperlinked title above.

 

By Dan McDade


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Topics: Lead Generation, Prospect Development, Lead Nurturing, Market Segmentation, Lead Management


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