This finishes my series of answers from the Citrix webinar for first timers. You can read Part One and Part Two in their own posts.
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Janelle: Have you used webinars to conduct training sessions in-house?
Answer: Absolutely! I used to work at a software company and we used webinars to train employees on our latest software releases or to involve them in meetings when they were at remote locations. Many companies now use webinars for “all hands meetings” to communicate information from top executives. Companies are also offering new employee orientation for satellite offices from their central HR department. The possibilities are endless.
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Denis: What are advantages/disadvantages/effectiveness of conducting webinars in virtual environments such as Second Life?
Answer: In addition to Second Life, you will find companies such as InXpo, ON24, and Unisfair offering virtual environments that turn the computer into a mock exhibition hall, auditorium, or conference center. Attendees see iconic images of other people, move between rooms to interact with various aspects of the event, and can visit and communicate with representatives of the companies involved. These can be very immersive experiences, and offer a different type of interaction than the classic webinar or webcast. But the setup and preparation for an effective virtual event should not be trivialized. In many respects, it is like setting up a large physical show. And although the costs are lower than booking physical buildings, they are still higher than the average webinar or webcasting technology. They start to pay off when companies have very large audiences they want to interact with and several groups who want to present themselves to the audiences. I haven’t seen studies on effectiveness, but anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that they can be quite cost effective compared to flying in target audiences from large geographies.
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Jerry Lee: What was the name of the payment gateway you mentioned for charging for a webinar?
Answer: I mentioned www.EventBrite.com as an example of a registration management system that can be used with webinar connection links. It is quite intuitive to work with and has the advantage of no up-front costs. They skim a little off each payment from a registrant. Other third-party systems are also available, including www.cvent.com, www.actonsoftware.com, and AMP from Corvent.
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Cristina: Can webinars be used as part of the eLearning program of an organization?
Answer: Definitely. You might schedule a webinar to offer the basic training, you might offer a collaborative session to allow interaction with the instructor for remote students. There are also specialized versions of web conferencing software that have features designed to offer extra eLearning support. These can include the ability to run scored tests, integrate with external Learning Management Systems, separate students into breakout groups, or manage a series of courses in a program.
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Norm: Can we pre-record a webinar and just “run” it at another time, or does it have to be live?
Answer: It is usually not a good idea (or in most cases possible) to try to fool an audience into thinking that an event is live when they are actually watching a recording. But I have seen webinars where a host introduces the topic, announces that we will now watch a recorded presentation (for instance a guest speaker subject expert), and then take live questions afterwards. The only technology I know of off-hand for really faking a live webinar using recorded content is from a company called omNovia.
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Kim: Do you have tips for handling people who become frustrated or unhappy if a webinar stops working or if something goes wrong during the presentation?
Answer: Take ownership and responsibility – don’t start pointing fingers and playing the blame game. If it’s your webinar, you get to accept the responsibility for everything that happened. Express empathy with your frustrated audience member. See it from their perspective. If you can offer a way to make it right, do so (offer a refund, re-record the content and offer it for viewing at their convenience, or offer a new session). If you can’t recover from what happened, explain that you understand the inconvenience and frustration they are experiencing and let them know that you are treating this as a painful learning experience so you can take steps to make sure it never happens again.
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David: Is there a typical registration curve for webinars? Is it different for free vs. charged events? Is there a minimum time to let webinar promotions run?
Answer: This varies by subject and audience. But in general, you get the majority of registrations for a free event immediately after you send out announcements and invitations (if you have designed them correctly to provoke an action response!). This drops off to a low constant rate for the remainder of the time you have registration open. Many people will register quickly, then decide at the last minute whether it is convenient to attend. So attendance rates can easily be in the 30-45% range. For fee-based events, it is now common for people to register anywhere from 1-48 hours before the scheduled time. They want to make sure they are free before committing their money. For this reason, I like sending a reminder invitation push a day or two before a paid event. If you can leave your promotional materials up for several weeks (3-4 typically), you can benefit from having them spread through search engines, social networks, and registrant word of mouth. But this depends on proper design and execution of your promotion strategy.
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David: Are lunchtime webinars the best time to get high conversion rates on registration?
Answer: Even though Citrix advertised my webinar as part of their “Lunch and Learn” series, it was only lunchtime for a portion of our audience. We had attendees from a wide range of time zones, which is usually the case. Your best bet for attracting a business audience is to span the active workday across as many regions as possible. This typically means that the time zone in the middle of your geographic reach will be there at lunchtime.
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Whew! Thus endeth the webinar responses. Thanks for all the great questions!
