Starting around Thanksgiving, a number of web conferencing providers got a little breathing time and started contacting me with end of year recaps and looks ahead at directions for 2011. Right around that time, I got very lazy and didn’t write up any of it on this blog! So it’s time to make up for my holiday slacking and thank the vendors for sharing their insights.
First up is ReadyTalk. I spoke with Anita Wehnert and Scott Hendrickson in product marketing. They told me that the company is focusing on scheduled webinars and webcasts for larger groups (let’s call them “web events”), rather than small team web collaboration. They told me that the company provides 24/7 live human support, which is something I acknowledge, applaud, and encourage you to look for when selecting a vendor. In a global business environment, having support available “from 7am to 6pm” in some headquarters location is just not good enough. I give webinars at the strangest local times in order to hit audiences in Australia, Asia, and the Middle East.
ReadyTalk is sticking with a “single product” approach rather than licensing different versions for different types of meetings. Last year saw an improvement to ease of entry for conference participants with the addition of a Flash interface. I like the fact that the software tries Flash first, and if the participant can’t use it the software automatically falls back to a Java client. Some companies block Flash applications for their employees and some people have old, out of date versions of Flash on their computers, so this can help avoid long diagnosis sessions and “Sorry, you’re out of luck” responses to attendees.
ReadyTalk allows conference sizes of up to 2000 participants and can be used as a pure self-service technology or bundled with event services and support. They offer pricing options ranging from per person-minute to monthly/annual subscription (unlimited meetings), to single-event full production.
An unusual feature is the ability to send bulk email invitations to an uploaded list of up to 10000 addresses. You can also set up marketing campaign designators to track which channels brought people to your web event registration page. The software also lets you tie in to Facebook and Twitter accounts to publicize upcoming events. This is a growing trend in the web conferencing industry.
Event recordings are available in four standard media formats covering audio-only and audio-video. Recordings are available immediately after an event concludes and may be archived on ReadyTalk’s servers or downloaded for distribution or rehosting.
The roadmap for 2011 includes direct bi-directional integration with Salesforce.com. This should allow registration and attendance data to feed into Salesforce, while also letting Salesforce users schedule, start, and invite leads to ReadyTalk web events.
I am also allowed to tell you that ReadyTalk plans integration with Eloqua in a similar manner, although this has not been publicly announced yet.
I wrote last year about ReadyTalk’s enhanced polling features, which is a capability I admire. They also have pre-populated dropdown fields for Country and State on registration forms. This is such an easy thing to provide, and so few conferencing vendors bother. I love the time-saving aspect of it.
Unfortunately my biggest single reservation about ReadyTalk remains constant… It displays static slides. If your PowerPoint presentation includes animations, transitions, or build effects you must alter it to a series of static slides without animations. I don’t like forcing my presenters to rebuild existing presentations to satisfy the limitations of a technology channel. But aside from that, ReadyTalk has an excellent combination of features, service, support, and pricing.
I will insert my standard disclaimer here, since I’m talking about a particular vendor/product. I do not accept advertising dollars, revenue share, or licensing fees for any web conferencing product. I sometimes act as an “industry expert” guest speaker for various web conferencing companies, for which I charge a standard fee, identical for all companies. I own no private or public stake or stock in any web conferencing company.
