The Webinar Blog

AnyMeeting Introduces SMB Pricing

AnyMeeting put out a press release today announcing pricing plans for small and medium businesses that want to provide web conferencing accounts for multiple employees. The announced plans start at a 3-user size and go up to 50 users.

Rates for the "Company Pro" plan are shown clearly and unambiguously on the AnyMeeting website, which in itself is a nice change of pace from most other vendors' multi-seat mystery rates. A 3-employee bundle costs $40/month (billed up front as an annual total) and 50 employees will run you the equivalent of $585/month.

It should be noted that the plans only cover meeting sizes of up to 25 attendees, so this is not comparable to larger webinar-appropriate capacities accommodating hundreds of participants. 200-attendee plans are available at higher prices and can be specified for a subset of your company's total account pool.

I have enjoyed watching the growth and transformation of AnyMeeting since first reporting on its launch as "Freebinar" in 2010. Since their initial vision of providing free webinar services entirely supported by display advertising (still available), the company has changed its name, added paid plans, expanded options for pricing models, and continually added new features. They seem to have been able to claw out a foothold in a crowded market segment, as today's press release also mentioned that they passed half a million registered meeting hosts.

For more information, you can read a message from founder and CEO Costin Tuculescu on the AnyMeeting Blog where he directly positions their plan against GoToMeeting. This is fun for us industry old-timers who remember how revolutionary it was when GoToMeeting first came out with its clearly stated, low-cost pricing options. What was once the upstart is now the established yardstick to be challenged!

Technorati Tags: AnyMeeting,GoToMeeting,webinar,web conferencing,web conference,online meeting,online conference,web collaboration,Costin Tuculescu

Hublished Gives Webinars Embeddable Web Page Registration

Hublished is a startup focusing on providing value-add services for people running webinars on existing platforms. The company is not a webinar technology firm itself. It assumes you are creating and running your webinars with an established mass-market product such as Citrix GoToWebinar, Cisco WebEx, or something similar.

The goal of the company is to make it easier for marketers to drive registrations for upcoming live events or archived recordings of events. They have started with direct links to GoToWebinar, are expanding in the next week or two to WebEx, and then will integrate other products as interest and API availability dictate.

The GoToWebinar linkage is rather slick. Once you give it your administrator account specifics, you can access a list of scheduled webinars inside of your Hublished publishing page. The software grabs the title, date, time, and description. It then automatically creates a popup window that can be embedded on any page by adding a few lines of Javascript to the page's HTML coding.

You can see an example of an upcoming webinar in this event listing for a scheduled Hublished webinar this week: https://hublished.com/index#/webinar153

Notice that the software displays the start time in your computer's local time zone (determined by IP address location). It also adds social media link buttons to help spread the word. Clicking the Register button brings up form fields and your data is passed back to the webinar application.

On the back end, Hublished can link to your account in a marketing automation system such as HubSpot or Marketo so you have statistics about registrants. Hublished has its own ability to send out registrant communications such as reminders and follow up messages, but it's a wash as to whether you would want to use theirs or rely on customized communications from your webinar system or your marketing automation system.

I spoke to Nis Frome, the COO and co-founder of Hublished. He told me that the current marketing/registration support is just the first step in a planned build-out to include a searchable portal of clients' webinar content. In testing with early adopter customers, this was the feature they gave the greatest short-term priority.

Pricing is not listed on the company's website, but Nis shared the fact that the pricing model is set up on a fixed-rate monthly subscription basis. So you will know up front what your expenditures are, rather than risking an open-ended usage-based model. There is a 30-day free trial period available for anyone who wants to try out the service.

This is an interesting addition to the offerings from the webinar vendors themselves and I will be tracking it to see how it does in the marketplace.

 

Technorati Tags: Hublished,Nis Frome,webinar,web seminar,web conference,web conferencing,webcast,webcasting,online seminar,marketing automation,GoToWebinar

Reviewauthority.com Publishes Bogus Web Conferencing Rankings

Today, January 19, reviewauthority.com put out a press release ranking the "10 Best Web Conferencing Firms for January 2014." 

The companies listed in their results are variously referred to as "the best web conferencing agencies," "the best performing web conferencing agencies," and "the 10 top web conferencing consultants."

We know these are up to date and trustworthy because the release tells us that "the rankings are updated monthly based on the meticulous evaluation process, client references, and industry research and analysis."

Unfortunately, the number five ranked company is Dimdim. Why unfortunate? Because Dimdim was acquired by Salesforce in early 2011 and the product was discontinued for all activity and service.

In addition to this fine piece of up-to-date analysis work, we can also take heart in the Evaluation criteria posted on the rankings page:

You will note that although the press release indicates a concentration on the companies and their services (including "web conferencing consultants" - huh?) the criteria are all about product specifics. And in the case of a multi-product company like InterCall, we can't even know what product was evaluated!

But that's okay… If you are unsure of the expertise devoted to careful analysis of web conferencing companies by reviewauthority.com, you can always look at their rankings for one of the other lists they simultaneously published in press releases today. Your choices include:

• Online Banking Services
• Elliptical Providers
• Washing Machine Providers
• Toaster Companies
• AC Unit Consultants
• Coffee Maker Providers
• Online Payment Processing Firms
• Treadmill Providers
• Gas Mower Consultants
• Electric Mower Manufacturers
• Sports Ticket Consultants
• Online Stock Brokerage Companies
• Conference Calling Services
• Apartment Location Services
• Online Movie Streaming Consultants
• Life Insurance Consultants
• Automobile Insurance Firms
• Online Real Estate Companies
• Voice Over IP Companies
• Recruitment Agencies

Pshaw and balderdash. It only bothers me that some people might not instantly recognize this ranking inanity for the obvious paid marketing gimmick it is. Nothing to see here… Move along, please.

 

Technorati Tags: reviewauthority.com,Review Authority,web conferencing,web conference

WebEx Quietly Sunsets A Module

I got an email today asking if I had heard about Cisco starting an end-of-life "sunset" process for WebEx Training Center. My correspondent said they talked to a customer who received notification that they should migrate training content off WebEx by April.

This shocked me, as I had heard nothing of the kind. I did some searching online and could find nothing supporting the rumor. So I got on the phone to try and find someone at Cisco who could verify or refute the story.

After a few redirects, I ended up communicating with Nicole Andergard, the PR Manager in Cisco's Collaboration unit. Nicole helped me get the facts straight. As is so often the case, things had been garbled in the telling.

First of all, WebEx Training Center is safe, as are recordings of customer training sessions residing on the WebEx servers. It remains a significant part of the WebEx suite of collaboration products along with Support Center, Event Center, and WebEx Meetings.

But Nicole confirmed that Cisco has indeed started end-of-life notifications for customers using an optional module that worked with Training Center. The Training Center On-Demand Module will only be available until May 30. As of June 1, presentations converted to on-demand status using the WebEx Presentation Studio functionality of the On-Demand Module will no longer be accessible and no additional recordings will be supported under the On-Demand environment.

It is easy to misinterpret the scope of this announcement. When I say "On-Demand Module presentations" I am not referring to the ability to watch archived recordings of live sessions. That is also a common use of the term "on-demand," but we'll keep that lowercase to show that it does not refer to the specific sunsetted product offering.

On-Demand Module presentations (uppercase letters) allow educators and administrators using this product option to add functionality to the standard WebEx session recordings. You start with a WebEx session recording as the source input and convert it for use in the On-Demand training environment. The module allows hosts to attach course materials, add a custom logo for branding, insert a test for interactive use by viewers, add web links for external interaction, and create a special library portal of recordings for search and access by visitors. These capabilities will be lost.

WebEx Training Center will continue to concentrate on live training sessions (which will still support attendee tests, file sharing, and other interactive functionality). Recordings however will be limited to the more basic "watch and listen" format shared with the other WebEx products.

My advice to customers lamenting the loss of the more fully-functional On-Demand Module presentations they had created is to look at third-party products designed to deliver this kind of recorded presentation interactivity. Two options that spring to mind immediately are Brainshark and Articulate.

 

Technorati Tags: Cisco WebEx,WebEx Training Center,On-Demand Module,recorded training,online training,web training,Presentation Studio

Learn More About Webinar Lead Scoring

This coming Tuesday (January 14) I will be the featured guest speaker in a free Adobe Connect educational webinar. My topic will be "A Better Way To Score Webinar Leads." I plan to discuss the most common tactics for lead scoring on marketing webinars along with drawbacks they have. I'll move on to alternative approaches that can give you better insight and higher predictors of sales interest.

I hope you'll join me for this all-new presentation. The 60-minute webinar (including time for live Q&A) will start at 10am California time / 1pm New York time. For more information and easy registration online, please visit http://j.mp/Jan14Scoring

As always, I am interested in delivering the information you care about the most. So please email me ahead of time with any questions or topic points you would like me to address during the session. You can write to me directly at [email protected]

I hope to see you online!

 

Technorati Tags: lead scoring,lead generation,marketing webinar,webinar,web seminar,web conferencing,web conference,webcast,webcasting,sales leads

Do Webinar Attention Meters Offer Value?

Adrian wrote to me over the holidays to ask if I had any benchmarks or comparative statistics on "attention ratios" for webinars. It's an interesting question and one that opens a can of worms. So let's pop the lid and start 'em wiggling!

If you are not familiar with the concept of webinar attention ratios or attention meters, I had better start with a definition. They are a valiant attempt by webinar software vendors to give webinar hosts additional data about attendee behavior and interest in the session. Several webinar technologies have incorporated the idea.

Some vendors include a percentage figure for each attendee, visible in the post-session reports. Some vendors include an overall percentage or meter that presenters and hosts can see during the session, reflecting average overall audience engagement.

Here are a few examples based on what I could quickly and easily find online:

             Adobe Connect

 

                 Citrix GoToWebinar

 

                                                        Cisco WebEx

 

Our first problem is identifying what the software is measuring. I have asked various people in some of these organizations what the percentage is based on and I have received conflicting answers. The easiest assumption is that the ratio merely looks at whether the conference window has focus or not (in other words whether it is the last thing the user clicked on). The instantaneous in-room figure would be the ratio of in-focus sessions to background sessions. And the post-session reports figure for each attendee would indicate the amount of time s/he kept the conference window in the foreground.

However some vendors have been much more mysterious, and told me that other factors are included in their calculation. Maybe things like number of interactions with the software (Q&A, hand-raising, poll answering, etc). I would like a lot more clarity before determining how much emphasis to place on the statistic.

Our second problem is deciding whether the data tells us anything of value. If the figure looks entirely or mostly at whether the conference window has screen focus, is that important? An attendee could click once outside the conference window -- maybe by accident -- and still pay plenty of attention to the content. And let's be honest… Computers are inherently a multitasking environment. Is it even reasonable to expect attendees to do nothing else at all while watching a one hour webinar? I might well be suspect of an extremely high ratio for an individual. It makes me think they opened the webinar and then left the room or took a phone call!

The third problem is the one Adrian identified… Given a set of numbers, what constitutes high/low, or good/bad? How are you going to use the data you collected? Is a person with an 80% attention ratio a better sales lead than someone with a 70% ratio? Is a webinar with a cumulative attention ratio of 68% successful or not?

I'd be very interested in your comments. Do you pay attention to your attention ratios? Do you know your average results across a number of webinars? Do you have a sense of what is a good score and what is a bad score? The floor is yours.

UPDATE JAN 15 2014: The Senior Product Marketing Manager at Adobe Systems wrote in to share the fact that they do indeed expose what goes into their attendee engagement meter. You can download the whitepaper at http://j.mp/AdobeEngagement. Thank you, Rocky Mitarai and Adobe!

 

Technorati Tags: attention ratio,attention meter,webinar,web seminar,web conference,web conferencing,webcast,webcasting,web meeting,online meeting,online seminar