Webinars are an excellent way for a regular audience to touch base topics of their interest. With webinars, they can get a more in-depth understanding of something they are curious about or even to improve their own skill-set. Brands across the world are taking to this method to reach a relevant audience in an insightful manner- a way that cuts the faff and gets straight to the point.
Lately, webinars are also witnessing their own variants and types (apart from the traditional Live Webinars). The most prominent ones are popularly known by the names of Automated Webinars, Evergreen Webinars and On-demand Webinars.
Automated webinars are pre-recorded webinar sessions that can be played anytime, online. This kind of a webinar is hosted by an expert, who lets the webinar play and take queries of the audience on the go. He can event take questions at the end of the session. The type has gained popularity as it demands lesser resources and proves to be more flexible for the host.
Evergreen webinars are sessions that are updated regularly, with latest and fresh content. You will see most product-specific webinars are always the most recent, which means they are edited to add newer material at regular intervals. Evergreen webinars can also be pre-recorded.
And lastly, on-demand webinars are again pre-recorded but are hosted online, on a website which can be accessed by the audience at any time. These webinars are mostly form gated are an excellent way for marketers to generate leads.
Why go for Webinars?
As you would agree, webinars are an excellent way for businesses to put across a word to their audience. They can do it without sounding too pushy or looking like they are trying too hard to advertise themselves. Webinars are also known to get the highest number of leads for any business.
With a good webinar, you can really deliver value, get in touch with your audience and receive genuine feedback. Not only this, but you are also seen as a thought leader or an expert in your domain. When you speak on a topic as you own it, you definitely leave an impact on your audience that nobody can take away from you. Your audience immediately puts you on a pedestal when they see you leading a topic.
Further, you don't have to put in much effort to reach your audience. In fact, your audience comes to you, and there is always a potential to reach a broader audience, from anywhere in the world. There is also real-time engagement which means that your brand doesn't seem like a distant object to your audience. Instead, you are seen as an approachable brand they would tend to rely on when there is a need. Check our blog post on instant Webinar Hosting Platforms for Online Team here.
Why go for Automated Webinars?
While webinars can be useful and result oriented, they can also be challenging to scale. To run a live webinar on a regular schedule can be time-consuming, taxing and can take away the time you might put into various other activities. Not just that, you would also need to put in real administrative efforts to organize every session, look after registrations a whole bunch of other mundane tasks.
In such a hassled situation, hating the commitment required to run a live webinar is a natural reaction. If you really want to use webinars as a real business growth tool, you might want to give Automated Webinars a shot.
Event Automation: As automated webinars are something that you record beforehand, you can use a slide deck presentation or even a video of yourself speaking at the camera. After this, all you need to do it upload the webinar session on to a platform of your choice. Once uploaded, you can even use the platform to schedule your session at certain times and also manage the entire registration process, each linked to the different start times, set-up by you.
Live Streaming: This is a component that can help you build something like a mix of automation and live streaming. You can partially automate your live streaming events. You can choose to host the presentation in real time but have the webinar service platform automate other tasks such as building landing pages, registration models, email notifications, etc.
Save Time: With a significant chunk of your worries of a Live Webinar taken care of, you are left with a lot of time at your hands. Not being present at the time of a webinar session being aired is not the only benefit here. You also get to forego a lot of other tasks that come along with the decision of hosting a webinar- blocking the calendar, coordinating with guest speakers, managing slide decks, videos, documents and the works!
For an automated webinar, these efforts are required only for the first time. Post the first session has been aired, you can reuse the recording anytime you like, from anywhere. The reduced hassle also gives you time to focus on your lead generation activities, like building impactful landing pages working on engaging content, etc.
Stay Consistent: Consistency is the key to conquer digital marketing. Webinars being a vital part of the digital marketing space demands you to be consistent in terms of content, frequency, schedule, and topics. While automated webinars help you save a considerable amount of time, you actually get a chance to work on your content calendars and coordinate with influencers in your domain to come on-board with you for the next session.
Share More Webinars: An automated webinar holds the potential to be played over and over again. In case you decide to change your target segment or their location, all you need to do is schedule it to play in a different time zone. This way, you get to reach out to your audience spread across the world and gather data, analytics for each set. You get more profound insights into how your audience in each location receives your content.
Now, let's get down to reviewing our Top 3 automated webinar platforms.
Demio
Demio currently lies amongst some of the best webinar software in the industry today. It is said to be one of the most intuitive platforms, packed with all the necessary elements and simplified processes, which lets the user focus on working out the perfect webinar.
Apart from being an extremely effective sales method, webinars can really put you across as a thought leader in your domain. Demio, as a webinar platform, helps you conduct an ideal webinar full of features that will enable you to convert your leads in almost no time.
Features:
Browser Based: Demio is browser-based and does not require any downloads. This makes it easier for you to reach out to your audience and eliminates the effort of coaxing them into downloading a new application. You can easily use Demio for various types of sessions like- Q&A, marketing webinars, live training sessions, etc., without having to worry about its seamless running. Moreover, it also offers a simplified and quick setup along with a smooth registration process.
Integrations: Another offering by Demio is its integration with various CRM platforms such as Odesk, Drip, MailChimp and many more than a lot of businesses use today. If one of these CRMs are a part of your business, you can easily integrate Demio with them to automate a lot of your processes. Further, you can also create your own automation rules, based on your personal preferences and requirement. This means you can decide how the system would respond in certain situations.
Real-time Communication: Demio also offers real-time chat during your live sessions, to enable communication with your audiences at all times. You can choose to interact with multiple people at a given time, delivering a truly engaging experience for your audience.
Automatic Recording: Most marketers often complain about losing their webinar sessions, either by mistake or when the system crashes. But with Demio, you really don't have to worry about losing out on content. The platform automatically records and backs up all sessions for you refer to, any time in the future. This is an excellent functionality as, during these sessions, a lot of the feedback and content exchanged can be pretty valuable.
'Always Available' Content: Since all webinar sessions are automatically recorded, you can access these files any time you like and replay them as and when required. Essentially, these live sessions are turned into automated webinars that can be re-played anytime, anywhere- a great way for you to reach out to a broader audience.
Demio has made all the required changes to make its platform GDPR compliant. As per the Demio website, " Demio has released an account-wide GDPR setting that you can enable for your account. You'll find this in the General tab in your account settings."
Jetwebinar
Jetwebinar is for marketers who aim to host rich quality, live and simulated live events at scale. The platform has been built to host large scare events, for more than 10,000 attendees, with almost no video lag. Organizing such a vast number of attendees can become a bit tedious, but JetWebinar is known to handle it all. They also claim to be the fastest webinar hosting platform on the market.
Amongst the various domains, small businesses owners and corporate marketing managers are known to use the platform on a regular basis, who swear by Jetwebinar's efficiency. Most importantly, the one feature that gets consistent praises is the platform's interface. The UI and software are designed to indeed help a marketer, in almost every environment. Especially considering the platform's capability to handle big crowds, the interface plays a key role here, and also comes out victorious as nowhere does it compromise on the quality of the event.
Also, Jetwebinar is not just a webinar hosting platform but a complete marketing automation software solution that every marketer should get their hands on. It offers a sense of ease and efficiency that does not get limited to just webinars but takes it up a notch by taking care of complete marketing automation.
Why Jetwebinar?
Speedy Webinars: Jetwebinar is known to be one of the fasted real-time webinar hosting platforms, amongst marketers. On their website, the product claims to broadcast the fastest live webinars in the world. Not just this, you get to broadcast your webinar to more than 10,000 attendees all at once, with less than 1 second of lag.
You are merely empowered to put across your message and spread your brand identity to large numbers of people, with a one-time effort. You can also stream real-time live video broadcasts, send out messages for your attendees, irrespective of their location and communicate in real-time to promote quality engagement.
Webinar Automation: The webinar session you've already broadcast can be re-hosted and re-played whenever you like. This feature from Jetwebinar eliminated the need to go live every time you want to broadcast, instead, all you need to do is- reschedule. As a marketer, it is always a great practice to chalk out your calendar beforehand, this way you can easily schedule all your sessions for the next few weeks.
Eventually, you will have a much more organized content calendar. Moreover, your audience no longer needs to be updated with your webinar schedule, or take out the time especially to attend your session. It's because Jetwebinar gives them the option to replay pre-recorded sessions or sessions that went live in the past. They can always look these up on the platform, and watch them for reference as many times as they like.
Templates and Customization: As a marketer, it is your sole duty to make things presentable and even make then stand out in the clutter to get any attention from your audience. The content you put out there, be it visual or textual, has to be exciting. It should also establish a connection with your audience; otherwise, you are bound to get lost in the crowd.
To avoid adverse outcomes, you must imply the same logic to your webinars as well- which Jetwebinar takes good care of with their custom templates. Directly go and choose a template you like, something that resonates with your brand and goes ahead with creating a unique webinar experience for your audience. You can further customize these templates in the way you want them to be. And guess what? You will not need a technical professional for this task at all.
Email Personalization: The best way to keep in touch with your target audience is by keeping them updated with the latest content. And one way to do that is by sending emails. However, a factor you must take into consideration is the number of emails your audience receives every single day- and that's too many! So how do you put your message across in a way that it gets seen? Send a personalized email, of course! On Jetwebinar you can set up email automation and aim for quality personalization.
Pricing: Jetwebinar offers you three plans to choose from. Starting at $63 per month, going up to $397 per month. You also get a 20% discount on all of these subscription plans.
You can set an entire chain of emails, right from the first communication going up to the point where they actually sign up. The good bit is, for this activity, you will not need an additional tool. Jetwebinar's inbuilt features can help you take care of all your communication with your audience.
Update: JetWebinar is GDPR compliant and they have taken care of all the aspects that come with the new guidelines. It includes the data privacy agreement, security breaches, right to erasure, data portability and several more. You can get to know more about their privacy terms on this website .
Easywebinar
Easywebinar is again an excellent tool for marketers who want to go beyond just conducting webinars. The platform is a marketing automation tool in itself as it automates many functions that marketers would otherwise be managing manually. It is not limited to only hosting webinars, but also lets you host online meetings, remote conferences as well as training sessions.
Further, you can also choose to opt between live broadcasts and automated webinars on the same platform.
Features:
There are many webinar solutions available in the market today, and a lot of them would have similar features, but the following list is what makes EasyWebinar shine through:
Live Webinars with a Personal Touch: Like other webinar platforms, you also have an option to broadcast live webinar sessions on Easywebinar, but with a slight personal touch. The platform lets you go ahead and choose a presenter from your audience- this gives you a chance to really establish a connection with your attendees. Along with real-time chat options, EasyWebinar has introduced the true voice technology which eliminated noises from the sound and lets multiple people be heard clearly. The chat functionality helps you save bucks that you would have otherwise invested in tools like intercom.io and others.
Evergreen Webinars with Additional Offerings: An evergreen webinar is a recorded session that your attendees can consume anytime but still experience it like a live webinar. A real-time screening situation is created on the platform, which means that the audience is more like to feel the pressure. They feel urged to be on time, and it helps maintain a sense of importance for your content and brand as well. The anytime-anywhere availability is excellent, but sometimes, to create a sense of urgency can also help you uplift your brand.
Analytics and Reporting: Numbers and figures are essential to any and every marketer today. Especially with the world and businesses going digital, and the user getting access to so many digital platforms, it becomes critical to understand your customer's behaviour.
Pricing: Easywebinar is a flexible platform with flexible pricing. If you go for the annual pricing plans, you actually get three months free. And if you opt for a monthly subscription, the pricing starts with $70 per month, which then goes up to $499 per month.
EasyWebinar offers advanced analytics, which lets you see and assess which actions were performed during your session- on live as well as an automated webinar. Metrics like how many people showed up, how long did they stick around, did they click on your call-to-action and the likes. Such numbers play an important role in helping you improve your sessions and in turn, increasing your lead generation.
Update: Easywebinar has made all the required changes to their privacy policy, data processing addendum and their privacy shield to make it GDPR compliant. For any more GDPR related queries follow this .
Comparisons
You are probably already looking at different webinar platform to include in your overall marketing plan. But, with so many brands floating in the market and each one offering a new USP, you are bound to get confused. However, a great way to clear out the confusion is by penning down everything you are looking forward to achieving with your webinars. List down your objectives and a roadmap to meet them.
Webinars are a powerful marketing tool that one must explore, and align with your overall marketing objectives. If done right, you can do wonders concerning lead generation, keeping your customers engaged and spreading a word about your brand.
Now that we've already discussed some of the leading webinar hosting platforms let's get down to comparing them. Check out the comparisons and assess which tool would work best for your business and marketing goals.
Demio vs Jetwebinar
Features: Jetwebinar is an excellent webinar hosting platform that offers a few exciting features. Some of them include the less than 1-second video lag and personalized emails for you to keep your audience updated and engaged. Not to forget- affiliate tracking which makes it easy for affiliated to track registrations.
Pricing: When it comes to assessing the pricing of both the platforms, Jetwebinar starts at 63$ per month with 100 attendees, whereas Demio's basic plan lets you on-board 100 attendees.
Customer Size: Jetwebinar as a platform is very extensive and vast which makes it a perfect choice for an audience ranging between 2- 2000. However, if your audience size is more than 1000, only then should you opt for Demio; otherwise, a lot of its features can go un-used and not worth the money you invest.
Integration: Demio takes over, hands down when it comes to integration. While Jetwebinar also offers a number of integrations, Demio also provides ease and seamless integrations which makes the platform a better choice. And this is also why Demio is a clear choice among most marketers.
Demio vs Easywebinar
Easywebinar has offered an all-around solution with one platform to help you increase your lead generation and improve customer retention. With Easywebinar you can work on reliable sales funnels, along with email marketing and social media as well as progressive tracking solutions.
Communication: Other than this Easywebinar also offers a built-in chat functionality that can be integrated with YouTube Live. Not just that, you can also integrate Facebook comments and Twitter chat, to enable easier communication for your audience. Along with chat, you also get built-in email marketing to promote your webinars. You can use email personalized, pre-scheduled emails to reach out to your audience for regular updates, reminders, and notifications. These emails can be sent across different time zones and set the calendar accordingly to avoid any awkward time deliveries.
Number of Attendees: For any webinar, one of the most important aspects is the attendees. On Demio, if you want more attendees, you have to shell out more money than Easywebinar. And if you're paying more to call more attendees, you cannot go beyond 1000 viewers even at the cost $367 per month!
With Easywebinar, you can call unlimited attendees on to your webinar, and you will not have to pay any extra fee for it. The subscription charges are flat, and you can call as many attendees as you like. And this, in my opinion, is a significant difference as you would never want to shoo away your attendees just because you ran out of spots! Limited viewership for a webinar is a big No.
Types of Webinars: While Demio is also one of the modern-day webinar hosting platforms, and claims to host various kinds of webinars, it still falls short. Whereas, EasyWebinar is one platform that focuses on lead generation and conversion, at the same time offering nine different types of webinars for your audience. Here goes the list:
-Single view live event
-Recurring weekly live events
- Automated one-time event in one timezone
- Automated recurring webinars in your attendees' local timezone
-Right on time events [Streamed every 15 minutes] -Block day scenario streamed automated webinars
-Straight to replay page scenario
-Dynamically show next available session on the registration page
-Show multiple sessions in the registration drop-down menu
Live Streaming: The live streaming on Easywebinar is plain and simple. Just go on and click the Live Stream button, and instantly you would be streaming content for your viewers. The process is seamless and straightforward, minus all the complication of downloading another software.
Evergreen Webinars: There is an option of a "like Live" webinar on Demio, but it is not really evergreen webinars that you will find on Easywebinar. The evergreen webinars on Easywebinar are there for your growing community, available for current and prospective customers to access and view.
Conclusion:
Webinars are no longer just a promotional activity. In fact, they have now become a great way to put yourself out there to the world, and come across as a leader in your industry. However, picking the right webinar software for your business is also critical as the platform you choose will help you achieve your marketing goals. Everything from branding to lead generation will ride on your webinar platform.
Also, considering a few factors such as mobility, interaction, and engagement, webinar comes across as the perfect marketing tool for any business today.
