Discover how Melina Chan at IDP elevates webinar strategies by rolling out Interactive Webinars for cross-regional use. In this article, you can find the peer learnings of implementing Interactive Webinars to streamline webinar production and follow-up campaigns in Marketo Engage.

In this article, I share my insights on using Interactive Webinars at IDP, an international education organization that provides student placement services. My team implemented Interactive Webinars for a pilot test preparation session named IELTS MasterClass to help test takers succeed in their English Language Tests.

Key benefits of Interactive Webinars: A unified event solution

Hosting engaging and seamless webinars has never been easier with Interactive Webinars—an all-in-one webinar platform that integrates registration, presentation, engagement tools, and analytics into a single streamlined experience within Marketo Engage. Unlike traditional webinar setups requiring separate event registration and webinar platforms, this unified solution in Marketo Engage enhances efficiency for IDP's global marketing organization.

From my experience piloting Interactive Webinars, the feature has core advantages such as:

• Seamless event experience:  Unified event registration and webinar presentation workflows eliminate the need for multiple platforms.
• End-to-end data capture:  Track every stage, from event registration to attendance and engagement analytics.
• Enhanced audience interaction:  Leverage interactive pods like quizzes, polls, chat, and Q&A to boost live engagement.
• Data-driven follow-ups:  Use webinar analytics to craft personalized post-event campaigns, maximizing sales outreach opportunities.

In the following section, I share a comprehensive checklist to help you, as a Marketo Engage administrator, implement the Interactive Webinars feature effectively.

Planning checklist for rolling out Interactive Webinars to your marketing organization

To ensure a seamless roll-out of Interactive Webinars, you could reference this comprehensive checklist, summarized with my key learnings, to onboard your marketing team.

Planning stage:

1. User permissions: Identify the key stakeholders in using Interactive Webinars and configure their Interactive Webinars permissions in the Admin section.

   • Marketo Engage users: Grant Interactive Webinars access to campaign builders (for example, event marketing manager) & campaign approvers (for example, marketing automation manager)
   • Interactive Webinar template editor: Create a role or update an existing role with “Access Interactive Webinars Templates” access.

2. Webinar team: Add webinar co-hosts & presenters.

   • Administrators should set up permissions for marketing campaign users and approvals.
   • Marketing campaign users should assign permissions for webinar teams as co-hosts and presenters, allowing flexibility for each event.

3. Asset preparation: For global marketing organizations using multi-region Workspaces, ensure that your webinar templates and breakout rooms are created within each Workspace for seamless use.

   • Prepare your Interactive Webinars program templates for different recurring event types (for example, long-form workshop vs. short product updates) so marketers can easily reuse them based on event frequency.
   • Have your marketers prepare essential event registration assets. Train your marketers to clone from the Interactive Webinars templates, promotional emails, forms, and landing pages for a consistent registration and communication experience.

Watch the following video, in which I walk through the steps to create Interactive Webinars, from creating the templates to customizing the room layout.

Pre-Event: Event Program & setup for the event team

1. Create a new event program and select the webinar channel “Interactive Webinars powered by Adobe Connect.”

   • Design your webinar by cloning from the desired Interactive Webinar template and selecting the preferred room template.

   • In the program’s Assets tab:

     • Update the batch and trigger campaigns to trigger the registration confirmation email.
     • Set up registration invitations, confirmations, and reminder emails.

   • In the  Setup tab, define required tags and period costs.

   • In the  Tokens tab, generate necessary tokens, such as calendar files and event details.

   • Add the webinar team as co-hosts or presenters, allowing them to  test and rehearse backstage and familiarize themselves with the Interactive Webinars functionalities.

2. Launch the registration process at least one month before the event for maximum promotional reach.

3. Increase live webinar engagement with my tips below:

• Start with a video while waiting for attendees using the Video Pod.
• Encourage interaction with custom pods like word clouds or a countdown timer.
• Leverage co-hosts to monitor chat and Q&A for audience engagement.
• Use polls and quizzes to gather additional attendee analytics for Sales to follow up post-event with personalized content.

By following this checklist, you can prepare your marketing team to host successful  Interactive Webinars  that drive engagement and deliver valuable insights!

Post-event use cases: Use event analytics to develop follow-up campaigns

Additionally, I would like to showcase two use cases to follow up effectively with your engaged audience using engagement analytics from Interactive Webinars:

• Engagement during the event.
• Engagement post-event.

I’d recommend starting by understanding your engagement analytics.

• Identify the highest engagement points (for example, who raised their hand, gave a heart emoji, or asked multiple questions) in the entire session.
• Then, determine the importance of these interactions in nurturing leads.
• Use the Interactive Webinars-related triggers and filters in your Smart Campaign to nurture the specific audience segment for sales conversations.

Use case 1: Segment live engagement for follow-up

I have used engagement during the webinar, for example, attendee activity, to convert potential leads and personalize content to address their needs.

Watch this video where I demonstrate how I approach segmenting live engagement in the Smart Campaign.

Use case 2: Personalize follow-up with post-event engagement

To extend the impact of your audience’s post-event engagement, I can easily assess post-event attendee engagement in the Interactive Webinars engagement dashboard. Then, I can target the audience who didn’t attend the live event but watched the recording later.

Watch the following video to see how I would use Analytics to follow up effectively with the engaged audience post-event in my Smart Campaigns and nurture these leads.

Key takeaways

Before you go, here are three key takeaways to keep in mind:

• Set the right permissions: Ensure that all necessary user permissions are in place for your marketing team and external speakers for seamless access and collaboration.
• Prepare your webinar template assets: Have all required assets ready and accessible in Design Studio with appropriate template editing permissions to selected users.
• Maximize live engagement to use Analytics in follow-up: Plan your audience interactions strategically upfront to collect valuable data signals for follow-up campaigns.

I hope you found this tutorial insightful. If you have not implemented Interactive Webinars, start by using my checklist to help you prepare the templates and train your marketing team. Together, your team can develop more engaging event experiences with Interactive Webinars where everything is seamlessly integrated with Marketo Engage.