"It’s a brilliant solution for a one-to-many conversation,” says Neville Cooper, of the Citrix GoToWebinar solution he’s been using for the past year.

The marketing manager for mobile text reponse company TXT2GET says he has gradually become more convinced of the value of webinars. They allow companies to reach many people at once; to be interactive and, in TXT2GET’s case, to cost-effectively present a useful but complex low entry-price marketing tool to a number of prospective customers at once.

TXT2GET sells text key words to clients, who then use them as a quick and easy alternative to an 0800 number or web address on their advertising. An early example involved the launch, in early 2009, of new Christmas hamper company Hampsta.

Hampsta advertised on television and in newspapers providing a freephone number or an alternative to ‘text CHOICE to 244’ instead, to get more information.

The result, says Cooper, was Hampsta received three times more text enquiries than it did 0508 calls. He says this “triple your response rate” result is typical for those using the text word service, as texting is so much easier than calling or going online to check out a website.

The two-year-old Auckland company has big plans.

It already boasts 800-plus local customers and has set up shop in Australia. It will launch in the US market this year too and has also recently moved into the business-to-business market, with radio networks and advertising agencies increasingly offering text-words as an extra service to their clients.

Complex sell
“The challenge we face,” says Cooper, “is that while the concept is very simple, educating people on text reponse, showing them case studies and demonstrating it can take an hour to do a presentation. With the entrylevel price being just $250, we needed to find a more cost-effective way to present to clients, rather than relying just on face-to-face, which is very time-consuming.”

And, of course, when you factor in the new overseas clients TXT2GET is confident of attracting, the extra challenge of time zone differences will make it doubly difficult. “We also have clients in New Zealand in some quite remote places who are hard to reach,” says Cooper.

All-in-all, the company needed some help in extending its sales reach cost-effectively. It found it in Citrix GoToWebinar. But their first port of call was the online meeting tool from Citrix called GoToMeeting.

“This is more of a one-on-one tool, says Cooper. “It can handle up to 25 attendees in the Corporate version, whereas GoToWebinar, which is for planned, online events, can accommodate up to 1,000 and has more interactive functionality like polling, exit surveys and an attentiveness meter.”

Not that TXT2GET deals in such large numbers.

It typically hosts eight or nine attendees at its weekly webinars, but it needs the interactive tools provided in GoToWebinar to more fully engage with Webinar attendees.

GoToMeeting allows Cooper to do one-on-one sales presentations, or to view a customer’s screen on his own computer – and even take over the person’s keyboard and mouse if need be – to help solve a problem. “It’s useful for training new customers and trouble shooting issues. People often can’t explain a problem very well, but if you can see what’s happening on their screen it makes it much easier.”

From here, TXT2GET saw the opportunity to engage with prospects using Webinars and GoToWebinar was a natural progression. Although GoToWebinar is easy to use and designed for marketers, not IT managers, Cooper says it took a while for everyone to get their heads around the production process of delivering professional Webinars, as it involves quite a lot of planning, similar to off-line events.

There are a number of pre-checks that also need to be done before the company goes live with its webinars, showcasing the TXT2GET service. (These webinars now work so smoothly, they’re held weekly to everyone who has registered on the TXT2GET site.)

“You have to make sure your email is closed and your desktop is clean, and that your phones are silent for the duration,” says Cooper.

“I like to have a second monitor, where I can move some of the GoToWebinar control panel panes, and easily check the questions being asked during the webinar and monitor how attentive attendees are.”

The latter can come as a bit of a surprise to attendees.

The webinar organiser can see if an attendee has wandered off to answer an email or check out a website, as he or she has temporary access to attendees’ computers.

But, Cooper says, he regards such straying attention as a cue to bring people back in, and will ask, for example: ‘Can you see this on the screen?’

No re-set
One Citrix feature Cooper is very keen on is the fact that it’s not necessary to re-set webinar formats. “You can just say: ‘set up similar webinar’.”

This feature has allowed TXT2GET to pre-book attendees weeks ahead, as its basic webinar – which features a poll and PowerPoint slides – is set up and the tool takes care of the scheduling, confirmations and reminders through its integration with Outlook.

Cooper, for instance, will check who is booked into a forthcoming webinar beforehand and tailor his pitch accordingly, depending on, say, whether a real estate man is attending, or a woman from an advertising agency.

He also reads the questions people type in to the onscreen Instant Messaging box during webinars, to see if, for example, they’re confused about how the TXT2GET service works. He can address the questions in the live Webinar or follow up afterwards with a call, if he thinks it necessary.

He asks people to type their name in when asking online questions too, so replies can be addressed to them by name, making the webinar more personal, as well as more interactive.

TXT2GET’s webinars include an interactive poll and attendees are also asked to type in keywords on their mobile to help them understand-by-doing how textword marketing works.

“You do need to think a bit about what you’re doing to make the best of the technology,” says Cooper.

Perhaps Cooper’s biggest vote of confidence in Citrix’s GoToWebinar is that he’s moving on to a new position and plans to use the webinar as both a sales presentation and a training tool in his new role.

In the meantime, the soluton will be a key tool in TXT2GET’s international expansion.





iStart, in association with Citrix GoToMeeting, invites you to join us, to hear Roger Courville, a veteran of online meetings and presentations, share 7 ways to boost online meeting IQ's and discuss how high-performing meeting managers engage remote audiences and improve productivity.

You’ll also hear how local companies TXT2GET and Queensberry are benefiting from Webinars.

Click here for more information and to view the webinar 





> Citrix GotoMeeting
W: www.citrixonline.com








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