This is the second in a series about how our team at BHN Rewards uses digital rewards and our own platform to boost our engagement among prospects and customers.
Even before the pandemic began, webinars were a popular tactic for both lead generation and customer engagement. Once lockdowns, remote work, and digital channels took over, many marketing teams — including ours — relied even more heavily on webinars. That gave us an obvious opportunity to do what we do best: offer email gift cards as rewards to boost our results.
Webinar attendance is a never-ending challenge, but by incorporating our own digital rewards, we saw a significant jump. We also learned a few things along the way that we hope will help you build a better webinar program.
READ MORE BHN REWARDS’ PRO TIPS: How We Use Incentives for Engaged Customers
By offering email gift cards to webinar attendees, it’s inevitable that we get some people who are interested only in the reward and not the content. That’s why we’ve implemented a relatively strict approval process before we distribute rewards. It starts with the language we use when promoting the webinar, which explicitly states that “qualified attendees” will receive a gift card. We run all registrants through our internal diligence process to help weed out any spam. The process doesn’t take long, and it’s worth the extra time to make sure that we don’t waste our rewards budget and that we get the best quality of leads possible.
Make sure that you follow through on your promise as soon as you can after the webinar. If attendees have to wait a week or more to actually get their reward, it won’t be the great recipient experience it should be. You may even get attendees emailing your team or calling customer service to ask about it, which just wastes time. Plus, waiting too long means you lose your chance to capitalize on the webinar content and hopefully turn an attendee into a lead. By using BHN Rewards’ instant rewards, we can upload the attendee list, customize the messaging, and distribute the gift cards in minutes. We like to use the space in our reward emails and redemption pages to provide related content and highlight the value and potential use cases of BHN Rewards. To make this process even more seamless, you can take advantage BHN Rewards’ out-of-the-box integrations with marketing platforms like HubSpot and Marketo.
When our BHN Rewards team started offering digital rewards for webinar attendees, we gave $5 email gift cards that recipients could choose from. That gave us a good bump, but our attendance rate still left us short of our opportunity and lead goals. When we raised the reward to $10, we really began getting better traction. That’s proof that determining the appropriate reward value is key to the success of your program. You have to consider both the type of audience you’re trying to attract and the level of time and effort you’re asking from them.
Webinars aren’t easy to produce and promote, so driving better attendance is important to make sure you get a good return on your time investment. BHN Rewards’ digital rewards platform makes it easy to distribute a wide range of email gift cards to attendees, as well as track each reward and customize the recipient experience.
Ready to see how BHN Rewards can boost your webinar attendance? Contact us for a demo today!
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
