Let’s Talk Interactive Webinars

[TBlane_McMichen]

Hello Interactive Webinars

Maybe you have heard about it, or you saw an announcement, but you just didn’t have time the check it out. Whether you run many webinars or have never run any before, don’t ignore this new addition to Marketo Engage.  All Marketo Engage instances have this capability for at least 12 events with up to 500 participants! What is truly unique about Interactive Webinars (IW) is that it is built into Marketo and does not require integration setup, seamless access to interactions like questions and answers, surveys, polls, downloads, and participation. The native integration with Adobe Connect manages event creation, scheduling, registrations without the need to call webhooks, build in wait steps, and plucking data from custom objects. Let’s jump in and explore a little more.

What Are My License Details?

No matter what license you have, you have at least 12 events with up to 500 participants and 6GB of storage, which resets on the anniversary date of your Marketo Engage renewal. If you have Marketo Engage Prime or another premium subscription you probably have unlimited event with up to 1,000 participants and unlimited storage. What’s that mean?

• Events – this is a scheduled webinar event with a date, time and duration.
• Event Capacity – The maximum number of participants that can join the event.
• Storage Capacity – Amount of storage available for storing recordings, collaterals, hero images, documentation, and other assets.

If you have the base license, you can purchase an upgrade to increase events/capacity/storage.  The initial license is a “Shared Room License” which means that you cannot schedule or overlap two events simultaneously. You can purchase a license for an additional room if you need to run concurrent events. Also, you can purchase a license for additional storage if you wish to keep more records or want to leave assets in your event.

Your License Details

To find out what you have, navigate to the Admin section of Marketo (or ask someone with Admin access) to the Interactive Webinars control panel and look at the license panels. If it looks like the image below, you have the basic package.

If it looks like the image below, you have the unlimited events for 1,000 participants license.

If you see both, then you have both the base package and the upgraded license.

Important:
If you have more than one license, which license you use will be determined when you create your event.  If you have both packages but continually select the 500-capacity option, you will exhaust the license at 12 events.  No big deal, you have unlimited 1,000 capacity events which are fine for even small events.

Users, Hosts & Presenters

You may have noticed a Users panel in the IW control panel. Not all Marketo users have permission to create or edit Interactive Webinar programs. You need to grant access to these individuals in the control panel. There is no limit to the number of users that you can add, but they must be a Marketo Engaged user.

You can have external hosts and presenters for your events that are not Marketo users. Therefore, if you have another team or external contractor that will run the live event you do not need to add them as a Marketo user, but someone will need to schedule and setup the Marketo event program for them and add them to the event as a host or presenter.

My Favorite Things

No, the dog didn’t bite, the bee didn’t sting, I’m not feeling sad … these are simply a few of my favorite things about Interactive Webinars.

#1 Seamless Interaction with Adobe Connect

When you create an Interactive Webinar program in Marketo, the event is created and paired in Adobe Connect. This includes rescheduling or cancelling.  It is all controlled in one place …the Market program dashboard. Hosts and presenters are added from the Marketo program, and their personal links are available if you need to resend them.

When a program member status [A] is changed to “registered” [B] the custom join link [C] is created and available in the {{member.webinar url}} program token. When they join the status is changed, when they click a survey, download an asset, ask a question, etc. it is instantly available to the Marketo program and can be actioned by a trigger or filter. Checkout this clean interface design!

#2 Managing Tokens

The new My Tokens dashboard puts several nice features right at your fingertips.  (Follow along in the image below.) In addition to the new clean design, there are some nice features to improve token setup.  [A] Folders can now be created to help organize tokens, which is very helpful for event programs that require many tokens. [B] Import Tokens, yes, you can import tokens from another program or marketing activities folder. [C] Delete the selected token … but wait, I usually can’t because it is used somewhere, and I can’t find it! [D] Boom! Find Usage is now available for your tokens, so you can see, fix or change where and how they are used.

#3 Link Tokens

Did you look closely at the image above? There is a “link” token type … what!? I love this. In the image below you see We can drop the full URL.  Isn’t that a Marketo token no-no because it won’t be recognized and tracked as a link? … Not anymore. The tracking link settings are built into the token, so now it know how to handle it in emails and landing pages.

But that’s not all, folks! You may have also noticed that you can give it an HTML ID or Class or set the CSS styles directly in the token.  This means that the token can create a button in the place where it is used.  Like this…

#4 Transition to On-Demand

Remember the {{member.webinar url}} program token we talked about earlier?  Well, if you recorded the program to be used as enduring content, registered members can use the same token from the live event to access the on-demand recording. As new members are added to the program a join link is created.  This means the effort to transition the live event to an on-demand program is relatively simple.  You would change your registration page and associated smart campaigns. I do like to keep the program the same from a program performance and ROI perspective.

Wrap-up

These are a few things that I like about IW.  There are benefits to not needing to work across platforms and coordinating status and data transfers. This has been a review of the Marketo program features, but there is more to discuss about the Adobe Connect features. What is also exciting is that this initial product offering has a roadmap, too.  It was presented at the last Adobe Summit that Generative AI capabilities will be coming for the on-demand content.

See you next time.