Once you have added Zoom as a launchpoint service and created your webinar event program in Marketo you might be wondering how to set up your registration confirmation email to include “Add to Calendar” links that contain the unique join URL for each registrant. This post will show you how to create these calendar links and how to test that these links are working correctly.
Before jumping into the details I will answer a few questions that might be on your mind.
FAQs
Why should I use Marketo for webinar communication instead of Zoom’s communication features?
While Zoom does have a landing page with an embedded registration form and associated confirmation, reminder, and followup emails, you do not have a lot of control over how the landing page or emails look.
Instead, embedding a Marketo form on your Marketo landing page or on your 3rd Party CMS page will allow you to gain registrants while staying true to your branding. Similarly, using your existing Marketo email templates to communicate with registrants gives you more control over how the email looks and functions and again helps you stay consistent with your brand.
N.B. If you do decide to use Marketo for emailing registrants then make sure you have your Zoom webinar email settings configured not to send out any emails. You do not want to be double-emailing people!
Will status changes from Marketo sync to Zoom and vice versa?
Yes, there is bi-directional syncing of member statuses between Zoom and Marketo once the Marketo program has been associated with a Zoom webinar. So for example, if you use a smart campaign to change the program status of someone to “Registered” they will automatically be added as a registrant in Zoom.
Similarly, once the webinar is complete everyone who attended the Zoom webinar will automatically have their program status changed to “Attended” while those registrants who did not attend will have their status changed to “No Show”.
Adding Zoom Calendar & Join Links to Emails
Configuring Zoom “Add to Calendar” Links
If you intend to use Marketo to send out webinar registration confirmation emails with the same “Add to Calendar” links as the Zoom confirmation email then the links will need to have the following format:
- https://yourcompany.zoom.us/webinar/{{my.webinar id}}/ics?user_id={{member.registration code}}&type=icalendar
- https://yourcompany.zoom.us/webinar/{{my.webinar id}}/calendar/google/add?user_id={{member.registration code}}&type=google
- https://yourcompany.zoom.us/webinar/{{my.webinar id}}/ics?user_id={{member.registration code}}&type=yahoo
N.B. Make sure to set this confirmation email as Operational so that people who have unsubscribed will still be able to receive their joining info for the webinar.
Since the program is synced to the Zoom webinar, Zoom returns the unique registration code for every newly registered person and Marketo then stores this value in the {{member.registration code}} token.
The {{my.webinar id}} is a local program token that involves some Sherlock Holmes style investigation to obtain. Create the webinar id token before commencing with the steps below.
Getting the Zoom Webinar ID
- Click on the hyperlinked “Event Number” from the “Summary” view of the program
- Make sure you are logged into the Zoom account that you used to create the webinar
- Navigate to the “Email Settings” tab in the window that opens up
- Click on “Edit” beside “No Confirmation Email Sent to Registrants”
- Check the “Send Confirmation Email to Registrants” checkbox and click “Save”
- Navigate to the “Invitations” tab
- Copy the “Registration Link”
- Paste this link into a new browser tab and press enter
- Fill out the required information and click “Register” in the new browser tab
- Go to the inbox of the email address you just entered
- Open the Zoom registration confirmation email
- The registration email will arrive from the email address associated with the account that you used to create the webinar
- Right-click on any of the calendar links and click “Copy Link Address”
- Paste the copied link anywhere that will allow you to view the link
- The link will look similar to the link below
- https://yourcompany.zoom.us/webinar/tJErcuurrjoqE9CWX9sxw6G5WZ-qOukT5uK0/calendar/google/add?user_id=uF9GtMTISiaZwLYZ6lNKkQ&type=google
- https://yourcompany.zoom.us/webinar/{{my.webinar id}}/calendar/google/add?user_id={{member.registration code}}&type=google
- As mentioned above, since the program is synced to Zoom the {{member.registration code}} is automatically populated for every person that signs up for the webinar
- Copy the text from bullet 2 above which is designated by {{my.webinar id}} in bullet 3
- Navigate back to the program
- Click on the “My Tokens” tab at the top of the screen
- Click in the “Value” cell of the {{my.webinar id}} token
- Paste in the copied Zoom webinar string
- Navigate back to the Zoom webinar “Email Settings”
- Click on “Edit” besides the “Confirmation Email to Registrants Send upon registration”
- Uncheck “Send Confirmation Email to Registrants” checkbox and click “Save”
Getting the Unique Zoom Join Link
In contrast to getting the “Add to Calendar” links, getting the unique Zoom join link for each member is actually pretty simple. Similar to the {{member.registration code}} above, the {{member.webinar url}} is a webinar program member token that automatically gets populated when the program is synced to a Zoom webinar and a person’s status in the program changes to registered.
Testing Zoom Calendar & Join Links in Emails
Once you have created your registration confirmation email with the 3 “Add to Calendar” links from above, create a smart campaign to send this email once the registration form is filled out. Then follow the steps below to make sure that the webinar registration flow works as expected.
Testing Zoom “Add to Calendar” Links
- Fill out the registration form
- Check that you receive the registration confirmation email to your inbox
- Open the registration confirmation email
- Open the “Add to Google Calendar” link in Gmail on your desktop
- Give Zoom the necessary permissions to modify your calendar (if you have not done this previously)
- Check that the Title, Date, and Time of the webinar are correct in your Google calendar
- Click on the join url
- Make sure that you can join the webinar and that the Title, Date, and Time of the webinar are correct in the Zoom pop-up window
- Download the “Add to ICalendar” link on your desktop
- Follow the steps below to import the ICS file into your Google calendar
- Open Google Calendar
- In the top right, click the gear icon and then “Settings”
- In the menu on the left, click “Import & Export”
- Click “Select file from your computer” and select the Icalendar file
- Choose which calendar to add the imported events to
- Click “Import”
- Check that the Title, Date, and Time of the webinar are correct in your Google calendar
- Click on the join url
- Make sure that you can join the webinar and that the Title, Date, and Time of the webinar are correct in the Zoom pop-up window
- Follow the steps below to import the ICS file into your Google calendar
- If you have a Yahoo account then you can repeat step 4
- This should not be necessary once the Google link has been proven to work since both links are the exact same as provided by the Zoom confirmation email
Testing the Unique Zoom Join Link
- Use a smart campaign to send the webinar reminder email to the email address that you used to register in the previous section
- The email address used must be registered for the webinar or else the join link will not work
- Open the webinar join email that got sent to your inbox
- Click on the link to join the webinar
- Check that the join link leads to the correct webinar
N.B. I always recommend using a smart campaign to send email tests because this will ensure that the email we receive in our inbox is the exact same as the customer will see. The “Send Sample” option in the preview window does not send the email as the customer will receive it 100% of the time. I have had issues in the past with sending samples of emails with dynamic content that appeared fine but then links in the dynamic content section 404’d when they were sent to customers.
What Next?
Now that you have your calendar links set up successfully you should take a look at how to set up SMS notifications to confirm registration and later on remind people to attend.
The content in this blog has been reviewed by the Community Manager to ensure that it is following Marketing Nation Community guidelines. If you have concerns or questions, please reach out to @Jon_Chen or comment down below.
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