The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of communication. Various types of online events, including webinars and video conferences, have become an integral part of our lives. No doubt, they will stay with us.
Not only educators and trainers take advantage of their potential. They are also excellent support for marketing and PR campaigns and play an increasingly important role in modern business. The increasing demand is also followed by a growing number of platforms that allow for the creation of interactive events. What should they feature? What can be achieved thanks to them? What role does automation play in today’s webinar market?
These questions are answered by the experts of ClickMeeting – a platform for webinars and online meetings, which stands out for its intuitiveness, ease of use, and concern for user privacy and data security.
At the very beginning: can you tell more about ClickMeeting? When was the company founded? Where does it come from? What exactly do you do, and what are your goals?
ClickMeeting debuted in 2011. It was initially developed as part of GetResponse, a company responsible for creating a well-known omnichannel marketing tool. However, we started to grow rapidly, and in 2016, we spun off into a separate company and team focused on developing our webinar and online meeting platform.
We come from Poland; our headquarters are located in Gdansk. However, from the very beginning, we have been operating worldwide. Initially, our strategic market was the United States. Soon we noticed a great interest from customers from other large markets, including Brazil and Russia. Today, attendees of events hosted on ClickMeeting are almost all over the world. Which, of course, makes us very happy and inspires us to grow.
Our goal remains the same. We want to create a platform that allows you to stay in touch without any constraints. We want to make it intuitive and simple so that anyone, regardless of technical skills and experience, can create and join our webinars and online meetings. That’s why ClickMeeting is browser-based (we provide both a desktop app and a mobile app, too). We have an experienced customer support department and extensive educational materials at our customers’ disposal.
Webinars are mainly associated with education. However, as you often point out, that’s not the only sector that uses them. So who should think about creating their own online events?
Indeed, webinars come directly from the education sector, hence their name. But today, their role is much broader. Of course, they are still used by schools, universities, and private training companies, but webinar marketing, i.e., the use of webinars in the marketing and PR strategy of different types of companies, is playing an increasingly important role. Such events help shape an expert image and are useful in lead generation and nurturing campaigns. The materials prepared can be used in various ways and embedded in various channels.
We can quote direct market data from our latest State of Online Events report for 2021. We analyzed nearly 2 million webinars and meetings that took place on ClickMeeting during this period:
- 52.4% of all events were education-related: 41.3% of these included activities run by schools, universities, or other entities of this type, and 11.1% included internal training provided by various types of companies.
- 35% of the events were of a marketing or sales nature. 19% supported marketing or PR campaigns, and 16% were sales-focused, so these included very popular product video presentations.
- 12.6% were online meetings. They took different forms – on the one hand, standard, short team meetings, and on the other hand, board meetings.
Webinars are also associated with live meetings: presenters meet with participants in real-time. At the same time, automation is playing an increasingly important role. What exactly does it mean?
Of course, live webinars are still the most popular format. Not only do they allow for face-to-face contact, but also many interactive options such as presentation sharing, screen sharing, using a virtual whiteboard, and chatting. However, automation is becoming more and more important – it allows you to reuse previously created material and share it with your audience when it’s most convenient for them. With ClickMeeting, in addition, to live webinars, you can choose from two options:
- Automated webinars: it becomes possible to start an event at a chosen time automatically, including creating a recurring event. This can be based on a pre-recorded recording, as well as a live webinar recording that can be created directly in the event room.
- Webinars on demand: The principle of preparing content is the same, but in this case, the attendee can access it at any time.
Importantly: both automated webinars and on-demand webinars allow for interactions between the participant and the organizer. For example, you can include a Q&A session and answer questions at any time. Of course, access to all types of events can be free or paid.
Sticking with the topic of monetizing webinars – how exactly does it work? Can hosting webinars be a primary source of income?
Of course. This market segment is growing brilliantly. Our clients earned $1,767,427 from event access sales in 2021 alone. The record holder earned $26,687 from selling access to a single event. Everything works by integrating with fast and secure payment systems, so getting started is really easy.
It is important to know that this is only one of the ways to make money by hosting webinars. The aforementioned webinar marketing can generate huge revenues; of course, measuring this is a bit more complicated. Our clients use the platform for lead generation, lead nurturing, content marketing, and a variety of strategies. So how much can you really earn from webinars? There are no limits. A well-crafted strategy will allow you to achieve great results. And we make sure that neither the organizers nor the participants have to worry about technical issues.
I bet the coronavirus pandemic has changed the face of the market to a great extent. Can you share data from that period?
It’s true. We faced a real revolution in 2020. Companies and institutions, which until then did not have to use online channels or did so to a limited extent, suddenly had to switch to either fully remote communication or hybrid models. How did this look in numbers?
In 2020 alone, our platform hosted 2,316,074 events with a total of 30,779,244 participants. So on average, 44,540 events took place per week. In contrast, the year before, there were 627,033 events and 8,504,770 attendees, respectively.
While 2021 was similar in many ways, it was also somewhat different. We saw some fatigue with online events, and users were definitely more familiar with the tools. However, the numbers are still impressive: there were 1,953,406 events with 26,603,480 participants. This represents an increase of 320% compared to the pre-pandemic period.
So today, we can proudly say that ClickMeeting passed the test: we underwent rapid modernization, including infrastructure, to provide our customers with stability and everything necessary to run engaging and interactive online events.
So, what is your secret? What do you pay special attention to?
Our motto remains intuitiveness and simplicity. When introducing new improvements and features, we make sure that users can use them without stress. They often point out the very high level of customer service. This is something that people cooperating with large corporations often cannot count on. We approach each case individually and do our best to solve a potential problem.
Moreover, the support team helps customers in five languages: English, German, Russian, Spanish and Polish.
The event room is available in 9 languages: English, Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Polish, Portuguese, and Arabic.
In addition, we focus on ensuring the highest possible level of data security and privacy for both our clients and participants in the events they create. As a European company, we must strive to comply with advanced GDPR procedures, so for many of our business customers, this is a fundamental argument for choosing ClickMeeting.
What’s more: you can test ClickMeeting during a free 30-day trial period and do not need to enter your credit card details!
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