How to Set Up a Zoom Webinar Event Program in Marketo

COVID-19 has caused marketers to shift their focus in tactics and budgets. In order to understand how the pandemic has impacted marketers, LinkedIn teamed up with Central Vision to conduct a survey. The questions included topics like budget cuts, tactic shifts, and goals.

When diving into the adjustments in tactics, the survey confirmed that there has been a large decrease in live events (80 percent). The largest increase in marketing efforts was dedicated to webinars, at 67 percent. These results support the idea that, now more than ever, webinars are an essential way to reach your audience and share valuable information.

While Marketo integrates with several webinar platforms to allow you to set up, promote, and track your events, Zoom is a certified launchpoint partner application. The Zoom integration provides Marketo users with data, including totals for attendees, invited, and registered. When connecting Zoom Webinar with Marketo Event Program, you are able to trigger automated emails for registrations, follow ups, and more.

Now how do you get started? Here are the steps to integrate the two platforms and create a successful webinar program in Marketo.

Integrate Zoom Webinar with Marketo

Before you can sync the two platforms, ensure you meet the following prerequisites:

• You have a Zoom Pro account with the Webinar add-on
• You are a Marketo user with admin permissions
• You have access to a Zoom account with admin permissions
• You have pre-approval of Marketo for Zoom in the Zoom App Marketplace

After you have confirmed these prerequisites, complete the following steps to add Zoom as a Launchpoint Service in Marketo:

1. Within the “Admin” section, navigate to the panel on the left and select “LaunchPoint.”
2. Click “New Service” to create a new service.

3. Enter the service name and select Zoom from the service provider list.

4. Log into Zoom by entering your Zoom credentials.

5. Click “Allow” to grant Marketo to access the specified information, and click “Save.”

Connect Zoom Webinar to Your Event Program in Marketo

When the setup is complete, you will be able to see and use all of your Zoom webinars in Marketo. If you need assistance scheduling a Zoom webinar, follow these instructions provided by Zoom.

After your create your webinar, follow these steps to connect it to the Event Program in Marketo:

1. Create an Event Program in Marketo for this specific webinar. Ensure the channel type is set to Webinar upon creation.
2. Within your Event, click “Event Actions” in the top navigation, and select “Event Settings.”

3. Under login, choose Zoom as the Event Partner and select the Zoom account appropriate for this event.

4. Within the dropdown for “Event,” select the desired event. Hit “Save.”

Your Marketo event program is now synched with your Zoom webinar, and you can begin to build out your program and promote your event.

Follow Marketo Event Program and Webinar Best Practices

Best Practices for Event Programs in Marketo

In a previous post, I shared tips on how to build a GoToWebinar Event Program in Marketo. These guidelines can be followed here, as well, to ensure you are setting up your event program correctly and following best practices. Click through to read helpful information on tokens, registration forms, triggered emails, and more.

Webinar Best Practices

Zoom has compiled a variety of guidelines to ensure you stage a successful webinar. Their online webinar best practices help you from the planning stage through post-event, but here are few key things to keep in mind at each stage:

Pre-event

• Event promotion should start about one month prior to the event start date. Increase promotion frequency and tactics to include a mix of channels as the date nears.
• According to ON24, Tuesday is the best day to send the promotional emails to promote your event.
• On average, a typical online event is one hour in duration, with at least 10 minutes recommended to be set aside for interactive activity such as Q&A.
• According to RingCentral, the average attendee will watch 52 minutes of a webinar.
• Schedule at least 30 minutes for a rehearsal with your presenters and stakeholders a few days prior to your event. Use this time to discuss roles and tasks, and finalize content to ensure you are all comfortable and ready.

Live event

• If you expect more than 20 attendees, consider bringing a subject matter expert to assist you as a co-host.
• Consider the use of a second monitor. This will allow you to host the screen sharing on your primary display and move windows like participants list, chat, Q&A, and polls to a secondary monitor, to give you a greater ability to track everything at a glance.
• Provide housekeeping tips at the start of your event to show your attendees what tools you will use and set expectations. This includes information on recording, Q&A, polls, and so forth.
• Always record. According to RingCentral, 25 percent of registrations will plan to just watch the replay.

Post-event

• Provide follow-up communications, segmented based on those who attended and absentees.
• This could include a follow-up survey. While both Zoom and Marketo do not include a follow-up survey tool, it is very easy to use external tools such as SurveyMonkey to fill this need.
• If you haven’t already, start planning your next event. Hosting events on a regular basis will help you to develop and enhance your community network and their expectations.
• Create a Marketo Event Program Template for your Zoom webinars to duplicate and update for each event, creating efficiencies and ensuring constancy in reporting.

After you have integrated Marketo with Zoom and have successfully launched your first webinar, you can start to learn what has worked well, what can be improved, and optimize your webinars in the future. The more webinars you complete, the more comfortable you will also be. Take advantage of these great platforms, and start connecting with your audience in a new way!

Originally published at www.smartbugmedia.com.