“Many companies work hard on building attendance for their webinars, but more important are using them as a way to qualify attendees and to decide whom to nurture and whom to disregard entirely,” said Laura Ramos, VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research.

A study developed by online marketing resource MarketingProfs and marketing measurement company Lenskold Group quantifies this point.

The study, “B-to-B Lead Generation: Marketing ROI & Performance Evaluation Study,” found that most marketers aren't very concerned about qualifying leads, a practice that experts say is endemic to webinar marketing.

The study, which was conducted online early last year and compiled the responses of 834 marketers, found 52% of respondents engaged in lead-gen activities use no qualifications when defining leads, and one-fourth define a lead as any inbound response. “Companies with more effective lead generation were more likely to be outgrowing their competitors,” said study author Jim Lenskold.

“We started doing webinars six years ago—first with our health care consulting group—and scored almost immediately with consulting deals from it,” said Naylor Gray, director-global marketing. “And we noticed right away that attendees also were converting into research subscription clients.” Today, the consulting company offers webcasts in 10 industry segments.

Gray said the company continued to refine its approach by adding automated registration when it became available and streaming audio—obviating the need for attendees to make a telephone call to hear the audio.

Frost & Sullivan also spends a lot of time with its internal database of clients and prospects, checking job titles, company size and mail codes, as well as screening whom to invite to webinars.

In addition to inviting marketing-identified attendees, the company's sales team is authorized to send out e-mail invitations to their own prospects. While the basic technology requirements of webinars can be inexpensive—$2,000 to $3,000 per event is not uncommon—ancillary tasks such as segmenting the audience database, screening and qualifying attendees, and marketing the event can increase costs dramatically. Worse, without a strong commitment to quality events and targeted lead gathering, webinar ROI plummets and a company's brand can be damaged, said Kim Ryden, director-demand generation at webinar vendor ON24. “ROI starts with the planning stages,” said Ryden. “You want to segment your database and market to those people who have responded to something else in the past.” After that, Ryden said, plan to give the audience something informative, with a speaker who is engaging and doesn't just read the bullet points off the slide presentation. While e-mail is the most common delivery method of webinar invitations, reminders and follow-ups, Ryden recommends an additional channel-phone calls, to remind registrants about the upcoming event. “That gives a big lift at the end of the cycle,” Ryden said. “We've seen an increase of 20% when clients do outbound reminder calls.” In order to prequalify attendees, both Ryden and Forrester's Ramos recommend adding a brief survey to the webinar invitation itself, with one or two multiple-choice questions querying the invitee on his or her key challenges or needs. “If the attendee answers the brief questions, you know [they are] engaged and more interested in the topic,” Ramos said. “Thus, they're a hotter lead and go to the top of the lead list.” For the day-before reminder e-mail, Ramos recommends adding another question, asking the invitee to suggest a particular issue that the webinar presenters should explore. “Here, if the registrant answers this question, you've really got someone who's involved,” Ramos said, adding that these registrants are more likely to attend the event and get their question answered. Not only that, these attendees can be counted among the most interested and warmest potential leads, she said. Ramos recommends that marketers assign numeric values to sort through the most interested or active attendees of the webinar for most immediate follow-up by sales. Like advertising and direct-mail campaigns, webinars can benefit from consistency and volume, said Ben Chodor, president and founder of webinar platform provider Stream57. “A series of webinars can be most successful,” Chodor said. If a registrant misses the first one, he can get an e-mail with a link to the archived version and a reminder about the upcoming one. “It gives him a reason to come back and be educated,” Chodor said.

For example, PlatformQ, using video technology from Stream57, regularly stages a Virtual Energy Forum.

One such forum, delivered in 2008, attracted 7,000 attendees who had the opportunity to view and actively participate in video presentations and discussions. Later, they could linger in the sponsors' virtual booths.

In this model, the webinar functions not only as a product introduction but later as a virtual sales session, without having to split the two into separate online events.

“The potential level of engagement here is enormous, with direct interaction and downloading of documents,” Rosenbloom said. M