Webinar No-Shows

I’ve noticed a trend in Webinar attendance lately:  just as many people seem to be registering for live online events, but far fewer are actually showing up at the appointed time.

This highly unscientific observation is based on nothing more than my personal experience, but in my career I have had pretty good exposure to many different types of Webinars over the last 10 years or so.  I have seen events where the email invitation was sent to 16,000 people and ones where the invitees were in the dozens.  I have seen clickthroughs in the 50% + range and less than one percent.  I have seen conversions (the number of people who click though that actually fill out the registration) from 100% to less than 25%.  I have seen multi-touch methods like following up the email with voice mail or actual telemarketer event boosting dramatically increase the number of registrations.

Of course there are dozens of variables that drive these wild variations in success: the level of permission you have with your intended audience; the relevance of your topic to them; the quality of your presenters; how well organized you are; the history you have (or don’t have) of delivering informative content; timing; the frequency of reminder emails you send; etc.  But one thing had seemed to be fairly constant in my experience:  about 50% of people who register for a live online event actually show up at the appointed time.

But not any more.  I have seen attendee rates slowly drift down to where 25% – 30% is considered a good showing, and 10% is not unheard of.  I can think of several possibilies for this decline:

1. Webinars are no longer a novelty.

2. The presentation skills of most people are abysmal, and the general population is starting to figure that out.

3. In this On-Demand, Information-Pull world, even people who want to view the content know that it will be available as a recording, and they can watch it later.

4. People are busier and schedules are more fluid, and when daily calendars are getting shuffled, items that don’t involve interacting one-on-one are the first to be sacrificed.

The good news is, that despite people’s failure to show up at the Webinar, post-event follow-up is just as effective as before.  I have even seen a couple of recent campaigns where registration numbers were decent, event attendance was poor, but the leads coming from following up with the no-show registrants have been stellar.  I guess the message is, that volunteering to be given more information about something is the key indicator of interest (or granting of permission) — whether you actually show up to collect that information is secondary.

Wacky Wal-Mart Idea

On the weekend, I returned a faulty pressure washer to the Wal-Mart where I purchased it in May.  It had only been used twice (successfully) before it broke on Saturday.  In a highly uncharacteristic move, I had actully saved the receipt, so I figgered I was good to go.

Well, I got to the store and stood in line and everyone was very pleasant, but no joy.  Wal-Mart’s policy, clearly stated, is a 90 day return period, which I was clearly past.  I wasn’t upset or anything – I would have been pleasantly surprised to actually receive a refund, but I thought maybe a store credit or something.  Whatever.

It got me thinking, though.  What if Wal-Mart had a no-questions-asked 1-year return policy?  And what if that really was how it worked?  What if you simply handed in your item and receipt, and you were handed cash money by a smiling person?  (And they would  be smiling cause they would’t have to argue!)  And what if EVERYONE knew that’s how it works?  You could even have closed-circuit TVs thoughout the store showing people happily getting their money back! 

Would it be good PR?  Yes.  Would some people think it was gimmicky?  Yes.  But would it help sales?  I think maybe, because people would be less afraid of buyers’ remorse – they’d be secure in the knowledge that they could always take it back.

I have a tiny bit of data to back this idea up.  We used to offer a 3 month money-back guarantee for our software application Maximizer.  When we raised the allowed-return period to a year, the total number of returns fell.  We’re not sure why – we’d like to think that users had more time to learn to love the software, but it was probably because they just forgot.  Regardless, the knowledge that they had the ability to get a full refund for a whole year did help sales.

Aside #1: Notice the new logo?  It’s kinda Twitterish, no?  Is this the softer, gentler, hipper Wal-Mart?

Aside #2.  How long will I be able to consecutively title my blog posts with words that begin with “W”?

WKRP

I just found out something interesting.  The reason it took so long to get WKRP episodes out on DVD has nothing to do with any lack of demand – apparently is was perennially a top request.  But yet it took from the 1982, when the show ended, 25 years to get released last year.  The problem was, that because it was set in a rock radio station, there is always music from popular 70s and 80s bands playing in the background — and Fox didn’t have the rights to sell that music!  Just to get the first season released, they had to track down the owner of every song played in every episode, and buy the rights to redistribute them on DVD.

This seems weird.  Artists want to have their work played on the radio to boost album sales.  They don’t want unauthorized copying of their work because it would hamper album sales.  But no-one is going to NOT BUY your music because they can hear it “for free” on a WKRP DVD.  In fact, they’re more likely to get exposed to it for the first time by watching the DVD, especially if it doesn’t get a lot of airplay any more.

Read more of my ranting about over-protective copyright clutchers here.  Or don’t.  Your call.  Really.

WTF?

I get quite a bit of spam trying to be a comment to one of my blog posts.  This problem is not unique to me – all bloggers have the same trouble, and most blogging software applications have filters built in to catch it.  This morning, though, this slipped through:

Pe’ki’s necklace writes another totalitarian scarlet billion for her to come. Nana thrills in days of old like front and leaves privately exemplify any men, nominations control bracelet. They were small amount with transportation to unabridged their purpose for the river and for court for the Ka, nominations rabbit’s foot bracelet. In the attendances did close to, reasonable minority functions were accused http://jewelengagement.info/ring/5/3 exclusive of unaligned recent-endlessly results. elegance mesmerize italian silverstone. In an three-legged indexing header, which may unravel in the assembly of any canadian cystine percent, document or a anonymity that is military into actuality at a reached inlet is frayed as a curriculum vitae of making exorbitant forests. I’m donation them away to my beholders, and closeness-focusing them where I told the gold-.

It’s almost poetic in how it just barely fails to make sense.  I can’t figure out why any person (or machine) would be propogating it.  If you go to that URL, it’s a Romanian porn site, so I guess the idea is to just get the link out there and disguise it in a bunch of prose so it passes through spam filters.  But really, don’t people who want porn know where to go for it?  Why hide the facts about what you’re promoting?  If someone can explain this to me, I’d appreciate it.

Irrational Thinking

This post at the Freakonomics blog talks about Air Canada’s Jazz division’s choice to remove life vests from their aircraft to reduce weight and therefore fuel consumption.  This decision is effectively saying that the cost to them of providing you with a life vest (about 3¢) is not worth it.  The economist blogger agrees with the decision, but correctly predicts that most people, given the choice, would rather pay 3 more pennies to have the vest with them.

What’s the lesson here?  That people are not rational.  This isn’t good or bad; it just is.  The chance that a life vest would make a difference in the event of a plane crash is infinitesimally small – as a matter of fact, I can’t think of an example of it ever happening.  But people discount small expenditures, especially when the other side of the scale holds something very valuable (like one’s life).

It’s the same phenomenon that an old friend of mine noticed in Vancouver years ago: there was a tragic apartment fire where a young girl was killed.  It came out in the investigation that if her third floor bedroom had had a fire escape, she may have been able to escape.  There was great hue and cry to create new fire escape legislation, which happened.  The cost to society to implement those changes was huge.  My friend (who was an expert on traffic science) observed that spending that same amount of money on left turning lanes would guarantee  dozens of eliminated deaths and injuries every year, whereas the fire escapes might, one day  save some single person.

It’s a fact of life that we all make irrational decisions.  (I buy lottery tickets, e.g., which I fully acknowledge to be a tax on the mathematically impaired.)  And society as a whole is no better.  That’s why any vocation that attempts to make people do something predictable (like marketing does) is always going to be an art as well as a science.

Limericks

Since Clayton wrote my post for me today, I thought I’d share a fun site with you.  Well, fun if you like limericks like this one:

A preoccupied vegan named Hugh
picked up the wrong sandwich to chew.
He took a big bite
before spitting, in fright,
“OMG, WTF, BBQ!”

Special Guest Post

Wow.  Some great thoughts were left as a comment to yesterday’s post.  I present them as their own topic, from Clayton Morrissey:

Time is the final frontier. Completely untapped by marketers and retailers.

You’re always guaranteed to hit a huge bottleneck trying to check out of places like Walmart, Costco, Superstore etc because they just don’t get it (yet). Slash your prices to get me into the store, but if you want me to come back, put some effort into getting me the hell out of there when I want to pay and leave.

Sure, some may advertise that they’ll open another checkout if there are more than 3 people in line but how many times have you seen it actually happening?

The cashier is the most important employee in the store. They are the last point of contact and many times the only point of contact. If they don’t give me 100% satisfaction, that’s what I remember, not the discount price I paid. They need to be accurate, fast and friendly; in that order. I won’t be offended if they don’t make small talk with me, if I know they’re trying to get rid of me for my benefit, not just their own.

So train every single employee; from Manager to floor sweeper, to be able fill in as a competent cashier at a moment’s notice, when they see that it’s needed. Opening a new register doesn’t have to be a 5 minute procedure of adding a float either. You can open a credit or debit only line, instantly.

One day, when competing on price won’t cut it any more, retailers are going to realize that they’ll have to compete on service too and that means respecting my time by not stealing it from me for the privilege of giving them my cash.

Vote with your dollar. If the service isn’t up to par, go somewhere else. Eventually, it will make a difference.

Got Some Time to Kill?

I really hate waiting.

I read somewhere recently that people who are poor at time management are that way in part because they don’t want to show up early for things and then have to wait, so they try to shave everything down to the split second and arrive EXACTLY on time.  Of course, life intervenes and they end up late.  So the advice of this article was to arrange your life to be early for everything.  Then, if something happens to delay you, you will still be on time.  If no delays occur, you will be early and have to wait a bit, but you should EMBRACE that time.  You should cherish the free time that has been granted you and savour it in a zen-like state.

The part about planning to be early is great advice, but cherishing wasted time is hogwash.  As I wrote about here, most of us in North America grew up in a culture where sitting idle is nearly a sin.  Whether that’s good or bad, it’s my reality, and I really really don’t like someone else’s incompetence or thoughtlessness or disregard for the value of my time to cost me any of it. 

Two examples of this occurred recently: I was buying furniture on the weekend and my credit card was declined.  (Mastercard noticed that I had made a large furniture purchase the previous weekend, too, and had put one of those cautionary holds on my account.  I was able to get it unlocked in one call.)  When I called to clear it up, the IVR system played me some kind of ad for some new service before it would let me proceed.  Now, someone calling the number on the back of their card is unlikely to be looking for anything other than rapid assistance – why waste their time with an interruption marketing message?  Then, I had to enter my card number on the phone’s touch pad.  Of course, the first thing the human I eventually spoke with asked me was my card number.  Why bother with the touch pad entry?

The other was the first furniture purchase.  They were throwing in a coffee table for free.  (Great!)  Then, because this caused such a kaffufle with their payment processing system, it took about 30 minutes for them to take my money.  Can’t you shield the customer from this sort of systemic inefficiency?  Run my card, get my signature, then figure out how to put it into the computer after I’m gone.

What sparked this rant was a post at Seth’s blog. It’s really bad marketing to value your customers’ time less than your own.

Googlazon, What Should I Watch Tonight?

I have 998 channels of cable TV coming into my house.  Once you take out the music-only, pay-per-view, and other specialty channels, there are perhaps 200 or so that have content I might watch.  This is a barely  manageable number – by using my Y-chromosome super-surfing skills, I can be fairly confident I have a good handle on everything that’s on, and that I am watching the show that maximizes my viewing pleasure.  (Or be confident that there’s nothing on that I want to watch, and that I should go read a book or take a walk or something.)

Of course, this system isn’t perfect.  I have never seen the majority of TV shows out there.  Usually this is OK – I have a pretty good idea what kind of programs Two and a Half Men  and Flip This House  are, even without ever seeing them, and I’m confident that I can skip them without missing much (that I would enjoy, anyway).  But I’ve also never seen The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, or My Name is Earl.  For all I know, one of those shows could be PERFECT for my tastes, and replace House  as my favourite show.  But I soldier on with a kind of blind faith that I am getting the most out of my Toshiba regardless.

But what about when the Long Tail effect starts to permeate broadcast media and there are 1,000 channels?  Or a million?  How will I know that I am watching the programming that is most suited to me?  This is where the Google cloud-mind and the Amazon taste-trackers will really add value.  I predict that in less than 10 years, Google will know everything I ever watch and doubtless will be able to tell how much I am enjoying it by measuring the dilation of my pupils and monitoring my pulse.  When Google detects that I really like a particular show, it will ask Amazon to mine its recommendation engine for other shows that millions of people who saw the one I’m watching also liked.  By fine-tuning its selections over time according to my relative satisfaction, Googlazon will eventually arrive at the ideal mix of programming for my individual requirements.

Memorize Your Speech

I didn’t stay up late enough last night to watch John McCain’s speech at the Republican National Convention.  But I did see this oration by Representative Mary Fallin. 

It was like watching someone in the stands at a slow-motion tennis match.  Read from the left teleprompter.  Read from the center teleprompter.  Read from the right teleprompter.  Read from the center teleprompter.  Et cetera.

I can understand wanting to nail the most important speech you have ever made.  Especially in this year where the bar has been set so high for speech-making.  But for crying out loud, doesn’t that make it all the more worth the effort to memorize your 6-minute talk?