The webinar covered Qualtrics' lead generation strategies on LinkedIn, including how they use sponsored updates and InMails for different product campaigns and audiences. Qualtrics representatives discussed how they target the right professional audiences for their survey products. They shared best practices for driving event registrations through social media outreach, including conveying value, using compelling visuals and calls to action, and optimizing content for mobile. The presentation emphasized tailoring messaging to attract attendees and focusing on the value of events for members.
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Live Webinar: Killer Demand Gen Strategies: Qualtrics
1. Live Webinar: How Qualtrics is Killing
It with Lead Generation on LinkedIn
Irina Skripnik
Product Marketing Manager,
LinkedIn
Mike Maughan
Head of Brand Growth
Qualtrics
Mitchell Wright
Demand Generation
Qualtrics
4. • Who is Qualtrics
• Marketing Objectives
• Sponsored Updates &
Sponsored InMails
• Campaigns By Product
• Choosing Our Target AudienceWhat we’ll cover
5. Brands & Organizations
7K +
of the top 100
business schools
99
Users
1.8M+
Used In
Countries
75+
The World’s
Leading
Enterprise
Survey
Platform
PROVO / USA
DUBLIN / IRL
SYDNEY / AUS
SEATTLE / USA
DALLAS / USA
WASHINGTON DC / USA
9. Customer Insights
Voice of the Customer Programs
Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Net Promoter Systems
Website Experience Feedback
Employee Insights
360-degree Employee Feedback
Employee Engagement Surveys
Employee Satisfaction Surveys
Exit Interviews
Market Insights
Ad Testing
Concept Testing
Market Research
Academic Studies
Wide Variety of Products
for a Wide Variety of Roles
10. Driving Leads to Events:
One of the unsung heroes of demand generation
• Be relevant
• Be direct
• Be creative
• Be integrated
23. LinkedIn Sponsored InMail & Sponsored Updates
Event Registration Best Practices from Successful Customers
24. Address your audience directly, ask
them questions
Strong Visuals: Attention grabbing images such as
recognized leaders, interesting infographics
Type of content: Snack-able content, Lists,
valuable industry insights
Be Concise: Keep your intro
to 150 characters
Anatomy of a Successful Sponsored Update
25. Anatomy of a Successful Sponsored InMail Inbox Preview
Limit subject & description to 3-8 words.
Long previews may get cut off if they are over the
character limit
Make it clear this is an invitation and speak
to your audience
Use the description to give member a
reason to open the message.
Content, context and call to action
determines whether sender is company or
an individual
26. Anatomy of a Successful Sponsored InMail Message
Strong visual: Support your message
content and call to action, but not distract
Be concise and relevant: Address your
audience and get their attention with a clear
value. Keep your copy under 1000 characters
Strong call to action: Make it clear what
action you want the recipient to take
29. Use strong language to create sense of urgency to drive registrations
29
Be timely
30. Use strong language to create sense of urgency to drive registrations
Be timely
31. Convey the value of your webinar to your target audience
31
Be helpful
32. 32
Tell your audience about yourself and why they should attend your event
Be Personal
Convey the value of your webinar to your target audience
Be helpful
33. Use large images to emphasize your event’s value and CTA
33
Be visual
34. 34
Use the side image banner to highlight your event and CTA
Be visual
35. Keep your intro under 150 characters for optimal mobile conversions
35
Be Mobile
37. Re-use your webinar content to fuel your demand gen efforts further
37
Be resourceful
38. 38
Include a link to your profile to connect with your audience
Be resourceful
39. 39
You need to GIVE value to GET value. Focus the message on
the value of the event for the member
Create a sense of urgency to drive event registrations
Tailor the message to draw their attention on how this event will
make them more successful
Include a clear call to action to drive desired behavior
effectively
Keep it concise. Read your message out loud and see if it feels
too long. Does it hold up interest?
Key Take-aways
We're all looking for ways to do our jobs more effectively and efficiently.
Qualtrics has products that empower people to do that
But that means finding the people and organizations who will most benefit from using Qualtrics.
Qualtrics uses sophisticated LinkedIn targeting to approach the right people with the right message
Whether for a specific product
With thought leadership, or
Invitations to premier online events
Etc
Here’s what we’ll cover
First we want to give you some context as to what Qualtrics is and what we do as that will inform the rest of our conversation
Then we’ll walk through our objectives and how we have used LinkedIn to accomplish them
Including sponsored Updates and InMails, specific campaigns as case studies, and lastly, how we identify our target audience
2002 – Academia
2008 – Took off in midst of crash
Data-driven decisions. Be right because being wrong sucks.
Nobody likes surprises
Our goal is to add value.
We want to make people’s lives easier.
That means finding people who will benefit most from Qualtrics.
It’s not all that different from dating. Finding the right match can be hard. But that’s where LInkedIn comes in.
This can be hard because Qualtrics is a single platform that brings together three key areas: Customer Experience, Employee Engagement, and Market Research. There are lots of other organizations that do one of these things. There are even a few that do a couple of these things, but we’re unique in the sophistication and unification we bring to all three. That can make targeting hard.
LInkedIn is key in allowing us to do two things:
Target buyers within each vertical: (for EI – HR managers, talent development, organizational development, etc. which is way different than CX or MR)
Target buyers in more senior roles whose responsibilities span those areas (these are potential clients who use multiple products, which generally means we are using LinkedIn to target more senior roles)
FORD
Yum!
HC.gov
Let’s look at one of the three areas we serve: Customer Experience and let’s do it through the lens of CX Week.
Largest customer experience event in the world. It was a weeklong, online event focused on bringing the best CX professionals, thought leaders, content, etc. together in one place.
We had over 20,000 registrants and content downloads in a single week
Now, no one wants to throw a party and have no one come. So people create invitations. When the party is small, you can just hand them out to friends. When the party is large and you’re inviting lots of people you don’t know, you have to:
Find the right people
Get them the right message by helping them
See the value
Establishing credibility and legitimacy
That’s where we come to the four rules we noted previously:
Be relevant
Be direct
Be creative
Be integrated
Be relevant
We’re all busy. Please don’t send me advertisements for women’s footwear. I don’t need any.
If something doesn’t help me do my job better, I generally don’t have time to jump in
We’re targeting CX professionals and want to make it very clear up front that we have something of value for them
CX Week
Customer experience
So you can wow your customers
Top brands, thought leaders and practitioners to help you raise your CX game
Be direct
Attention spans – especially on social media – are short. Don’t make people go looking!
Largest CX event in the world … at your desk
Free. Online
Webinars, best practices, etc
Be relevant
Be direct
Establish credibility
Here we’re showing people that when they sign up, they’ll be hearing from some of the top CX brands in the world
This isn’t a rag tag event. This is a legitimate place to come spend your time and you’ll be better for it.
Be creative
Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi
We took the old theory of “No soup for you” sent him to CX Week and he came out with “More soup for you”
The full YouTube video garnered almost 1 million views on YouTube and we had a number of shorter vignettes that we posted to LinkedIn.
Different things resonate with different people so while we’re always A/B testing to see what’s working best, we’re also always trying new things to see what sticks with whom
Be integrated
I know this seems simple, but organizations often miss this.
Integrate your Sponsored Updates with your website and your landing pages
That means using similar language
Messaging
Colors and branding
Etc
It can be a very jarring experience to go from a Sponsored Update that purports to deliver one thing to a landing page or website that appears to offer something different.
If you’re not careful, it can feel like a bait and switch even when it’s not.
That can be very damaging and substantially hurt conversion … and thus your ability to deliver value to those who need it.
Sponsored InMails have been most useful when targeting for a specific event – like CX Week
We use Sponsored Updates when we’re targeting a much larger, more general audience
General Audience
Talent Week
Like CX Week, but for a much broader audience. We’ll still use Sponsored InMails to target HR professionals, talent development, organizational development titles, etc
But it’s also for anyone looking to get better at their job
Resume and interviewing advice
CEO’s sharing what they look for in super star employees, etc.
CEO coach for DropBox, Twitter, etc coming to share some of the advice she gives them, etc.
That’s a much wider audience than CX Week, so we’ll use more sponsored updates when targeting the broad list
-- Content Marketing
Strong visuals: a picture is worth a thousand words. Make sure you use the paperclip function to upload a new image so that you can put the most attention grabbing image that matches your content. We find that recognized leaders, colorful images work really well and drive CTR substantially
Addressing your audience directly such as hey entrepreneurs or starting with a question is a great way to engage your audience right away and also customize your message to your audience.
Being concise in your update is also very important – we see that especially for the introduction text, 140 characters or less works the best
And finally the type of content really matters: two tips here: snackable content, lists, industry insights are always great way to engage your audience on LinkedIn. But also think about matching your content to your marketing objective. If you are looking to create brand awareness for instance you probably do not want to lead the audience to a whitepaper but maybe a lighter version of the research
And don’t forget to use Direct Sponsored Content to test what works for your audience – best way to know how to appeal to your audience is to test and iterate
A great way to personalize the message to your audience and hook them from the get go is by speaking directly to them – look at these two examples from Alteryx and Microsoft where the target audience’s title and geography are called out explicitly
This tactic lets your target audience know that this content and the webinar is relevant for them. Personalization is a great way to boost the performance of your content and increase your event attendance
Why this worked:
1. Personal invitation that feels genuine and mentions the sender in the first person
2. Attention grabbing subject line with a supporting description
3. Consistent message with clear member benefit
Creating a sense of urgency is a great way to boost registrations for your event – this gives your target audience a motivation to act now, amplifying the strength of your call to action
Here replicon has two great examples – in the first example, save my seat combines the sense of urgency along with a strong cta
In the second example, by calling out the there is limited spacing, replicon is able to create sense of urgency to click and sign up before they run out of space
Also good to call out here that they are exhibiting other SU best practices- for instance calling out clearly the time/day of the webinar, provocative headline that grabs the reader’s attention and speaks to the benefits of attending the webinar
The body link pops and makes it easy to click when the member’s interst is peaked.
There is limited formatting here, so it’s easy to read on mobile
The message was easy to engage with on desktop and it’s even easier to consume on mobile.
People come to LinkedIn to further their careers and be better professionals
Webinars are a great way to do that – by explicitly mentioning why this webinar would be helpful to them is an effective way to earn their trust. It sets expectations on why exactly they would benefit from signing up for the webinar
Schwab’s example of asking a question to the reader is a great way to both spark a conversation, engage the audience as well as convey the value of the event
They are also calling out the industry experts who will be speaking, which is another effective way to boost clicks to your landing page
Why this worked:
1. Personal invitation that feels genuine and mentions the sender in the first person
2. Attention grabbing subject line with a supporting description
3. Consistent message with clear member benefit
Large images on average have higher engagement rate than content with thumbnail images
Large images that perform well have some snackable content/fact or attention grabbing visuals that stand out in the feed
Here are great examples that grab the member’s attention
In PGI’s example the image already gives them some helpful information and sets the expectation on what the webinar will be about
In Optus’ example, the large call to action to register now creates a visually strong CTA – the image is doing most of the heavy lifting here so that they can keep their intro short and sweet – just focusing on the value prop to the member
Why this works:
1. It’s Opening with an engaging question will peak member’s interest
2. Sponsored InMail is perfect for listing out events details like speakers
3. Hyperlinking to agenda will drive more clicks.
On LinkedIn, more than ¾ of the engagement comes from mobile – so it is very important to think mobile first when it comes to events and how to lay out your sponsored updates to stand out on mobile
We see that keeping the introduction short and sweet is a great way to boost clicks on both desktop and mobile. Especially on mobile, this will ensure that your intro does not get truncated and that your shortened link to the event registration is visible
As you see here – both of these updates are well under 150 characters – ability to convey your value proposition under 150 characters to busy professionals can make your content stand out both on mobile and desktop
Keep the message short to avoid overwhelming the member with content (under 1,000 characters)
Include a clickable link in the message body
Avoid excessive formatting and spacing.Plain text and up to 3 bullets works best
And lastly - Webinars and events produce a lot of helpful content. As you see from Pinnacle Financial Strategies example, you can extend the useful life of your webinars by reposting them for lead generation purposes – with a refreshed and appropriate call to action to download the webinar
Don’t over target seniority if your message is not intended for C-Suite audience
Avoid hyper targeting, it may work against your campaign performance if the message is too general
Tailor the message for your audience so the recipients can relate to the content
Please visit http://marketing.linkedin.com for additional information about LinkedIn products.