ZS Generates Data and Leads with ON24

ZS is a global management, consulting, and professional services firm with more than 13,000 employees in more than 25 offices worldwide. It specializes in software and technology for companies in the life sciences, pharmaceutical, and medical industries.

A big way for the company to showcase its expertise has been its annual ZS Impact Summit. Prior to COVID-19, about 200 people attended the in-person event. That number almost tripled when the summit went virtual.

To make the most of this expansion, ZS strove to create an engaging, interactive event, even at a distance. The company also wanted to capture audience data that it could use to nurture clients and prospects.

“We wanted to ensure that everyone was getting the in-person experience,” Emma Knuckman, ZS event marketing lead, says. “The audience would be larger—600 registrants vs. 200 attendees in-person—and keeping them tuned in was critical.”

ZS also conducts a series of monthly webinars that also needed reimagining. “In the past, we went with Zoom webinars,” Knuckman says. “But we were really looking for a better experience that was more on-brand.”

ZS turned to ON24 Virtual Conference and ON24 Webcast Elite to help deliver its online summit and webinars. The company is now driving more engagement, delivering better insights to sales, and generating greater demand using ON24.

For the ZS Summit, ON24 helped it achieve a 72 percent attendee-to-registrant rate, the highest conversion it has ever had, says Emilie Watrob, head of event marketing at ZS. “We engaged more clients and generated more insights and metrics that made a measurable business impact. ON24 has now become our number one source of leads.”

The ZS Summit featured live and prerecorded keynote addresses, breakout sessions, a social lounge for networking, interactive games, and an afterparty. The firm encouraged active attendee interaction through gamification, allowing participants to earn prizes for completing polls and surveys, asking questions, and downloading materials from the resource list.

ON24 supported the many facets of the event. “The keynotes, the general sessions, the breakouts—everything was really easily navigable from our home screen,” Watrob recalls. “We had a mix of live and on-demand sessions and incorporated engagement features like group chat, Q&A widgets, and surveys.”

ON24 also offers actionable insight into who interacts throughout any ZS virtual event. Through a seamless integration with Marketo, ON24 analytics data flows into Marketo for nurture campaigns.

Metrics gathered by ON24 have informed ZS marketing efforts, which have, in part, led to a steadily growing audience for its webinars. “We’ve seen a 47 percent-plus retention rate with our webinars, which is pretty great,” Knuckman says.

The ZS team is enthusiastic about what ON24 has helped accomplish in a short time and about what lies ahead.

“Two things that really stand out are ON24’s flexibility and the way it enabled us to incorporate a number of super-fun and engaging pieces into our virtual summit, and it all still felt like our event,” Knuckman says. “The ease of viewing and ease of navigating the environment went a long way with our audience. We have seen some pretty great engagements, specifically with the surveys.

“And now that we have our first year with ON24 under our belt, the ideas are just flowing for what this summit is going to look like in the hybrid capacity for next year. It’s all pretty exciting.”

The Payoff

Since implementing ON24's Virtual Conference and Webcast Elite, ZS has seen the following results:

• webinars have become the number one source of lead generation;
• webinars have seen more than a 47 percent retention rate; and
• the registrant-to-attendee rate for the ZS Summit jumped to 72 percent, the highest conversion ZS has ever had.