Flexential Tripled Its Reach with ON24

IT and data center services and consulting firm Flexential had been putting on marketing webinars for several years, but the Denver-based company put its webinars on hold for a while as it looked to optimize its marketing mix. That led to a lack of data on prospects and customers. The company soon also struggled with time-consuming manual processes and a lack of integration in its marketing programs.

So for Kim Johnston, vice president of revenue marketing at Flexential, one of her priorities was to get its webinar program back up and running.

o better scale its marketing efforts, Johnston and her team reimagined Flexential's digital engagement strategy using ON24's Analytics and Content Engine (ACE) an artificial intelligence-powered tool within the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform, which together automatically turn webinars and digital events into personalized marketing campaigns. Fortunately, Flexential had already included ON24's Intelligent Engagement Platform as part of its marketing technology stack, making ramping up its webinar program and increasing audience engagement much easier.

By fully using the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform and ACE, Flexential now automatically generates written content from webinars and, through on-demand programming, can propel the reach and impact to connect with a broader audience.

"We've looked to ON24 and digital engagement to drive engagement with both prospects and customers and to add scale and efficiency well beyond what physical events could do for us," Johnston explained. "We focused on using all the capabilities of ON24, not just to build engagement during the webinar, but utilizing automated AI-generated written content from simulive recordings to promote events pre live date."

By using ON24's templates and global settings, Flexential established a consistent and streamlined process aligned around an integrated approach to digital engagement. With ON24, anyone can create on-brand experiences optimized for engagement.

Having established and matured its program, Flexential then explored how new tactics could push its program even further. Using AI in its multichannel and integrated campaigns was especially appealing, because it would let Flexential reduce manual processes while also producing more relevant content.

As early adopters of ON24 ACE, Johnston views AI as a supercharger. It has helped Flexential increase the number of people who attend and sign up for webinars. It has also let the company make content like blogs, videos, social media posts, videos, advertising, and e-books from webinars. This has taken a lot of work off the plates of Flexential's internal creative team.

Some of the AI-generated content is also used within the webinar itself as related on-demand resources./p>

By using generative AI, Flexential extends the impact of its digital engagement content even after it airs. By taking advantage of on-demand capabilities, not only do webinars drive long-lasting engagement, but this multichannel approach drives up attendance rates, keeps audiences engaged for longer and, ultimately, drives more pipeline and revenue.

Flexential also uses ON24 content hubs to host content after live broadcasts. And, because Flexential uses the ON24 Salesforce integration, engagement data and warm lead information from content hubs and webinars are instantly fed to sales reps through automated triggers.

AI has also lifted a great deal of the burden of creating written content, which Flexential can now create four times faster.

Wha's more, Johnson attributes the engagement options available in the webinar platform to being able to retain 90 percent of its audience throughout the full webinar sessions.

Making sure Flexential gets as much mileage out of its webinars as possible through an on-demand strategy has also made a difference. Johnston reports that within the first three to six months of a webinar, 30 percent of total consumption is done through on-demand.

"Our webinars are now evergreen and continue to attract viewers even six months after," said Johnston, who noted that those on-demand viewers are people "otherwise we would not be engaging."

With its digital engagement strategy firmly set on the ON24 platform, Flexential tripled its audience reach, accelerated campaign creation by four times, and significantly accelerated its marketing efficiency

"ON24 has greatly improved both our efficiency and our results across all our marketing processes, from creating our promotions to content that powers our multichannel campaigns and drives audiences to watch on demand," Johnston said.

The Payoff

Since reinvigorating its webinars with ON24's ACE and Intelligent Engagement Platform, Flexential has done the following:

• Tripled its audience reach;
• Reduced content creation time by four times;
• Increased on-demand viewership of webinars to 30 percent of total consumption up to six months after airing.
• Retained 90 percent of viewers for the full duration of webinars.