With a primary focus on empowering their customers and fostering a strong community, Cloudsmith's webinars have become an integral part of their growth strategy. 

Through their webinars, Cloudsmith brings together experts who share their knowledge on pertinent industry topics such as container optimization and software supply chain security, demonstrating the company’s commitment to staying at the forefront of industry advancements. In this manner, Cloudsmith is able to serve as a trusted advisor as well as create opportunities for meaningful engagement that benefit both customers and the company's sales efforts.

To achieve these goals, Cloudsmith realized that a basic webinar tool just wouldn't cut it. 

The challenge

“We hit the glass ceiling with the webinar tool we were using before Zuddl,” says Hillary Foster, Global Events and Sponsorship Lead for Cloudsmith, and the one-woman powerhouse behind the company’s webinar, sponsorship, virtual and in-person events program.

The previous tools - Demio, Zoom Webinar and Restream.io - had let Hillary (who sets up and runs the webinars herself) host “basic webinars with basic functionality” but even this was a complicated affair. “The tools didn’t ‘talk’ to the other tools I was using so everything took extra effort. And I just never knew when things would go haywire with any of them” she recalls.

With Zuddl Webinars, Hillary was able to level up the caliber of Cloudsmith’s webinar program, while experiencing a much more organizer-friendly experience to adapt and innovate along the way.

‍“With Zuddl, we are able to make our webinars look better, be more interactive, and get access to better data. It lets us really take our program to the next level and stand out in our industry.”

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Key outcomes:

(1) Using Studio to make webinars look and feel polished

Studio comes equipped with a ready-to-use collection of backgrounds, banners, and lower-thirds, and an easy-to-use interface which made it simple for Hillary to customize them to Cloudsmith’s branding. This resulted in a visually stunning and cohesive experience that reflected the brand's professionalism, and which contributed to a high average time spent at each webinar.

Hillary used the Scenes feature in Studio to pre-set her run of show with speakers, presentations and branding, and push it live with a simple click of the button. As the sole person running the webinars, Hillary says the user-friendliness reduced the burden on her to manage speakers, record, stream all at once “without having to learn a super-complicated tool.”

(2) Making data-based decisions using the analytics dashboard to optimize strategy

Hillary was able to monitor and analyze webinar performance using the analytics dashboard, identify areas of improvement and make data-driven decisions. 

• Refining marketing campaigns for better results: With UTM-tracking, Hillary was able to see which marketing channels were driving more registrations than others in real-time and lean into those the top-performing promotions immediately. Routing marketing campaigns directly to the Zuddl landing pages helped to improve results too.

• Optimizing webinar length to improve ‘stickiness’: Historically, Cloudsmith’s webinars used to run for 1 hour. But with the analytics tool, Hillary could see that most people were only logging in and watching for about 30-40 minutes. Armed with this insight, Cloudsmith made the strategic decision to reduce webinar duration.

“We’ve seen that attendees stay for the full length and are more interactive now that we’ve shortened the session time,” Hillary points out. “I wouldn’t have had access to this data without Zuddl."

• Optimizing for the right timezone: By customizing the registration form on their webinar landing page, Cloudsmith was able to capture important attendee details like their country. Using analytics, Hillary was able to identify which timezones the majority of attendees were from, and make an informed decision on the best time to hold live webinars so as to attract maximum turnout.

(3) Using platform features to drive leads for Sales + enable targeted, timely follow-up

Hillary used a combination of webinar features to generate new opportunities for the sales team and build customer loyalty.

“We’ve seen a few new large customers come in from our program and it’s given our sales team a lot to work with.” Hillary says. And we’ve seen customer engagement increase too.”

• Registration analytics to identify ICP fit for Sales: Customizable registration forms that capture company and job title help identify how many attendees are potential customers, says Hillary. This crucial information combined with a Salesforce integration let the sales team reach out post-webinar with better context. 

• Real-time webinar registration Slack alerts for Sales: By having a dedicated Slack channel for webinar alerts, Cloudsmith’s Sales team was able to monitor registrant and attendee behavior and seize opportunities to nurture warm leads.

‍“If Sales can see that a prospect that they are working to get over the line has registered, that’s a great opportunity for them to follow-up later with a “Did you have a great time?” points out Hillary. “Or if we see a prospect who always attends our webinars but hasn’t converted yet, that’s important information too. It’s always good to track who’s returning or who’s a new contact.”

• Streaming directly to social: By streaming directly to social from Zuddl and by downloading the recordings and posting on Cloudsmith’s YouTube channel, the company has been able to consistently generate thousands of additional views after the webinar is over.
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‍“This not only helps us reach new audiences but also extend the life of the content we worked so hard to create.”

• Better follow-up with webinar no-shows: Using Analytics, Hillary was able to generate a list of no-shows and registrants, and send targeted post-webinar emails with links to on-demand recordings. This has let Cloudsmith continue to engage with prospects.

• Attendance analytics for insight into customer engagement: Observing customer attendance at webinars has helped provide insight into customer churn or retention says Hillary, and in turn helped the team in building customer incentives and community.

To sum up...

With Zuddl's webinar features, Cloudsmith was able to take its webinar program to new heights by delivering professional educational experiences, driving registration and attendance rates upwards, and driving  targeted outreach for its sales team.

This ease of being able to accomplish all these goals has enabled Hillary to increase the frequency of Cloudsmith webinars from 1 per quarter to 1 per month.

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