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smartbrief console

SmartBrief quadruples average webinar audience for clients via ON24

400%

More contacts delivered to webinar sponsors than promised

5

Repeat webinar sponsors

60%

Average registrant-to-attendee conversion rate

About SmartBrief

Name: SmartBrief

Headquarters: Washington D.C.

Founded: 1999

Employees: 100

Funding: Private

Industry: Publishing

Serving nearly six million senior executives, thought leaders and industry professionals, SmartBrief is the leading digital media publisher of targeted business news and information by industry. By combining technology and editorial expertise, SmartBrief delivers the most relevant industry news—curated daily from thousands of sources—in partnership with leading trade associations, professional societies, nonprofits and corporations.

Introduction

SmartBrief is in the business of whittling a broad spectrum of information down to what matters for more than 14 industries. Its quick-hitting summaries and insider analysis helps the organization influence more than 5 million business decision-makers. With such an informed and engaged audience, SmartBrief is a powerful platform for brands to drive awareness and acquire new leads through advertising and sponsored content.

And as companies look to build more thought leadership, SmartBrief evolved to add content services to its offerings, creating bespoke webinars, white papers, articles and more through its branded content arm, SmartStudio. Clients and sponsors, such as Coca-Cola, Amazon and The Wall Street Journal, come to SmartStudio for highly-targeted content reaching specific audiences across platforms while driving engaging on-brand experiences.

By providing a channel to both acquire and engage an audience, SmartBrief can develop and run integrated marketing campaigns for its advertisers. That means SmartBrief must provide the same level of customization and accountability as a brand’s own channels while proving the ROI of their partnership.

Name: SmartBrief

Headquarters: Washington D.C.

Founded: 1999

Employees: 100

Funding: Private

Industry: Publishing

Serving nearly six million senior executives, thought leaders and industry professionals, SmartBrief is the leading digital media publisher of targeted business news and information by industry. By combining technology and editorial expertise, SmartBrief delivers the most relevant industry news—curated daily from thousands of sources—in partnership with leading trade associations, professional societies, nonprofits and corporations.

SmartBrief is in the business of whittling a broad spectrum of information down to what matters for more than 14 industries. Its quick-hitting summaries and insider analysis helps the organization influence more than 5 million business decision-makers. With such an informed and engaged audience, SmartBrief is a powerful platform for brands to drive awareness and acquire new leads through advertising and sponsored content.

And as companies look to build more thought leadership, SmartBrief evolved to add content services to its offerings, creating bespoke webinars, white papers, articles and more through its branded content arm, SmartStudio. Clients and sponsors, such as Coca-Cola, Amazon and The Wall Street Journal, come to SmartStudio for highly-targeted content reaching specific audiences across platforms while driving engaging on-brand experiences.

By providing a channel to both acquire and engage an audience, SmartBrief can develop and run integrated marketing campaigns for its advertisers. That means SmartBrief must provide the same level of customization and accountability as a brand’s own channels while proving the ROI of their partnership.

Problem

SmartBrief knows that webinars are a critical piece of its overall content bundle for both its SmartStudio clients and its newsletters. With the right presenter and subject matter, webinars can hold an audience’s attention for upwards of an hour—providing a unique opportunity to position client thought leadership messages, brands and more while collecting insights on audience interest and engagement. But the webinar solution SmartBrief had wasn’t up to the task of providing high-quality, reliable webinar campaigns.

In fact, its old webinar solution wasn’t up to much at all. It only offered an unbranded, generic experience for attendees which diminished the opportunity for brands to make an impression. Worse, it was difficult for the SmartBrief staff to manage on the back-end, straining internal resources and just overall creating day-to-day pain. SmartBrief needed a new solution to provide a high-quality, reliable experience and give SmartBrief the flexibility to deliver its clients webinar campaigns and series in new and inventive ways.

“We’re impressed by ON24’s reporting capabilities. We get quicker, better and faster reporting on leads than we did with our previous webinar platform, and the engagement score really helps us pull out the hot leads.”

Virginia Moncure
Project Manager, Content Marketing

Solution

SmartBrief had to get smart about its webinars. After evaluating the field of webinar providers, the publisher turned to ON24® to provide the best-in-class webinar experiences it needed. With the ON24 platform, SmartBrief enjoys:

  • Easy-to-use, customizable webinars. With an intuitive interface and easy webinar management, SmartBrief could deliver customized webinars emphasizing its sponsors brand and style.
  • On-demand engagement. Today’s audiences consume content on their own terms. To accommodate this new Netflix-style world, SmartBrief uses the ON24 platform to create content hubs that offer a range of sponsored webinars for their audience to binge on.

SmartBrief had to get smart about its webinars. After evaluating the field of webinar providers, the publisher turned to ON24® to provide the best-in-class webinar experiences it needed. With the ON24 platform, SmartBrief enjoys:

  • Easy-to-use, customizable webinars. With an intuitive interface and easy webinar management, SmartBrief could deliver customized webinars emphasizing its sponsors brand and style.
  • On-demand engagement. Today’s audiences consume content on their own terms. To accommodate this new Netflix-style world, SmartBrief uses the ON24 platform to create content hubs that offer a range of sponsored webinars for their audience to binge on.
  • Powerful analytics. The days of counting value by brand impressions are long over. Now, publishers have to deliver their advertisers and sponsors actionable data and metrics tied to revenue. SmartBrief helps its clients do more than just get their name out there and create content. Through ON24, the publisher provides sponsors with a detailed understanding of how attendees interact with its sponsored webinar campaigns, their level of engagement and gather important insights to qualify leads and start sales conversations.

With a powerful, integrated webinar platform in place, SmartBrief delivers on-brand webinar campaigns for its SmartStudio customers and promotes those webinar campaigns through its newsletter. As an added benefit to its services, SmartBrief can provide clients with webinar analytics, giving hosts critical insights into how their messaging and programming performs with their audiences, and identify promising leads for sales.

Results

Since SmartBrief’s move to ON24, its sponsors keep coming back to run more webinar campaigns. In fact, the company has seen at least five brand partners run multiple programs with SmartBrief because of the publisher’s newfound webinar capabilities.

Through the ON24 platform, Smartbrief has achieved:

  • 400% more contacts delivered to webinar sponsors than promised
  • 5 repeat webinar sponsors
  • 60% average registrant-to-attendee conversion rate

With a better solution in place, SmartBrief’s flexible one-two combination of highly targeted newsletters with high-quality branded experiences leaves its advertisers with better results, ultimately growing SmartBrief’s own business.

ON24 delivers a strong and effective branding experience; prominently putting our company’s logo and messaging on everything from the registration page to the presentation webinar console to the thank you email.

Virginia Moncure
Project Manager, Content Marketing

SmartBrief Webinars Quadruple Average Audience | Easy Webinar Management| ON24 Customer Stories

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