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How an Award-Winning Community Boosts Engagement with Webinars

June 03, 2019 Tiffany Beddow

Newark element14 is a high-service distributor of technology products, services and solutions for electronic system design, maintenance and repair. Bringing together the latest products, services, and development software, all connected to an innovative online engineering community where purchasers and engineers can access peers and experts, a wide range of independent technical information and helpful tools.

Whether researching new technology, designing an electronic product, or looking for parts to repair an existing system, Newark is the trusted global source to find the answers and parts you need to keep your project on the fast track, right from the start.

 

Diane Kibbey, VP of Community and Social Media at Newark, is responsible for reaching out and connecting with a  community of more than 600,000 engineers. For the Newark team, aside from the community experience and discussion board, webinars traditionally performed as a top tactic to cost-effectively connect and engage hundreds of Newark element 14 community members. However, over time, attendance and active participation declined. As she explored how she could improve the webinar experience, she realized the current tool, WebEx, couldn’t provide the data she needed to investigate declining performance and didn’t support her vision to provide a seamless journey from community platform to webinar program.

After researching alternatives to WebEx, Diane turned to the ON24 webinar platform to engage with and delight her community members, and the first webinar was a hit! The company engaged with 220+ community members with 200 survey responses. Even better, Diane and her team recruited 30 new members to the community from the webinar and, over time, generated 500 additional on-demand views.

Newark selected ON24 for three key benefits:

  • Ease of use for remote presenters – With the help of the ON24 platform, Newark humanized their brand by having their experts from around the world present using video seamlessly.
  • Detailed analytics – With ON24, Newark could see how the audience interacted with the provided resources, surveys and determine how to follow up with each attendee.
  • Single-Sign-On capability – Using ON24’s integration services, Newark set up single-sign-on between the community platform and ON24, allowing community members, when logged into the community, the ability to register for webinars without having to input their information again.