More contacts delivered to webinar sponsors than promised
Repeat webinar sponsors
Average registrant-to-attendee conversion rate
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.
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
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:
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.
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:
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
