Item: ON24
Rating: 7
Author: Jeff Farnsworth

Overall Satisfaction with ON24

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I can't speak for the entire organization, but our marketing department is using it to host webinars targeting existing customers and new prospects. I conduct webinars promoting practice development services to existing customers. It has allowed me to promote and communicate program features to my customers and to set up a forum for them to communicate clearly with my employees and key opinion leaders.

Pros and Cons

Pros

On24 has a very easy to use webinar setup and registration tool. It is very easy to get things established and to set up customer communications with the On24 tools. This is what I like most about the service.
The presentation dashboard is easy to follow and connect to for those attending a webinar.
The real-time reporting tools are great. I can see how many people are online at any particular moment of a live webinar and I can then download final stats within minutes of the webinar completing. This makes it easy for my team to followup on potential leads very quickly.

Cons

Prior to a recent meeting with our On24 account team, I was having a period of time where the on-demand technical reps were not very skilled at answering some pretty direct and back questions. This was very frustrating--on one webinar I had to make an emergency call to our account manager to step in and help salvage the webinar. To be fair, in the past 6 months it seems that things have improved dramatically, which is good.
Uploading and replacing of slides has caused duplicates to be created and has sometimes jumbled the order of the slides. Once I figured out how to move and block slides it was less of a problem. But it is still something I worry about.
Lag-time between clicking on slides and when they appear to have changed in the presenter's window. On24 still seems to not have a good explanation or answer to this other than to tell the presenter to "keep presenting as if the slide has changed." This makes it very hard for the presenter.

Integration to CRM & Marketing Automation

I know we have integration with Eloqua, but I am not the person who manages this function and have yet to try it out yet to see what the integration can really do.

Reliability and Availability

Availability is not a concern of mine with On24--I can access it whenever.

Reliability is another matter as I have previously explained--we have had tech issues during the webinar where slides haven't forwarded when clicked on by my speakers. And some of the tech support reps have not had the skills or expertise to help solve these issues while they are happening. This is my biggest concern with On24.

Return on Investment

Positive--it has allowed me to get real-time information on how well my Webinar is tracking. The reports and lead analysis tools are great.
On24 has had a good impact on our close ratio for the Practice Develpment business sales team. Good quality leads have been gathered and closed due to this web presentation software.

Alternatives Considered

WebEx

I have only used Webex a couple of times and for presentation purposes I think On24 is easier to use. My concerns with On24 aren't with the ease of use, but the technical customer service and also the connectivity speeds (lagging slides).

Other Software Used

Microsoft Office 2016, Adobe Acrobat DC

Likelihood to Recommend

I have used it for webinars and for no other way, so I can't speak to this point as clearly as you are asking me; however, I think and believe the service works really for webinars and it seems some of my concerns have been and are being fixed for future releases.

ON24 Feature Ratings

Comments

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The pros and cons of using On24 for customer facing webinars