Item: ON24
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our marketing team uses ON24 to host regular customer, partner and prospect webinars. Previously we have also used the Engagement Hub and Target pages to support our virtual events but removed that functionality in our recent renewal. Knowing that we would need to increase the number and quality of webinars and virtual events that we hosted through the pandemic, we were looking for an upgrade to GoToWebinar, which we were using previously.

Pros and Cons

Integrated and customisable registration pages.
Extensive options for interactivity and audience engagement in the console.
Choice of options for webinar types - simulive is really useful.
Online support team quick and responsive.
Seamless transition from live to on-demand webinars using the same links.

Can be unreliable - very bandwidth intensive so audience and presenters can have issues with video quality, losing connection while presenting etc. Advised by support to clear cache constantly.
Not always an intuitive user experience for webinar setup - for example multi registration setup.
Great ideas that don't always work in reality - for example very poor closed captioning and translations.
Tracking attribution for webinar registrations from paid promotional campaigns is challenging.

Return on Investment

Quality of the webinar experience for attendees vastly improved.
Improved insights on audience participation, content downloads, etc. shared with BDR team for better follow up.

Use Cases for Analytics Insights

Integrate with CRM/marketing automation software
Conduct lead scoring
Track registration and attendance
Enable sales follow-up
Optimize campaign nurture programs
Identify and track top-engaged accounts

COVID-19 Impact

ON24 has enabled us to host more engaging webinars during the pandemic, which remain a key part of our demand-gen strategy. Our customer success team has also recently begun using ON24 for hosting customer education and awareness webinars.

We were able to host our partner conference virtually using the ON24 webinar platform and Engagement Hub but this wasn't an ideal tool for that purpose and we moved away from this approach - there are better solutions for virtual events.

Scalability

Adding user licenses is easy but expensive in my opinion. Ideally we would like to split our ON24 into two instances for marketing and CS but again that is expensive and for the size of the team at present I cannot justify that cost.

Alternatives Considered

GoToWebinar, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and GlobalMeet Collaboration

We replaced GoToWebinar with ON24. We use MS Teams Live or Zoom alongside ON24 as it allows for interactive workshop format sessions with full audience participation. When we renewed ON24 this year I evaluated GlobalMeet which I was impressed with as it has a native integration into 6Connex, the virtual events platform we are now using. ON24 has a basic integration only so not such a good user experience for attendees. It is also significantly less expensive than ON24 and appears to offer much of the same functionality. I decided to continue with ON24 as did not want to disrupt our team with a change in platform at such a critical time, and overall we are pleased with ON24 and are optimistic that they will address some of the issues that we have been facing.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Marketo

Likelihood to Recommend

We weren't impressed with the Engagement Hub and Target pages, they really weren't suitable for what we wanted, which was a virtual events hub. There are also much better content platforms available in my view hence making our decision to choose other vendors for both.

However, the webinar functionality is a significant improvement on what we were previously using. There is a lack of confidence using it internally due to the performance issues but as one of the main users I enjoy using the tool. It makes our lives much easier as there is a lot less setup required in Marketo due to the built-in registration and landing pages, and the transition from live to in-demand webinar using the same link. I will be interested to see how the product continues to evolve and hope that ON24 addresses some of the feedback we've given where user experience could be improved.

A significant upgrade on our previous webinar platform - but improvements to be made!

Overall Satisfaction with ON24