Schadenfreude. Ever heard of it? It’s the pleasure one derives from the misfortune of others.

We invite you to do that at our expense in the hopes that you’ll learn from our webinar missteps.

What Happened

Two weeks ago, we hosted the first of a series of SharpSpring webinars designed to share best practices and case studies related to marketing automation.

We started small, inviting only our current agency partners.

We did a dry run the day before.

We retested audio and web connections 30 minutes before go-live.

The result?  Complete freaking train wreck!

Once we started the webinar, our network connectivity collapsed – both the connection leading into our building and our wi-fi.

Beyond that, our internal presenters had issues with the wireless headsets they were using.

These factors added up to multiple restarts and one final decision – pull the plug 15 minutes in.

Ugh! #EPIC #FAIL

What We Learned

No one wants to make a mistake publicly. But the only thing worse than doing that is failing to accept and learn from those mistakes.

What We Did

  1. Admitted/embraced our train wreck. We apologized to the audience that could hear us and sent an email to all attendees and registrants to acknowledge our issues. We then followed up with a link to a recorded version of the webinar.
  2. Realized we couldn’t repeat any of the same mistakes moving forward and took steps to avoid that.
  3. Upgraded the Internet connection to our building with fiber-optic cable. This was already in the works, but wow, what a difference a few days make!
  4. Installed direct network connections to the computers of everyone who’s involved in SharpSpring’s webinars. Wi-fi is unreliable. Never (ever) count on it for hosting webinars.
  5. Purchased USB-connected, noise-cancelling headsets for all webinar speakers/moderators. Wireless headsets should be excluded from webinar transmissions.

What We Experienced

Thanks to those changes, our webinar we held two weeks later was a success. Woohoo!

But these steps are just the beginning. We want to build on those minor victories, and so should you…which leads us to our next webinar:

Supercharging Your Webinar Outcomes with Marketing Automation

Mike Agron, WebAttract

April 30, 11am EDT

REGISTER NOW

Mike is a webinar expert. You can bet that all of us will be watching and taking notes. We hope you’ll join us and do the same.

In the meantime…beware of trains and train-wreck webinars.

 

AUTHOR
Kim Jamerson
Kim Jamerson
As Vice President of Marketing at SharpSpring, Kim heads up lead generation efforts through a variety of channels and processes. She has an extensive background in marketing and communications, ranging from TV news to enterprise software and healthcare.
AUTHOR
Lindsey Sherman