Marketers

Slack + Marketing Teams: Use Slack to Plan Your Next Webinar Campaign

By Ryan Hitchler

Using Slack with Salesforce became a hot conversation when news broke about the Slack acquisition. Slack is loved by teams in all corners of the organization for its intuitive user interface and the collaboration ‘buzz’ it creates – and the marketing team is no exception.

However, keeping the ‘buzz’ of planning marketing campaigns in Slack in line with your Salesforce org can be a challenge, especially when marketing teams have become more flexible and reactive in a changing reality.


Editor’s note: this article aims to showcase ways that marketing teams can collaborate better together within, and beyond the team using Slack. The news that Salesforce are to acquire Slack got many people thinking how the two can work together. You will notice that there is a third-party application mentioned that enables Slack to really tap into Salesforce, however, the overriding aim is to outline the Slack + Salesforce possibilities for marketing you may not have considered.


Planning a webinar with a panel of speakers can translate to meaningful leads for a marketing team, important now more than ever, taking the place of in-person events. As an organizer, you need to:

  • Plan out content
  • Organize speakers and logistics
  • Drive attendance
  • Follow up activities to drive new pipeline and progress deals

What are some techniques to do this effectively? How can you work with multiple teams internally and externally with tools like Slack and Salesforce?

Let’s dive in! You’ll need:

  • Salesforce (your system of record),
  • Slack as your communication and action layer,
  • Zoom or other online conferencing software,
  • Mass email tools such as Pardot or Mailchimp to send out invites and post-event follow-up,
  • Quip or similar document collaboration tool for brainstorming and to-do list,
  • Google Slides or similar tools for slideware and presentation,
  • Centro or a similar integration between Salesforce and Slack for notifications and synchronization,
  • Your smiling panel of experts.

What’s nice about this tech stack is that both Slack and Salesforce have massive app ecosystems and ‘clean’ integrations that you can get up and running with, minus any hassle. All of the tools I listed above are apps you can add to Slack.

Planning Your Webinar with Slack

You will know, as a marketer, that you need to start with the webinar goals, when it will be, who is in your target audience, what your audience will learn from it, and the call to action for attendees – and make sure to make it engaging and valuable!

Here are some tactical items to help:

Step 1: Set up a Slack Connect channel in your workspace

A Slack Connect channel enables you to invite panelists and your internal team to work through logistics and share documents. Even if the external person doesn’t have Slack, you can invite them as a Guest User.

Instead of trying to coordinate multiple meetings, you’ll save a ton of time letting people respond to action items on their schedule. The last time I did this, we had one planning meeting and two dry runs – we discussed everything else in Slack!

Above: an example of a recent Slack Connect conversation.

Step 2: Set up a Quip document

Invite the team to a Quip document to hammer out outline and action items. I like the checkboxes and assignment functionality in Quip.

Step 3: Create the Zoom webinar

Create the Zoom webinar, landing page, and registration links to drive attendees to.
Hint: Create multiple links with tracking parameters added for each of your marketing channels to understand where most of your registrations are coming from (eg. email campaign, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.).

Leverage Slack to Drive Webinar Attendance

Using Pardot (or similar), start segmenting your audience to your target from the planning phase. You’ll want to focus on attendees that will likely attend and start creating that buzz.

Timing the mailings is an art: too early, and people will forget why they were interested. Too late, and they won’t be able to put it on their calendar! I like 3-4 weeks in advance, with reminders to non-registrants about every week after. Don’t forget to promote on social networks!

A couple of ways to leverage Slack in this phase:

1. Set up a new registration alert with Flow

Set up a Flow to alert your channel when a new registration occurs*. The record detail of the lead should surface so the team can see the name and company. Keep the team excited and motivated to see who will likely be joining!

(*this is one way to leverage Centro)

Above: Slack notification for a new webinar registration.

2. Slack account owners

Send a Slack message to account owners on targeted accounts, encouraging them to invite their key contacts. Webinars are a good example of a “Valid Business Reason (VBR)” to get in touch with existing customers or prospects. Make sure to give one or two liners they can use on the phone and copy into their follow-up emails.

(*another way to leverage Centro)

Showtime

The day has arrived! Last-minute action items are best surfaced in Slack with @mentions. Slack mentions will alert panelists or team members of any final things to take care of. During the webinar, I like to have the Slack channel up on another monitor (with audible notifications off). Someone monitoring questions for the audience can direct them to the panelists right in Slack.

Webinar Follow-up

Good work! Now it’s time to follow up and process action items. If you have material to send out to attendees, now would be a good time, and you’ve kept track of Q&A from specific audience members. Funnel those questions into the Account Slack channel to the account owner, so they have another reason to reach out and set a follow-up meeting.

Bonus: You have all of this history and learning captured in Slack. Next time will be even smoother!

When executed and tracked well, a webinar is a great way to inform your prospects, create new leads, fill your pipeline, and progress deals. Leveraging Slack, Salesforce, and the other tools will make this effort worthwhile and actionable!

Over to you

Do you have any other use cases for using Slack as a marketing team? Which parts of the planning and execution process that take place in Slack feel disconnected from Salesforce?  Let us know in the comments below!

Next steps

  1. Take my tech stack list and modify what’s available in your organization.
  2. Experiment with your team in Slack for your next webinar.
  3. Check out Centro for a free demo or trial. We have both a Slack and Salesforce package that work really well together and will enable a smooth integration.

 

 

The Author

Ryan Hitchler

CEO and Co-Founder of Centro

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