How to Engage Members, Attract Partners and Generate Revenue: The ROI of Webcasting for Associations

Hi.

Thanks for joining us for today's webinar, How to Engage

Members, Attract Partners, and Generate Revenue: The ROI of

Webcasting for Associations.

I'm Erica St. Angel.

I'll be your moderator today.

And I'm delighted to be here with Todd Hutchings, who is

Director of Distance Learning for the Ontario Hospital

Association.

And a couple bit of housekeeping items before I

turn it over to him for his presentation, just to orient

you to the player experience, you'll find some interactive

buttons underneath or near the video window.

One of those is a polling pie chart.

So if you click on that, you'll see we're going to do

three polls today.

You can go ahead and take those now or if you'd like

we'll prompt you during Todd's presentation.

There's also a speech bubble so you can ask a

question at any time.

And again, we'll be taking your questions in an

interactive format as we present.

Don't hold them until the end.

We do ask if we don't have time to get to your question,

though, that you provide your email address and that way

either Todd or someone from Sonic Foundry can follow up

with you afterwards.

And there's also an envelope button that allows you to

share this presentation with anyone that you think should

be watching.

So you can go ahead and forward that to them now or

share it with them on-demand.

And this presentation will be available as

soon as we're done.

You can click on that same link to watch it again.

And there's also some additional information in the

links tab if you'd like to click on that.

So with that I'm going to turn it over to Todd and I'm going

to start out with a question.

So the big question is how did you get to 280% ROI?

Thank you, Erica.

I'm delighted to be here.

Well, really there were several factors as

to how we got there.

It didn't happen overnight.

I'll explain that to you in a minute here.

Also I think one of the keys to our success is we were

taking things a step at a time.

So before I get into those issues, let me tell you a

little bit about the Ontario Hospital Association, or OHA.

We represent 156 hospitals in the province of Ontario.

Just to give you some perspective, that's equivalent

to six times the size of the state of Wisconsin.

So it's a very large province.

We have both hospitals in rural and northern regions as

well as metropolitan cities such as Toronto and Ottawa so

larger concentrations in those areas.

Our journey really began back around the year 2000.

Video conferencing was introduced to hospitals

through a pilot project through the government.

So just about every hospital in the province was given

video conferencing equipment to use more from a clinical

standpoint.

And what was happening is during the down time, this

equipment was available.

So hospitals started to utilize the equipment for

educational purposes or to connect with neighboring

hospitals to share ideas.

The demand was then on OHA to look at trying to use the same

sort of technology to connect with other hospitals and

provide education across the province.

So really our journey began in 2004.

If you look on my chart here, you'll see that it was really

during 2004 to 2007 that our numbers are based on strictly

video conferencing.

At this point we were able to deliver education this way.

But what was happening is by the time 2007 rolled around,

our capacity was running out.

We weren't able to reach as many sites as we wanted to.

The demand was exceeding what our capability was.

And you'll notice there was slow growth here so what was

also happening at this time is our members were learning a

new way to engage in education.

So they were getting broken away from the traditional

conference side of things, or teleconferences as we were

doing back then.

And so now they were looking at a technology based medium

such as video conferencing.

So as we moved forward in 2007, we had to look at ways

to increase our capacity.

Well, it was then in 2008 that we began to do things in, what

I'd call, dual mode, so we did video conferencing as well as

webcasting.

And at first, things were a little bit slow.

People were not sure of webcasting and so there was

smaller numbers participating that way.

But quite quickly, by the end of the year, we were realizing

the same number of webcast participants as video

conference participants.

And so we made a concentrated effort that in 2009 we were

going to step up our productions and we ended up

delivering three times more events.

And we also noticed that we were now reaching twice as

many participants just by adding

that webcasting component.

So the way we calculated our return on investment is I took

our capital costs, amortized that over five years.

Looked at our operating expenses such as our streaming

costs and our hosting costs.

And when you divided that by the number of events, we

discovered that we had achieved a 280% return on

investment.

And I'll come back to when I recognized that in a minute

when we talk about tracking.

So that's how we got to that event.

So as we move forward, I'm going to talk to you about

some of the things that we did or some of the challenges I

think you may face, such as to charge or not to charge.

Tracking and what to track.

And then I'm going to try to provide you with some tips and

suggestions on how you can help move this type of

technology forward with your association.

So before we do that, let's do our first poll.

And if you haven't done so, what I want to know is how

many people are currently charging for access to your

webcast or Mediasite content?

And as a reminder, there's a little pie chart in your

player window, so you just click on that.

And you'll see three different polling questions.

We're on question number one, so you can hit take the poll.

And if you've already taken the poll and your curious

about the results, you can click on view results.

And that's what we're looking at right now.

And I'm just going to hit refresh.

Keep the polling coming in.

And it looks like we're at about 75% yes, people are

currently changing for their content.

And 25% are no.

So that's great.

So that's actually somewhat surprising because as I will

talk later, a lot of stuff that I see is often free.

So to charge or not to charge.

So here's one of the perceptions.

As an association, it's very easy to assume that the

information you're providing, it needs to be free to your

members because it's a service you're providing.

If you're in the government, you may be wanting to provide

it to the public for free because you're

saying, they pay taxes.

We can't charge them additional for content.

So the opposite challenge, though, is that the reality is

you have costs-- you have expenses-- to deliver this

type of technology.

They may not be huge but there's still real cost so you

need to consider that.

Now when I realized that we had grown to the point where I

needed to start covering my costs and was told that

basically we had to start charging for events, my

reaction was, there's no way anybody is going to sign up

for this because I'm the first guy to go on to the website

and find stuff for free.

It may take me a little longer.

I may have to validate the credibility

of some of the sources.

But ultimately, I usually find my answer on the internet and

find it for free and not have to pay.

Can I ask you a question?

Absolutely.

So who was it in your organization who was saying we

should go online or who was pushing

for the paying process?

Was it a group of people or one specific department?

Well, I think ultimately it was looking at-- our expenses

were continuing to grow and we couldn't continue on that same

path so we had to look at trying to recoup our costs in

some manner.

So purely a business proposition?

Purely a business decision.

You have to cover your costs in order to stay.

And the other piece, too, was we were growing.

And so as demand was growing, so were our costs-- so were

our streaming costs-- so we had to find a way to generate

some revenue to start to recoup some of those ongoing

demand costs.

Plus we wanted to improve our quality.

We wanted to add more so all these things end

up costing you money.

So the reality that I was missing here was that you

can't underestimate the power of webcasting.

And it's for the very reasons that it's easy access.

Your message is consistent so, in this case, I'm delivering

one message.

It's going across to a group of people.

It's being archived.

It can be shared again.

You're getting a consistent message across your

membership.

So if you're bringing in quality speakers to deliver a

quality message, it's consistent and that's

beneficial to your association.

It adds credibility to your programs.

The big thing, too, is it saves time and it

saves travel dollars.

And these days, those are two very key items on everybody's

list. And that piece that I'd like to try and keep secret

here is that it's actually getting very easy.

Technology today is becoming more point and click.

You don't need a high technical end to be able to

produce a web cast, especially using Mediasite type players.

So now our success has led to the need, as Erica pointed

out, for more resources.

And so moving forward, we had to look at what's our price

point going to be?

And so, based on the results from our first poll, we know

that most people are, in fact, charging for this.

And actually our results have changed a little bit since

you've been presenting.

So now we're about half and half.

Well, so that's actually probably more what I expected.

So the question becomes then so what do you charge?

Well, really this comes back to what your rationale for

charging is.

Do you need to be cost recovery?

Or are you looking at a revenue generation model for

your organization?

Is this going to be another service that tries to generate

revenue for your association or organization?

So I also caution you about the perception of free.

Quite often, if events are free, if they're sponsored,

you've got to be careful that they don't look like sales

pitches because that will turn people off.

And also free, there's no skin in the game, so to speak.

If a meeting comes up it's easy to drop out and not

participate.

So free isn't always the best model.

What we find from our stats is that when we do a free event,

about 20% of the people do not attend and we

look at our live viewers.

So we get a 20% decrease from our registration numbers.

So it's just something to keep in mind.

Is that face-to-face to online?

Or just purely online?

That's just purely the online aspect of it.

So let's take another little poll here.

What do you feel out there is the best rate to be charging?

And, again, you might have different rationale.

I'm not taking that into account.

But free isn't an option here.

We want to know if you have to charge out, what do you think

the best rate is?

And as a reminder if you're joining us a little bit late,

there's a little pie chart button on your player window.

If you click on that, you'll see three polling questions.

We're on question number two.

And if you've already taken the poll, and you want to see

the results, click that view results button and that'll

show you how people are voting.

And right now we are at a mix.

But I would say the majority, 42%, are at $1 to $50.

Interesting.

So we'll come back to that in a minute.

So one of the recommendations I would make is that you do a

benchmarking study.

And so before you groan saying, not another study and

so on, I suggest that there's an easy way to do this.

If you're like me, every day in your email box, you're

probably getting a promotion to attend a webinar or a

webcast or some sort of teleconference type event.

Simply track those for a month.

And all I'm suggesting is you do a spreadsheet to look at

who the organization is, what the length of the program is,

what the cost is, and any other notes

that you want to track.

I can guarantee that within a month you're going to start to

see some patterns happening here.

What I will caution you, though, is make sure you're

comparing apples to apples.

So make sure you're in the same time frames.

Make sure that a webinar where you're dialling in through an

audio line and just doing slides, you're not comparing

that to a webcast event where you see the video here, and I

think if I point correctly, over there

you're seeing the slides.

So they're a little different.

I would say there's a little more value in this type of

presentation than a webinar type scenario.

So keep that in mind.

When you did your benchmarking were you looking at industries

similar to yours or associations similar to yours,

or did you look at across the board?

Absolutely.

Again, I only looked at what I was receiving, which the nice

thing is that that's probably the same audience that is

targeting my association members.

So we're really comparing the same types of programs. I

think if you're trying to set up your pricing then you want

to stay within those industry norms whether it's revenue

generation or whether it's just cost recovery.

And the results have changed a little bit as more

voting has come in.

It spiked for a little while with $51 to $100 and now it's

back to more than 50% are saying $1 to $50

is the clear winner.

Ok.

We changed rationale.

So we've discovered that we need to be cost recovery here

and we need to start bringing some revenue in to continue to

expand the services and provide for the necessary

bandwidth for the growing demand.

So the way we looked at it is I looked at our expenses--

annual expenses-- divided by our number of events and our

number of participants to come up with the price.

We also wanted to be consistent with our other

product lines so the value that we've come up with is

$125 per event per site.

So if three people from a site want to

participate, it's one rate.

That also gives them access to six months of the archive.

That's consistent.

And that's based on a 90 minute program.

That's also consistent with our conference level.

Our conferences typically get charged at a

daily rate of $500.

If you divide that into your four kind of 90 minute

segments, it works out to $125 per segment.

So when we go into a live event and actually capture the

keynote or capture a quarter of the program, we can then

turn around and make that available at the same rate as

it would be for those that participated

in the event live.

So there's no penalty or no bonus for not showing up to

the conference.

And those online versions-- that hybrid or blended option

to attend-- that's happening synchronously, right?

That's happening at the same time as the conferences?

No, we're not.

We've done that on a couple of occasions.

So our big HealthAchieve event, which is our annual

convention, we do offer it simultaneously.

But a lot of the things lately, we've been just

capturing and making available after the fact.

At offer on-demand.

It really depends on how advance notice we get on when

the event's going to take place and our ability with are

busy schedule already for live events within our studio

whether we have the resources to stream

live during an event.

So just a quick look at our poll.

How did we come out in terms of--

The final final.

--the final final?

It looks like most of our people still want to be in the

$1 to $50 range.

And so, I would suggest that the CAD 125 is probably

equivalent to your $100 U.S. here, even though our dollar

is very close to [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

or maybe a little above.

But the reality is there seems to be a mark up in the

Canadian market.

So that's the rationale behind the pricing.

I'd like to now just shift gears a little bit now and

talk about tracking.

So tracking your events is how you build your evidence.

If you don't have evidence, it's very hard to pitch your

case to your senior management team or even to your sponsors

who may be interested, if you can't provide them with some

good evidence.

In fact, it was during 2009 when I looked at three times

the events and twice as many participants, that I realized,

wow, I knew we were doing more but when you put it down on

paper and you charted it out, you realized how significant a

jump it had been.

And it was actually through that then that we made our

submission for the Rich Media Impact Awards, so I'm glad we

were tracking.

If you look at this chart, this is to me a real classic

example of as you're building your evidence.

If you look at it year to year, you don't really see the

significant jump.

But when you put it out over five years, it really builds

your case for requiring additional resources.

For promoting your outreach to potential sponsors or outside

organizations that want to use your service.

Here's the evidence that you've got that you're

reaching your target markets.

So the question now will be, well, what do you track?

And I'm actually pleased to announce that our 2011 results

are actually going to exceed our 2010 so the growth is

certainly continuing to happen.

This is what OHA has decided to track.

And, again, you track what you need for your information.

But based on this information that I'm showing on our slide

here, we were able to get most of this information

internally.

So we have a registration system.

I'm able to know in advance how many people are going to

potentially attend an upcoming webcast. Financials, you can

get those from your accounting department so you can track

your revenue that way as well.

But, in our case, we actually use the Mediasite reporting

for a lot of this information.

So when it comes to live participants or peak viewers,

we monitor that during an event to see-- and this is

where I'm able to prove that 20% of our participants don't

actually become live participants

during our free events.

Whereas the statistics are quite different on a paper

access event where it's pretty much 100% live for what's

registered.

And again, as I mentioned earlier, this is how you prove

to your sponsor that you've been able to reach the number

of target participants that you had intended to do.

And do you provide your sponsor with-- I mean, is it

a-- I hate to say this, but is it a lead

generation tool for them?

Do they know who exactly registered?

We haven't drilled it down that far, but they absolutely

know who's participated.

They will often post the archive link on their site as

well so they're gaining exposure to it as well.

We also brand the player with the sponsor's information so

it gives them the added profile.

So when people go to that event, they know whose brought

it to them.

So let's move to a third and final polling question.

So how many people out there are using reporting?

How many people are actually tracking information?

And so while you're completing that survey, I'm going to move

on to some of the tips that I'd like to share with you.

One of the key parts that any association and group should

know is know your issues.

And so I give you what I call the association advantage.

The reality is most of your members or most of the people

within your select sector are going to be coming to you with

ideas or wanting information.

So here's your opportunity to connect with them and deliver

through webcasting the content that they're looking for.

And if you're not sure of what that is, then there's a few

suggestions I'd have for you.

Do a needs assessment.

The OHA itself does an annual needs

assessment of our members.

And that's typically geared towards CEOs and board chairs

so it tends to look at more of the high level

leadership type issues.

Our education department does a separate needs assessment

that we gear to the frontline people or to our conference or

past participants.

The results there tend to be more frontline driven.

More specific around their needs as opposed to maybe some

of the higher end needs.

But between those two needs assessments, we get a pretty

good gauge on the issues that are up and coming or need to

be addressed either through a conference, through our

continuing education courses, or through a webcast.

The other piece that we do, our president does an annual

member engagement tour where he goes out to the regions and

does a face-to-face dialogue with the CEO and board chairs.

What we get there are probably more of the regional issues

and so we can then target particular webcasts for either

northern issues or to deal with regional specific type

issues or matters.

And then the final piece is evaluations on programs. So

every program we do has an evaluation process and we

include a question asking them, is there related topics?

Are there other questions or issues that

you'd like to see addressed?

And so again, you're getting immediate feedback on some

additional programs that you can potentially develop.

I'd also suggest that you look at industry trends.

And this is where things can get a little more challenging,

because you don't want to jump on every trend.

But a couple that I'd suggest that you keep in your vision

over the next few years is the use of social media.

It's no longer in the public domain.

It's now in the business domain as well.

And so you'll see more and more organization conferences

such as UNLEASH using social media as a means to get

information, to share information.

And if you're not looking into that, I think it's something

you probably need to be aware of.

The other piece that I think, in terms of moving forward, is

the use of mobile apps or mobile

applications or mobile devices.

Whether it be your Smartphones or iPads or the new PlayBooks

that are coming out, I think you're going to see a growing

trend towards that type of access.

And so as you're doing webcasts, think of those as

opportunities for you to create content to make

available in a broader scope.

The next piece I want to talk on is quality.

In today's information rich and media based society,

people have access to a ton of media.

The learning curve is over.

People are comfortable accessing it whether it be a

YouTube video to an archived event of some sort or just

video content through the internet.

People can tune in and tune out if they don't like what

they're seeing so there's an expectation now for quality.

So if it means adding a couple lights to your studio.

If it means adding a backdrop.

If it means a little intro music before

your program begins.

These are little tips that will help increase your

production value and will also help, I think, create

credibility for not just your audience but your speakers.

They'll want to be part of a Hollywood style production as

opposed to something that's taking place in a dingy

lecture hall with poor lighting and 100 people on the

camera so far away that you can barely make them out on

the screen.

So keep your production concepts in mind and remember,

your speakers will want to be part of a good quality

production.

Take it a step at a time.

So, again, if you look at our journey, for the few first few

years, we were just doing video conferencing.

In fact, it was myself and over time we added a resource

and we added a resource.

And so we still have a very small team but we're focused

on doing quite a few different programs now.

And we did have a question about the difference between

video conferencing and webcasting.

OK.

So typically video conferencing has given you the

ability to be interactive.

So a video conference site can pipe up and ask a question.

You can see them live.

Or at least your speakers can see them live.

And then we can respond directly to them.

Whereas webcasting tends to be a little bit more one

directional.

So you are seeing me, you are hearing me.

The only way you can interact is through questions and

through our polling.

What I'm finding is that the learning curve on that isn't

what it used to be.

People are quite comfortable typing in their questions

these days.

And so it's just a different way of doing an event.

And so I wouldn't say it's restrictive.

The nice thing is is you can have as many people

participate in a webcast as long as you've made

arrangements for the bandwidth.

In our case, we're limited to only up to 80 video conference

sites and then we have to close things off or we run

into some issues-- technical issues.

So webcasting is the direction we're moving towards because

it just allows us far more flexibility.

So keep it simple.

Try new things.

The polling we're using today.

Use those types of activities to engage your audience.

This is how you get the video conference experience without

having to bring in a whole new video conferencing system-- a

separate system-- to develop your things.

Remember also your changing viewer habits.

So people that are used to face-to-face or teleconference

because it's easy to dial a phone and listen in, it's

going to take time.

So work with your audience.

Help them understand how to use webcasting.

Don't base your whole presentation on the results of

your polling.

Utilize it a step at a time.

So we've used three questions today.

Next time, we might use five.

And we might engage more people.

But try these things.

If it doesn't work, hey, you tried it.

You know what to do next time.

Experiment.

Try new things.

Finally, I can't emphasize again the evidence enough.

But count what's important to you.

You need to know how successful you're being and if

it's not moving in the direction you need, then you

need to have the evidence available to you to say, OK,

we need to make changes and here's why.

When you reach milestones, celebrate your success.

Enter a Rich Media Impact Award.

Brag to your board.

Share your results.

I think you'll be amazed at how quickly webcasting is

going to take off over the next few years.

And finally, stay informed.

Know your market, as I mentioned.

Do the benchmarking.

Do the needs assessment.

Understand what your members want.

Know your product and stay current.

So this is very much a technology

based learning tool.

If you're falling behind, if you're not doing updates,

you're going to discover that, when I talked about production

quality, the association down the street is going to be

doing a lot nicer programs. And all it is is that you

haven't gone to the next level.

So, an example is, moving to a Silverlight player versus the

original player that was offered through Mediasite.

Some cases you still need to use the old player but you

need to be staying current.

It looks better.

It looks cleaner.

There's more features.

And that's what people are going to be looking for as you

move forward.

It is technology based.

In terms of staying informed, attend

conferences like UNLEASH.

UNLEASH offers you an opportunity to

talk to other users.

Whether you can attend live is great.

But if you can't, they offer it virtually.

So again, you can get that same information.

And it's important to stay connected to know what's

happening in the industry.

And UNLEASH is our Mediasite user conference if you're not

familiar with it.

And you can go to sonicfoundry.com/unleash to

get more information.

And while you're there, you will want to check out what

they call the Mediasite user group.

And whether you're a Mediasite user or not, I would encourage

you to join this group.

Again, it's another forum where people can share ideas

on webcasting-- particular Mediasite product based, but

nonetheless I think you'll find some very valuable

information there.

Post a question.

Post ideas.

This is a very engaged network that is willing to share their

ideas with you.

And so, just before we close, let's take a look at our last

poll and see where we ended up.

Yeah, so we're about 34%, love it and use it all the time.

38% say sometimes.

And this is the part that makes me sad is we've got 21%

who say they don't use them.

And 7% that their system doesn't offer reporting.

So as Todd mentioned, there's a lot of reports that you can

actually pull from within the portal experience which then

you can manipulate in a lot of different ways.

And in some cases cross reference that with your own

database-- your own membership database-- to see who's

watching and how much they've watched, which gives you a lot

of impact in the organization.

But to understand what are the topics that are most important

to your membership.

So just as I close, I'm willing to take any questions

that you may have. I just want to thank my team back at OHA

for doing an excellent job on our productions.

Fenton, Katie, Candace, and Lena, keep up the good work.

Thank you.

And I know they're watching because one of them said

they'd like to say thank you for the HealthAchieve plug for

your conference.

Our first question is about transitioning from a cost

based approach-- or transitioning to cost based

from being originally free.

If you've offered webcasts in the past for a few conference

sessions, and now you want people to start paying, how do

you go through that transition or what would you recommend?

Yeah, and actually that's going to be a

challenge for us as well.

In today's environment, I think people understand that

you can't give everything away for free.

So you have to be reasonable in terms of your

pricing going forward.

But the reality is you have real costs and if you want to

continue to save them money as opposed to travelling to these

events, $99, $125, it's really a small price to pay when you

can have 10 to 20 people attend something that they

wouldn't be able to have attended in the past and to

have access to an archive of it after the fact.

So I think you have to promote the pluses.

I don't think we're talking a large drop in the bucket in

terms of budgets.

And again, this was my argument originally.

I didn't think anybody would pay $100 to

participate in an event.

And I was very wrong on that.

It does make good economical sense.

And one of the questions we've had in the past, too, is about

the attendance.

Do you see the face-to-face on-site attendance affected by

the fact that you're offering an online option.

No, not at all.

In fact, we're probably seeing more of the opposite.

What you're doing is actually generating more awareness and

more publicity so to speak around a topic or an issue.

So if you're doing a webcast on event, why not blend it

into an upcoming conference?

Use it as an introduction to the topic and then you attend

the conference.

Or vice versa.

If you do a conference and you need to do a followup but you

probably don't have enough content for a full day

conference, do it as a webcast to

complement what you've done.

The more access to this information you can provide,

the more interest you're going to generate around the topic

all around.

At least that's what we've found.

And another question about the partnership structure.

Did you go out seeking sponsors to support your

webcasting efforts?

Or did you start webcasting and then they came to you?

It's been a bit of both.

If organizations come to us and ask how can they get

involved with OHA, we share with them all the various

opportunities whether it be our annual convention, our

conferences, or our technology based education such as

broadcasts.

But what we're finding-- again, this is part of your

tracking and promoting-- is that people

are seeing the results.

They're seeing our outreach .

And they want to be part of that.

And they want to say, hey, we've got an idea.

Can we sponsor an event?

Can we get out there and reach your membership?

And so it's a bit of both.

We have been marketing a little bit but the reality is

most of the people are coming to us saying they've got ideas

that they want to try and share with our membership.

And as long as they're not sales pitches, we're quite

happy to try and get that information out to our

membership.

And we just had a question from Tom about value add and

perception.

Do you find charging for webcasts positions them more

as an elite status?

Or do you feel people value them more now that they, as

you said, have the skin in the game.

Yeah, I think so.

Well, the flip side is is you better make sure that the

content you're delivering has some quality to it and has

some merit.

Otherwise, the backlash won't be worth it.

So make sure your speakers are credible.

Make sure the content is current and relevant.

And the reality is, for the amount they're putting in, and

the ability to have 30 of their staff, or make it

available as an archive to all of their staff, is incredible

value for what they're really putting into this.

And so, again, make sure your message is relevant, key,

correct, and the value is there.

It's a great point to end on.

And there's a couple more questions but we want to be

respectful of your time.

So keep them coming and just provide your email address and

then we'll have Todd follow up directly with you afterwards.

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