ActiveDEMAND has really tight integration with GoToWebinar that includes all sorts of added bonuses like attendance recording, automatic webinar creation, integrated RSVP lists, custom join links per registrant and more. But, some companies just want to keep their webinars or online group events cheap and cheerful: opting to use the built-in meeting systems in Microsoft Office 365 and Google’s GSuite or streaming live to YouTube. So we thought we’d write a quick guide about using those platforms for online events, their pros, and cons, and what to watch out for.

Platforms

Essentially, one of the biggest differences is that GSuite and Teams are meeting platforms at heart, not webinar platforms. Widescale controls, polling, and moderation tools aren’t really the focus, so they don’t scale to large groups very well. But, you can create future meetings and get join links and dial-in details.

In Google Meet, by default, guests who try to join early will have to wait for you to approve them. You can mute or remove attendees.

Guests can be approved before joining

You can mute or remove attendees

In Microsoft Teams, guests also start in a lobby and you can mute or remove them. You also have some added role controls on meetings themselves to set who can present.

One downside is that in Teams or Meet, people can unmute themselves and make a bunch of noise and you can’t really lock down many of the collaboration tools that are built into the platforms. If your webinar is less of a webinar and more of an online social or group meeting with you as the leader, perfect!

You can also opt to use social media these days. You could stream live to an unlisted YouTube video link for more of a webinar experience that’s easier to watch. G Suite Enterprise can also live stream a meeting. If you don’t care at all if the webinar is public, you could also stream live to your company’s Facebook page.

Support in ActiveDEMAND

ActiveDEMAND helps manage and promote webinars like this by handling much of the promotion, managing the list of RSVPs, reminding RSVPs of the upcoming webinar, and handling any after event communications. Best of all, you can create 1 great template of all of the above, then clone it as your starting point for future webinars.

Build your own “Webinar Recipe” in ActiveDEMAND to:

• Send promo emails to selected contact lists
• Expose contact lists for marketing via Facebook Ads and Customer Match
• Handle event registration with a landing page and form. Auto-send an email confirming the RSVP and time.
  • ActiveDEMAND can generate links for “add to calendar” that make it easy for guests to reserve the time
• Send reminder emails with a link to the meeting 1 day and 1 hour before the event
  • Send text message reminders if you prefer
• Send an after-event survey and/or link to the webinar recording
• Transform the event registration page to a “download this webinar” page once you have the video processed and uploaded to your favorite host
• and more

We suggest having people register for the webinar, and once they’re registered, send a link with the meeting info. That way, you get better information in ActiveDEMAND: you learn what webinars people prefer, you can target people based on what webinars they like to register for, and you can use ActiveDEMAND’s reminders to increase attendance.