Isn’t it interesting that a decade ago very few nonprofit organizations used nonprofit webinar software but now none of them can do without it?
Face-to-face peer-to-peer meetings don’t happen as much as they used to in the past, especially for business networking. Everything is automated if it possibly can be automated. The whole COVID-19 pandemic contributed greatly to the advent of webinar software being indispensable for every single professional business. You need webinars and interactive media for business-to-business and business-to-consumer relationships, and your presentation has to match your brand and value proposition. Your reputation depends on it!
Everything is about distance education now. The classroom is at home in people’s office. Web conferencing is essential for the education of staff, consumers, and donors alike. Even the community can participate in web conferencing. Streaming media, a web browser, computing platform, cloud computing, internet hosting service, social media and even virtual reality is pretty much essential these days.
And event management is not just about having a trade fair annually anymore. It’s about utilizing every aspect of the experience of your information technology expert staff (technical support) for real-time computing,
It’s about engagement marketing using every aspect of social media to connect to those giving you donations, your own staff, and new customers in the community.
What Your Nonprofit Organization Needs to Know About Webinars
What Does It Mean When a Webinar Is 100% GDPR-Compliant?
Whenever you are sharing information on your website, through email, on social media/social network, web traffic, or even through webinars, there are a few skills that are required of your webmaster when dealing with user data, IP addresses, any promotion (marketing), web hosting service, WordPress blogs and more. One skill has to do with privacy and the law. Your customer service has to consider privacy and the law.
That’s where the user interface comes into the picture. You have to obtain consents from users, meet the legal requirements, prove you have done this, manage the consents, and then optimize the consents for Youtube, GoogleMaps,
GDPR-compliance relates to the EU. Every country has its own compliance rules and guidelines. California has its own as well (called CCPA). Website publishers that use tracking technology for users for the purpose of marketing have to tell their users and get them to consent. This is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Not complying means you could get fined. Thus your consent management platform should always make privacy breaches visible. When you can do this, you boost the trust of your users.
Privacy Can Make or Break Your Brand
And according to a Harvard study, digital data has to be taken seriously. Targeting the needs of your users and determining their user intent has its limits. Here are some other things the Harvard scientists found:
- Consumers are likely to backlash and oppose you if you use your online surveillance (online cookies and more) and ad personalization to sell products.
- Based on the study, ad personalization only worked for those who didn’t know what their data was being used for.
- When websites were required by law to explain their types of tracking, the advertisement click-through rates dropped.
It seems that catering to consumers is even more important than ever. They vote with their money and purchases.
Consumer Tracking is Questionable
Privacy online is a paradox. And the digital space also is questionable in the eyes of consumers for privacy.
In one study, factor analysis predicted what consumers liked and didn’t like. They found that consumers believed that obtaining information and knowledge about a user outside the website where a company’s or organization’s ad appears is equivalent to talking about someone behind their back.
They also believed that using analytics to deduce information on someone is inferring information. This can happen when a company uses information beyond the landing page and website.
For example, they gather information by digital display advertising, positioning (marketing), distribution (marketing), call-to-action (marketing), an overlay network, and conversation via their software development, and conversion marketing. They then add it to their knowledge base. In many cases their software design and development is utilizing cryptography and more.
Once consumers dislike the way their information is shared, they really don’t care about your product anymore. They use their money to buy your product 24% less of the time.
People are very concerned about their privacy. All this tells you that considering trust in your business relationships is super important. You must use data judiciously and your webmaster has to get this part of the business equation right. Don’t take personalization too far.
Comparison of Types of Webinar Tools Specs and Benefits
A comparison always helps you choose the best product. It can give you a heads-up insight to things you wouldn’t have figured out until later – after you already purchased the product. GoToMeeting and Zoom are two of the top webinar tools. Below is a comparison of them.
GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting has applications for education in that the virtual meetings are free for students to join, the video conferences are secure, perfect for parent teacher conferences or group work between students. In healthcare, professional health care providers can “meet” with patients online for advice almost as if it were a patient visit to their practice. Privacy is not sacrificed. Telehealth via video-telephony provided with GoToMeeting is HIPAA compliant.
Professional executives who do not need to be on location on the job and can be on the road for their job, can utilize the full-featured mobile app. And sales staff can customize web meeting rooms, links, and invites while easily connecting via one-click.
Here are some other features:
- Fast, reliable and secure video conferencing for up to 250 attendees
- Can be accessed on any device – smartphone, laptop, ipad, and desktop computer
- Built for business with safety and security considered. Sessions are encrypted and there’s a meeting lock as well. Unlimited cloud recording. Transcriptions available. Integration is not difficult.
- Good audio and video quality (built-in audio with VoIP and Toll and background noise suppression)
- No app needs to be downloaded
- Mobile conferencing and conference calling available
- During the user experience, you can do screen share, use drawing tools, have an in-session chat, and preview your webcam
- Business reporting and analytics
Zoom
Zoom includes Zoom rooms, events and webinars, mobile app marketplace, chat, meetings, phone, developer platform APIS & SDKS, Zoom for home (great for parenting), and OnZoom.
The types of industry Zoom targets include healthcare, government, finance, and education, not just nonprofit organizations. In education, their tagline is to expand traditional classrooms in the cloud.
Zoom for home boasts they are able to deploy a personal collaboration device for video meetings, phone calls, interactive whiteboarding and more. You can sync your Google calendar to it, set it up to be IT-controlled remotely, use it for content sharing, connect to any electronic devices, and share documents such as spreadsheets, even up to 12 pages long.
For nonprofits, you can scale up to 50,000 people in your video webinar, grow your audience by live streaming on Youtube Live, Facebook Live, and other streaming services. You can monetize your webinars with payment ahead of time, easily export the data collected from people on the call to spreadsheets, Zoom is thought to do it all with the most innovative tools that marketing professionals need.
An expert on the Zoom team helps you set up the webinar software.
Some Questions to Consider Before Making a Decision on Your Webinar Service
The following are some of the considerations you might find important when deciding on a webinar service.
The Webinar Service Itself
- Can the webinar seminar integrate with the Google Calendar?
- Does the webinar service utilize artificial intelligence or remote control in any way?
- How can webinars be used for lead generation?
- Will the webinar service include any type of test (assessment) tools that may help my specialist schools programme?
- Does the webinar service consider your industry, your marketing strategy, content management system?
- Do you get a running total of how many people attended, those who watched the replay, etc.?
- Does it include an opinion poll during the webinar conference?
- Is a DEMO conference available? A product demonstration online?
- Is licensure needed?
- Does the seminar include methods for retargeting in case someone only watches the seminar for the first 20 minutes?
- Is the delivery (commerce) of the webinar dependent on the use of Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google Chrome?
Pricing and the Decision to Go Ahead
- What type of pricing, payment and money installments may be arranged?
- How does premium pricing for these webinar services differ from the standard services from the webinar company?
- What’s the real usability for our business?
- Can our business model include webinars for offering courses online? Have there been any studies about learning on these webinars?
- What is the probability of truly having economic growth in the business as a result of starting webinars?
- What about the General Data Protection Regulation guidelines and privacy rules. How is this addressed with the webinar service?
Service and Delivery
- How do you work problem-solving is necessary?
- What do you do if the webinar performance is not up to your standards?
- How much training and starting knowledge is needed for the service?
- Accessibility
- Who has access control?
Computing and Technology
- What type of computing platform is needed? What about Linux, Google Drive, Google Docs, Windows, and iOS integration? MacOS?
- What type of web content may be uploaded or downloaded during the webinar? Are there restrictions?
- How could the webinar integrate with your website and web page? Web tracking?
- What about integration with Google Pay Send, online advertising, Google Offers, and others?
- Does the nonprofit webinar software connect to email? Outlook? Android (operating service)?
Consider all the options you have available to you. You might also be interested in some discounts:
- Demio offers a 50% discount to companies (nonprofit organizations and education companies) that have had to shift their businesses online because of COVID-19 pandemic situations.
- One of the 100% webinar service providers is Zoom. Others include GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar, Join.me, Google Hangouts, YouTube Live, Facebook Live, and ezTalks. However, these others may only be free for a limited amount of time.
