Slack + Marketing Teams: Use Slack to Organize Your Upcoming Webinar Campaign

The integration of Slack with Salesforce became a popular topic of discussion following the announcement of the Slack acquisition. Teams across organizations appreciate Slack for its user-friendly interface and the collaborative energy it fosters, and marketing teams are no exception.

Nonetheless, aligning the collaborative efforts of marketing campaigns in Slack with your Salesforce organization can be challenging, particularly as marketing teams become more adaptable and responsive in a dynamic environment.

Editor’s note: this article aims to highlight how marketing teams can enhance collaboration both within and beyond the team using Slack. The news of Salesforce's acquisition of Slack prompted many to consider how the two could be integrated. You'll find mention of a third-party application that allows Slack to fully leverage Salesforce, but the primary goal is to explore the Slack + Salesforce opportunities for marketing that you might not have previously 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 effective techniques for achieving this? How can you collaborate with multiple teams both internally and externally using 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.

The great thing about this tech stack is that both Slack and Salesforce boast extensive app ecosystems and seamless integrations that you can easily set up without any trouble. All the tools mentioned above are apps that can be added to Slack.

Planning Your Webinar with Use 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!

Step 2: Set up a Quiq 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)

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 is finally here! It's best to bring up last-minute tasks in Slack using @mentions. This will notify panelists or team members about any remaining items that need attention.

While the webinar is ongoing, I prefer to keep the Slack channel open on a separate monitor (with sound notifications disabled). A person managing audience questions can relay them directly to the panelists 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

Are there additional ways your marketing team utilizes Slack? Which aspects of your planning and execution process in Slack seem disjointed from Salesforce?  Share your thoughts 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.