Key Takeaways: Discoverability on OD - English - Sept 18 - Subhani - Test
Executive Summary
B2B audiences increasingly prefer virtual, on-demand, hybrid, and personalized digital experiences, making engagement data central to marketing and sales performance. ON24 outlined a 2023 execution framework focused on analyzing prior program performance, planning scalable and consistent experiences, creating more interactive and personalized webinars and content hubs, and enabling faster follow-up through first-party engagement insights. Key capabilities include enhanced analytics across webinars, content hubs, forums, and live events; reusable templates, seamless registration, email automation, captioning, and bulk content upload; engagement tools such as chat, polls, surveys, CTAs, breakout rooms, and meeting requests; and personalization based on company, role, persona, and content interests. By connecting audience behavior across experiences at the prospect and account level, marketers can optimize programs, improve lead quality, support more relevant sales conversations, accelerate pipeline, and increase revenue impact.
Speakers
- Tessa Grefenstette, Associate Director, Search & Evolution
- Jason Moore, Director of Engineering
- Subhani Singh, Associate Director, Search & Evolution Associate Director, Search & Evolution Associate Director, Search & Evolution Associate Director, Search & Evolution, International Center for Artificial Intelligence Research, Innovation and Enterprise Solutions WorldwideX International Center for Artificial Intelligence Research, Innovation and Enterprise Solutions WorldwideX abc
Key Takeaways
1. Digital Engagement Expectations: B2B audiences increasingly prefer digital engagement, with 70% wanting on-demand, virtual, or hybrid experiences and 83% expecting more personalized digital experiences.
2. Engagement Data Optimization: Marketers should use first-party engagement data across webinars, content hubs, virtual events, prospects, and accounts to identify top-performing programs and optimize 2023 strategy.
3. Scalable Webinar Execution: Teams can improve execution efficiency by using reusable webinar templates, preset email workflows, one-click registration, branded layouts, and captioning in 25+ languages.
4. Interactive Intent Signals: Engagement tools such as chat, polls, surveys, CTAs, demos, meeting bookings, breakout rooms, and personalized content help audiences interact and signal buying intent.
5. Sales Follow-Up Intelligence: Sales teams can use prospect-level engagement insights—such as questions asked, content viewed, CTAs clicked, and session behavior—to prioritize follow-up, personalize outreach, and accelerate pipeline conversion.
Key Quote
It's not just about running another webinar about executing a live event or managing a content portal or a hub. It's about creating an end to end digital engagement strategy informed and optimized by your first party data and insights.
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Blog: How Data-Driven Digital Engagement Turns Audience Signals Into Revenue Action
B2B buyers now expect digital experiences to be relevant, flexible, and personalized across every stage of the decision process. Virtual events, webinars, content hubs, personalized landing pages, and on-demand experiences are no longer secondary channels. They are central to how audiences research challenges, compare solutions, engage with brands, and decide when to take the next step.
This shift gives marketing and sales teams a clear opportunity: turn every digital touchpoint into a source of engagement, insight, and revenue action. When audiences interact with content, attend sessions, answer polls, visit key pages, or return to on-demand assets, they create signals that reveal interests, priorities, pain points, and buying intent. The value comes from capturing those signals in a structured way and using them to guide smarter segmentation, faster follow-up, and more relevant sales conversations.
A strong digital engagement strategy starts with understanding what has already worked, then applying those insights to build better programs. That means designing experiences that are easy to access, aligned to audience needs, and built to support both self-education and sales readiness. With the right mix of personalization, interactivity, content organization, and follow-up, marketers can move beyond passive content delivery and create digital programs that help convert audience behavior into measurable pipeline impact.
Using Data to Plan Better Digital Engagement
A strong digital engagement strategy starts with a clear analysis of existing performance. Before adding more events, content hubs, roundtables, or virtual programs to the calendar, marketers need to understand what is already working and where improvement is needed. That requires looking beyond surface-level metrics and evaluating engagement, conversion, content consumption, audience behavior, and account-level activity.
Program-level reporting can show which formats generated the most leads, which topics attracted the right audience, which speakers drove stronger engagement, and which promotional channels delivered the highest registration volume. Content analytics can reveal which assets people viewed, how often they returned, which categories performed best, and where audience interest was strongest. This first-party engagement data gives marketing teams a clearer view of what captured attention and what helped move prospects through the buyer journey. When shared with sales, these insights become even more valuable by supporting smarter outreach, stronger prospect prioritization, and more relevant follow-up conversations.
With performance data in place, the next step is to plan programs that are efficient, consistent, and scalable. B2B marketing teams often manage multiple campaigns across regions, business units, and audience segments, which makes repeatable processes essential. Templates can help maintain brand consistency while reducing production time. Standardized registration pages, lobby experiences, email reminders, and calendar notifications can streamline execution and reduce operational friction.
Registration should also be as simple as possible, since every unnecessary step can lower conversion. One-click registration, clear promotional messaging, and timely reminder emails can improve the path from invitation to attendance. Accessibility needs to be part of the planning process as well, especially for global audiences. Captioning, multilingual support, and clear content formatting make it easier for more people to engage with the experience. By building these operational details into the planning stage, teams can spend less time resolving execution issues and more time improving audience impact.
Creating Personalized Digital Engagement Experiences
Creating engaging digital experiences takes more than publishing content or running another online event. Audiences need meaningful ways to participate: asking questions, responding to polls, joining discussions, exploring related resources, and choosing the content most relevant to their needs. Personalization is central to this experience. When buyers expect digital journeys to reflect their interests, marketers need to use available data to tailor content recommendations, calls to action, follow-up resources, and future invitations.
These interactions also generate valuable buying signals. Chat activity, survey responses, Q&A participation, poll answers, content downloads, and interactive CTA clicks all help reveal what topics matter to each person and where they may be in the buying journey. A prospect who downloads a technical asset, asks a product-specific question, and attends multiple related sessions is showing stronger intent than someone who only watches a short introductory segment. By designing experiences that encourage participation, marketers can increase engagement while capturing better insight for segmentation, nurture, and sales alignment.
A strong audience experience starts with the digital environment itself. The console or experience page should not function only as a content player. It should act as a structured engagement layer that gives visitors multiple ways to interact. Branding plays an important role because it creates continuity and trust, especially when experiences include company logos, tailored messaging, relevant visual design, and consistent styling across live and on-demand formats.
Engagement tools should be selected based on the business outcome the team wants to drive. Polls and surveys help collect audience insights. Q&A gives prospects a way to share priorities, challenges, and objections. Reactions provide real-time feedback. Calls to action such as “request a demo,” “book a meeting,” or “start a free trial” create direct conversion paths. Smaller interactive formats, including breakout discussions and roundtables, can extend the value of a digital event by allowing attendees to speak with subject matter experts, connect with peers, or continue the conversation after the main content ends.
Personalization is one of the most effective ways to improve engagement because different audiences do not need the same content in the same order. A single experience can become more relevant by using registration data, persona tags, job titles, company attributes, or stated interests to determine what each visitor sees. A marketing leader, sales leader, HR executive, finance decision-maker, and IT buyer may all enter the same content destination, but each should be guided toward assets that align with their specific priorities.
The same approach applies to resource centers and engagement hubs, where content can be organized by persona, topic, funnel stage, product interest, or industry. When high-value assets need to be gated, registration forms should capture the right information without adding unnecessary friction. Subscription options can also help audiences self-identify the topics they care about, giving marketing teams a practical way to continue nurturing prospects with relevant content after the first interaction.
The real value of digital engagement comes from connecting audience behavior to revenue action. Every chat message, poll response, survey answer, content download, CTA click, demo request, meeting booking, question asked, and session attended can become a signal of buyer intent. This first-party data gives marketing and sales teams a clearer view of who is engaged, what they care about, and how ready they may be to move forward.
This context makes follow-up more relevant. Instead of sending a generic message such as “I saw you attended,” a sales representative can reference a specific behavior, such as a question about implementation timelines, interest in a product feature, or engagement with a particular use case. At the account level, engagement data can help teams identify buying committees, prioritize accounts, and determine which prospects are ready for direct outreach and which require continued nurture.
As programs scale, teams need to move beyond single events and build connected digital journeys. A live webinar can become on-demand content, feed a resource center, support outbound campaigns, and trigger sales activity. A multi-session digital event can allow attendees to build personalized agendas, favorite sessions, join networking opportunities, download related resources, and interact through chat or one-to-one conversations. A targeted follow-up page can present custom messages and curated content based on what the visitor has already shared or consumed.
Operational capabilities also matter. Bulk content uploads, cookie consent management, bot protection, caption editing, speaker spotlighting, sponsorship options, and consistent event branding help teams manage programs efficiently while protecting the audience experience. These details may seem tactical, but they are what make scalable execution possible. They allow marketing teams to deliver relevant engagement consistently across campaigns, regions, personas, and buying stages.
Turning engagement into revenue depends on how effectively teams use the signals buyers provide through their digital behavior. Webinars, content hubs, landing pages, and other digital programs generate valuable first-party data, but that data only creates impact when it is connected to nurture, lead scoring, account-based marketing, content recommendations, and sales follow-up.
Marketing teams should use engagement insights to create connected experiences that are interactive, personalized, and measurable. Sales teams need clear, usable context, including attendee interests, questions asked, resources viewed, poll responses, and engagement levels. This helps representatives follow up with relevant messaging instead of generic outreach. A prospect exploring a specific product area requires a different conversation than someone engaging with early-stage thought leadership.
The same approach applies to customer retention and expansion. Engagement data can reveal which customers are attending advanced sessions, researching new topics, or consuming content tied to additional use cases. These signals help teams identify expansion opportunities, strengthen relationships, and support customers with greater relevance.
B2B buyers expect timely, contextual interactions. Organizations that analyze performance, plan with discipline, personalize digital experiences, and act on real engagement signals will be better positioned to convert interest into pipeline, accelerate deal cycles, and create long-term customer value.
