Background
Case study

Spendesk converts customers, reduces churn

Spendesk is an all-in-one spend management platform that removes the hassle from spending at work.

Industry

Finance

Size

SMB

Location

France

Use case

Product Demos

What is Spendesk?

Spendesk lets businesses easily manage all of their spending thanks to prepaid expense cards and clear spending policies. It gives employees flexible payment methods to handle work costs, while finance teams have all the control they need.

Spendesk serves CFOs and finance leaders in companies with between 50 and 500 employees.

Team Spendesk

How do Spendesk use webinars?

The way we use webinars have evolved considerably over the past year. But primarily they’ve been a sales tool.

At first, we employed them as a way to help prospective customers who weren’t sure if Spendesk would be a good fit. These were often small companies with specific needs, and it didn’t make sense to do a full demo with one of our sales team.

Webinars let us show multiple prospects around the platform at once, answer basic questions, and let them see whether it’s a fit. Then we can have a one-to-one discussion and demo if they’re interested.

We hold these 30-minute sessions twice a month, and they’ve proven to be very efficient for both Spendesk and our buyers. They certainly save our salespeople a lot of time.

After doing this happily for six months or so, we started to explore other webinar options. The next big success has been content marketing webinars. For these, we team up with another company and present a topic of common interest to both audiences. We’ve had the pleasure of working with partners including TravelPerk, Playfit, and Chartmogul.

We hold these webinar less often - once every few months - because we want them to really stand out and be special. At the same time, we always endeavor to invite as many viewers as possible and spread the word.

More recently, we’ve also started holding webinars for new Spendesk users. Our Customer Success team invites clients for 20-minute sessions where they discover the platform for the first time, get everything set up correctly, and learn how to make smart payments.

This has helped us speed up onboarding at scale, while still providing individual care to customers who need it. And we can present the tool to whole teams at once - not just the account controller.

When we started with our sales webinars, it was really just to test the interest and validate this idea. Now, webinars are more imporatant to us.

We even use them for internal “all-hands” meetings. We have remote teams and travelling staff, and they’re all able to join these important meetings from anywhere in the world. And anyone can always watch the recording if they can’t make the live session.

Outside of scaling, what are the chief benefits of webinars?

The sales webinars paid off right from the beginning. Nearly every single session has led directly to a sale - and often with less time invested. The immediate results have been hugely gratifying.

The sales webinars paid off right from the beginning. Nearly every single session has led directly to a sale - and often with less time invested.

Since then, our target clients have evolved alongside our strategy. We’re aiming for bigger companies now, with more complex sales cycles. Often there are 15 decision-makers to talk to - usually a salesperson’s worst nightmare.

We can use webinars to present the product to all of these people at once. They can still ask questions and we can solve their challenges one-by-one, but all in the same call. And we don’t have to be physically in their offices either.

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Why did you choose Livestorm?

The big difference at the beginning was how simple the platform is to use. This was a new strategy for us and we didn’t have time to put together something complex.

Our first webinar was live two days after we had the idea. And we saw straight away that our salespeople and attendees both enjoyed using the platform. It was a hit right from the start.

What integrations do you use, and how can people sign up for webinars?

We use HubSpot to handle user details and send emails, and the marketing team creates landing pages with this. It’s great that they can keep using their normal tools with no major changes.

There are a few main ways for users to sign up:

  • They can find a link on the Spendesk website
  • They might see an ad on Facebook or Google which takes them directly to the sign-up page
  • Sales and Customer Success team members send links out directly to prospects and customers they think will benefit most from a coming webinar

What’s probably worked best for us is simply to send the link to Spendesk account owners at companies. They’re glad to share the webinar with their colleagues, as it’s an easy way for the whole company to learn a new tool.

What are your favorite Livestorm features?

Personally, I love the actual webinar room itself - the chat, questions, and polls.

I know that the marketing team loves being able to create sign-up pages with HubSpot and integrate them easily. They get the design and feel exactly how they want them, and it’s still simple for the user to join in.

They also love the automated reminder emails that get sent out before the session goes live.

Overall, we love how easy it is to attract attendees, and then how simple it is to engage with them during the live session.

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What advice would you give someone who has never hosted a webinar?

The best advice I can give is to make webinars as interactive and natural as possible. You want to give participants the impression you’re face-to-face, just having a friendly conversation.

The best advice I can give is to make webinars as interactive and natural as possible. You want to give participants the impression you’re face-to-face, just having a friendly conversation.

When someone asks a question, I respond as if I already know the person, and as if they were with me in the room.

Another little tip: wait a minute or two at the beginning before launching into the presentation. People always show up late! Instead, use this time to interact in the chat.

How do you promote your webinars?

Sometimes we use paid promotion online - especially for the content webinars. This is usually through LinkedIn Ads, with a bit of Facebook thrown in as well.

The main objective is always to create quality events, and so we try to avoid hosting too many sessions. Naturally, they’re easier to promote this way.

We also get great results when our team members share important webinars on their LinkedIn profiles. They’re often connected to prospects and customers, and this is a nice way to get webinars in front of them.

Finally, email always works. We send out big newsletters to promote all of our content, and targeted direct emails to customers and prospects at the end of the sales cycle.

With Livestorm, the attendance duration is high: 99% of our participants on our product demos stayed for the entire event.

Adrien Gaucher' Avatar

Adrien Gaucher

Account Manager

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