How Mutiny Creates Viral Webinar Series that Generate a 42x ROI

Everyone wants to go viral these days but only a small percentage of people and businesses do – Mutiny is one of the few. If you aren’t yet familiar with Mutiny, it’s a solution that helps marketing teams generate pipeline through AI-powered personalized experiences, 1:1 microsites, and account intelligence. They’ve cracked the code for blowing up their webinar series so that both prospects and customers are talking about it. Not to mention, they have productized their motion to repeatedly bring their multiple webinar series to hundreds of thousands of marketers around the globe. It all started with their Surv-ai-vor series, based on the hit T.V. show and the lack of industry resources on tactical AI playbooks for marketers. Their goal was to position Mutiny as an AI leader to generate pipeline through their attention-grabbing campaign creative. They certainly achieved their goal having generated:

• A 42x ROI
• $1.7 million in pipeline
• 2k hours of engagement
• Over 4k registrations

The team has since launched other viral webinar series including their most recent, ABM MBA. In this playbook, we’ll dive into the tactics that Mutiny leverages to turn its series into viral experiences. Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. The strategy behind Mutiny’s viral webinar series
2. Building the foundation for an immersive webinar experience
3. Achieving virality through gamification
4. Activating your network and industry thought leaders
5. Nailing the webinar operations to drive efficiency
6. Replicating Mutiny’s webinar series playbook

The strategy behind Mutiny’s viral webinar series

You can’t create a viral & engaging webinar series if you start with a concept that's dry and easily forgettable. From the point of ideation, you need to think outside the box to differentiate yourself from every other business in your space.  This is exactly what Molly Bruckman, Head of CX, and Stewart Hillhouse, Head of Content, did when they established the strategy for their Suv-ai-vor series. At the time of its release, there was a ton of buzz around why businesses should adopt AI but nothing that had any actionable substance. They tackled this pain point in the space to create truly relevant, tactical, and timely content. The idea was to put a fun spin on the popular T.V. show, Survivor, by creating a 12-episode webinar series centered around helping marketers learn more about AI plays while building brand awareness. It even concluded with an in-person award ceremony and someone winning the grand prize of $10,000.  Since traditional B2B marketing has been described as boring, Mutiny decided to take inspiration from the B2C world to strike a chord with its audience and keep them engaged throughout the series and the customer journey.  When creating your own webinar series take inspiration from outside your industry and put your spin on the concept and topics. This will act as your hook to get your audience to lean in. The next step is to keep their attention. Tip: You should help your audience connect the dots and put what they have learned into practice. Mutiny did this by incorporating challenges after each session so everyone could go through a guided assignment specific to each episode. Attendees could leave with a better understanding of what they learned rather than forgetting everything the next day. Advice from Stewart: Don’t plan too far in advance. 1-2 months is the sweet spot where you have enough time to pull off the campaign while ensuring your content is still timely & relevant.

Building the foundation for an immersive webinar experience 

Now that you have your strategy defined and a hook, how are you keeping your audience’s attention? If you capture their attention and then give them an experience that isn't seamless or valuable, you break their trust. It’s your job to ensure the experience remains high quality across the audience journey to eliminate this risk. The key is crafting an immersive journey that aligns with the theme of your series. A great way to do this is by hosting everything directly on your website. When people come to access resources, connect with their peers, and tune into thought-provoking webinars they should be living and breathing your brand.  Molly & Stewart host all their webinars on Mutiny’s website, not only to embody each theme but to enable their audience to naturally explore their site and even book a demo. Their audience leaves each session with valuable insights they can apply to their own marketing programs and can easily remember that Mutiny is the go-to place for insightful marketing tips and solutions.  Mutiny’s embedded webinar set-up has helped contribute to their impact on the business with 4k registrants driving 2k hours of engagement on Mutiny’s domain. The best part is that it takes minutes to create each session and embed it on their website since Sequel.io provides a short snippet of code that just needs to be copied and pasted into their CMS. However, we always recommend integrating your CMS with Sequel so you can efficiently publish new webinars on your website without having to go into your CMS. When you think about the experience of your series, you should also take into account these 3 questions:

• When people sign up, are they receiving calendar invites for every session?
• How are you creating a touch point on days you don't have an episode?
• How do you incentivize people to share the series with their networks?

It’s important not to overlook the audience's journey. You should be making it as easy as possible for everyone to get exactly what they're looking for as seamlessly as possible. This is where technology can be a huge help. In Mutiny’s case, they’ve created their series using Sequel to remove a lot of the friction from the registration, live, and on-demand experiences. When someone registers, they automatically see each episode populated in their calendar and will receive automatic email reminders before and after each session. This setup significantly reduces the number of drop-offs throughout the registration process and the number of people that attend each episode live. 

Achieving virality through gamification 

Mutiny’s $10k prize wasn’t awarded to just anyone. Marketers who signed up for the series needed to compete for the chance to win. The gamification of the Surv-ai-vor series was an ingenious mechanism that Molly & Stewart used to create a viral component that generated more registrations and pipeline. Contestants were awarded points when they:

• Attended a webinar
• Posted about the series on LinkedIn
• Completed AI challenges
• Referred someone to attend the series
• Participated in bonus activities

On top of the $10k prize, there were weekly giveaways to contestants who had the top scores for the week. Seeing what they could win incentivized the audience to drive Mutiny’s campaign virality since the challenges they needed to complete were also straightforward and helped enhance their knowledge of AI.  As more people discovered the series and referred their connections, the network effect took off, bringing Surv-ai-vor to thousands of marketers’ computer screens and surrounding them with Mutiny’s core message. Now you might be wondering how their scoring system was set up. If you’re looking to gamify your webinar series you need to make sure you have access to the right 1st party data and have the technology that can support automation. Tools like Sequel & Airtable can help you collect audience engagement data, not only through the tools themself but also through your website analytics since your series can be hosted directly on your domain. This means you have access to all your audience engagement data without limitation to use for your scoring system.  Then it’s a matter of integrating your tools, in this case, Sequel and Airtable, to track & route these data points per registrant between each system.  Tip: Make sure that the competitor rankings and scores are publically available to your audience to build trust, reinforce a competitive spirit, and fuel virality.

Activating your network and industry thought leaders

You might be assuming that this campaign will eat up a chunk of your marketing budget and take up all your team's time. However, Molly & Stewart offloaded a lot of the content creation efforts and brought in sponsors to offset the costs of the prizes and campaign production efforts helping them achieve a 42x ROI.  Each episode was hosted by an industry expert on AI that was responsible for creating the content and the associated “AI challenge”. Taking this approach established Mutiny as a trusted source of exceptional content without them having to do all the heavy lifting. Instead, they could focus on executing a memorable experience. Industry thought leaders: If you’re looking to save time, money, and activate a larger network, bringing in partners and SMEs is the way to go. They will help you create insightful content and act as another amplification channel for your campaign. Above, you’ll see the guidelines that Mutiny shares with its speakers to ensure that each workshop is valuable and consistent with other elements of the campaign. Sponsors: Sponsorships are also a fantastic way to amplify your efforts especially since your partners have some skin in the game. You’ll also be able to offset some of the costs of prizes if that’s something you want to incorporate. However, you need to be intentional about the value you are providing your partners.  For example, Mutiny’s partners for Surv-ai-vor received:

• Brand exposure throughout the series
• An interactive demo showcase
• Access to the registration list
• Branded swag distribution
• Tickets to the in-person award ceremonies
• Among additional value that benefitted both parties

On the flip side, partners were also responsible for promoting the series & driving registrations which helped Mutiny create a lot of noise around the series.  Tip: Don’t leave anything on the table – activate ALL your channels to help create a viral motion including:

• Email
• Social 
• Website
• Community
• Customers
• Sponsors
• Thought Leaders
• Newsletters
• Sales Team
• Syndication Channels

Nailing the webinar operations to drive efficiency

When you have 12 sessions within a 4-week timeframe, it’s important to have a system in place that can handle the scale of your campaign without things breaking or tasks falling through the cracks. Beyond syncing engagement data from Sequel to Airtable for the gamification component, Mutiny decided to pre-record all the workshops and host them simulive on their website using Sequel to eliminate any last-minute surprises. This allowed them to do a multitude of things, like: 

• Ensuring each speaker’s content aligned with expectations
• Distributing the workload
• Focusing on driving live engagement
• Editing out any wifi problems from the final session recording
• Eliminating any last-minute speaker cancellation issues

Tip: If you’re hosting a series involving a lot of stakeholders, create a slide deck and communication framework from the beginning to ensure the experience is stellar from all angles. Part of this is providing the resources upfront like slides, promotional assets, timelines, etc.

Replicating Mutiny’s webinar series playbook

Mutiny’s Surv-ai-vor campaign saw a 42x ROI, $1.7 million in pipeline generated, 2k hours of engagement, and 4k registrations. It’s hard to ignore their success with this webinar series… and they have launched multiple!  If you’re looking to build a webinar series that drives real growth for your business, Mutiny’s playbook should be your go-to resource for inspiration and guidance. As Molly and Stewart have shared with us, you should be focusing on:

• Creating memorable & timely content 
• Building an immersive & engaging experience on your website
• Supporting virality through gamification & data
• Activating your entire network and industry thought leaders
• Nailing the webinar operations & tech stack to move efficiently

Mutiny’s webinar series are hosted via Sequel directly on their website, allowing them to collect & analyze more 1st party data necessary for gamification, immerse their audience in their unique brand experience, and naturally allow their audience to navigate their website.  If you’re curious about how you can leverage Sequel to host a viral webinar series, you can find a time for us to show you how.