Having read your recent piece on webinars, I thought your readers might be interested to know how this technology can work in practice, through some webinars my company, In Situ, has been running.

We were approached by The Information Exchange (IE), which puts together Trading and Expo seminars for traders and investors.Traditionally, the company promotes its seminars by holding events throughout the UK, which is both time consuming and expensive. IE commissioned us to produce an on-demand webinar presentation featuring Alpesh Patel, a well-known industry Guru, to "sell the sizzle" in a high-impact 15-minute online presentation.

To help promote the event, we set up a Vismail campaign (http://vismail.com). This enabled us to send out targeted high-impact video emails featuring Alpesh, which drove prospects to the online presentation.

IE really gained from the exposure the webinar gave them. Not only did they reach more people from a larger geographical location, but also out of the 6,114 Vismail's sent, 2,636 resulted in views of the webinar.

The message from Simon Campbell, MD of IE, was suitably enthusiastic: "We were extremely impressed by the high standards of productionquality and clear messages which came through."

Another client, Virtual Wine, pioneered live interactive wine tasting over the web, and is one of the new generation of content providers that is delivering television-style programming to a computer-based audience.

Working with us, the concept was launched in early 2005 with a live webinar allowing people to interact with an expert tasting panel. Since then Virtual Wine has held regular monthly tastings in a range of locations around the UK, with these events being watched by thousands of people.

In a further example, Matrix Tax Solutions were about to embark on a series of roadshows around the UK to introduce their inheritance tax solution. However, faced with the cost and time-intensive nature of having to take these presentations on the road, the company looked to find a new way forward. Together we devised a webinar that presented the service concisely. Independent financial advisors were then invited to the presentation using Vismail.

The applications of webinars can work for practically every industry and every function, ranging from shareholder presentations, internal and external management communications and investor announcements, through to training sessions, human resource messages like induction and meeting statutory demands for environment and health and safety training. On top of this there are sales and marketing presentations with all kinds of product launches, regular seminars, conferences and special events.

The main advantage of a webinar is that it can conveniently and cheaply reach a global audience. What's more, transport costs are non-existent and people can view them at their leisure. Additionally, they offer the opportunity of 'bringing people back' into the internet with enhanced interaction.

Chris Mitchell
managing director
In Situ