B2B marketers are rethinking event strategies & budgets. 🤔 Fuel ROI with webinars in 2025. Read the Forrester report

Softbank | Case Study | ON24

B2B marketers are rethinking event strategies & budgets. 🤔 Fuel ROI with webinars in 2025. Read the Forrester report

SoftBank engages 40K+ quality prospects with ON24

  • 30,000

    virtual event attendees

  • 70

    total sessions supported at virtual event

  • 20+

    webinars a month, with scaled program

Capabilities

Use Cases

Number of Employees

  • 10,000+

Introduction

SoftBank Group Corp. is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, and focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the Vision Fund, the world’s largest technology-focused venture capital fund, with over $100 billion in capital.

The technology sector is constantly evolving to meet the changing needs of modern consumers which means CEOs, investors and shareholders must stay flexible and informed. As one of the largest tech investors in the world, it’s no surprise that SoftBank Group Corp. has embraced an omnichannel marketing strategy capable of raising the capital it needs to drive innovation in a digital-first world.

Problem

Led by Taishi Yamada, Director, Enterprise Marketing, SoftBank Corp., the company has been using digital experiences to keep current and potential investors updated on the latest innovations of their subsidiaries to maintain shareholder value.

However, to keep pace with evolving audience expectations, Yamada had been working to transition from a tech-driven marketing strategy to a more audience-centric one, with webinars and virtual events at the core.

The obstacle at hand was what Yamada refers to as the “marketing technology challenge,” meaning that technology alone is not enough to execute a successful marketing strategy.

Tired of implementing new technology for technology’s sake, Yamada looked for a solution that would complement the rest of his team’s tech stack to propel their webinar and virtual event strategy forward as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

“Great technology is supposed to help you create great experiences for your audiences,“ said Yamada. “We know how to run a webinar, but to run a webinar that also serves the marketing function and puts audiences first? ON24 knows how to do that best.”

"Great technology is supposed to help you create great experiences for your audiences. We know how to run a webinar, but to run a webinar that also serves the marketing function and puts audiences first? ON24 knows how to do that best."

Taishi Yamada, Director, Enterprise Marketing, SoftBank Corp.

Solution

With ON24, Yamada was able to do more than create engaging, polished virtual events and webinars. He was able to create an entire system of engagement by delivering customer-centric digital experiences that drove audience engagement, and collected the actionable insights his team needed to personalize their marketing and, ultimately, drive conversion.

To profile their audience, the team utilized ON24’s 20+ engagement tools including live polls, Q&A, 1:1 chats and an AI-powered content recommendation engine, creating plenty of engagement opportunities as well as the ability to track the unique interests and intent signals of each and every attendee.

Furthermore, ON24’s ability to integrate with the team’s marketing automation platform (Marketo) and CRM (Salesforce) made it easy to streamline workflows and customise follow-up messaging including personalized emails, targeted ads and invitations to upcoming webinars relevant to the unique interests of each attendee.

“The event itself helped us make an introduction to our potential customers,” said Yamada. “But the data we collected from those events is what allowed us to drive pipeline and accelerate buying journeys.”

Results

The platform’s easy-to-use interface and drag and drop functionality made it possible for the team to deliver over 20 webinars per month, in multiple time zones and languages, to accommodate investors and customers around the world.

Powered by ON24, SoftBank’s annual event: “SoftBank World 2021”, included seven unique sessions over two days and attracted 40,000+ registrants and 30,000 attendees.

“This was one of the biggest B2B events in Japan,” said Yamada. “ON24 helped us achieve that success.”

"The event itself helped us make an introduction to our potential customers."

Taishi Yamada, Director, Enterprise Marketing, SoftBank Corp.

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