Demo automation was just named one of the “Top 10 New Categories With the Most Buyer Traffic” by G2.

So what’s all the hype about?

Keep reading to find out what demo automation is and how you can use automated demos as part of your sales motion.

What is demo automation?

According to G2, demo automation “is used to automate the creation of product demonstrations. It also enables prospects to get an early product experience through a customized and personalized demo.”

Unlike a static video recording, an automated demo gets your prospect in front of the actual product before qualifying themselves or committing to the sale.

At Navattic, we see our customers use demo automation to create self-serve click-through demos for their website or to build shareable demo assets during the sales cycle.

Why would you use automated demos?

There are two main reasons to use automated demos:

1. To increase the number of quality leads coming from the website

Interactive demos are attractive to buyers who want early, hands-on experience with your product without talking to sales.

The prospects who interact with your demo are more likely to align with your product’s core use cases and value prop, making them more qualified leads.

One of our customers, EVOLVE, nearly doubled their monthly rate of “hot” leads after putting a Navattic demo on their website.

Another customer, Insider, said that Navattic demos have “generated 1000s of high-intent leads that enter our sales cycle already familiar with our product and key use cases.”

2. To make the sales cycle more efficient

Automated demos can also reduce pre-sales costs and resources.

Our customer Sourceday said they spent “30% less time on early-stage demos,” which allowed them to “fully focus their resources on higher value and more strategic deals.”

Athennian said something similar. Navattic has saved its team time by sourcing only the most highly qualified product leads. “Leads from Navattic already know what the Athennian product does and are confident that it addresses a pain point that they have. This allows our sales reps to focus on specific questions during their demos and significantly reduces the time spent on initial discovery.”

Other customers, like Coupa, use Navattic demos as leave-behinds after live demos. These assets give champions a way to communicate exactly what the product does and how it functions to their team.

Coupa’s GTM team says, “Sharing an interactive demo as a leave-behind allows decision-makers to revisit the value messaging even when we’re not physically present and to easily share the resource internally.”

Examples of demo automation

To give you a sense of how automated demos can be used, let’s review three different ways to incorporate them into your go-to-market strategy.

Demo centers

Demo centers are online libraries of self-guided tours. Typically, these demos are tagged by use case or buyer persona to help prospects land on the demo that makes the most sense for their needs. Here are two great examples of demo centers:

CloudAlly

CloudAlly is a cloud-to-cloud backup platform with many valuable features — so many that they’ve created multiple interactive demos to showcase each one.

They have demos for: MS Exchange Backup, MS Exchange 1-Click Recovery, MS Exchange Granular Recovery, and Platform Security Credentials.

Splitting up CloudAlly’s interactive demos by functionality gives prospects a chance to dive deep into each one and fully understand the scope and strength of CloudAlly’s offerings.

Users can jump straight to another demo using the buttons at the top. Behind the scenes, CloudAlly’s sales team tracks the demos potential customers go through to tailor their pitch to the features prospects seem to care about most.

Airbase

Airbase, a spend management tool, highlights multiple parts of its platform in a demo center and in one overview demo using a checklist.

When visitors first come to the Airbase website, they can choose to "Take a Tour," which takes them to their overarching demo with a checklist.

After providing their name and email, prospects choose whether they want an introduction to the platform or if they want to learn about specific features, like virtual cards, bill payments, and procurement.

Alternatively, users can also go to the Airbase demo center to explore additional tour options.

Integration demos

Integrations are a key piece of B2B SaaS functionality. Interactive demos show prospects and customers just how valuable these integrations can be.

Alyce

Alyce’s Demandbase integration helps customers automate their one-to-many gifting motion based on prospect intent signals.

Their interactive demo shows customers just how simple it is to set up the integration, walking them through some prework, establishing a Salesforce connection, and then configuring triggers based on fields in Demandbase.

Showing users how easy it is to integrate the two systems encourages them to set it up and maximize the ROI of each tool.

Demandbase

Demandbase leverages interactive demos wherever possible — in a demo center, on the Salesforce AppExchange, and even in SDR outreach.

In an interview with our customer, Tara Quehl, we learned that Demandbase has created several integration demos to entice prospects based on known elements of their tech stack.

“Our SDRs to send out integration tours which I think is a really great way to get prospects warmed up to our services and help them understand a day in the life using Demandbase.”

Personalized demos at scale

Navattic’s interactive demos are highly customizable, making them ideal for email personalization. Starting with just one template, you can configure multiple variations of an interactive demo for each segment of your ICP.

Here’s how to do it at scale:

1. First, create a generic interactive demo as the foundation for further personalization.

2. Next, determine what generic variables your email marketing platform uses. Most platforms use {{}}, and others use {}. Here’s what it looks like in Hubspot.

3. Then, add custom variables to your interactive demo that match the ones in your email automation platform:

4. Add those variables to the end of your custom demo link. It should look something like this:

https://capture.navattic.com/cl8a8zz4j3300709js91gpy7pk?g=cl89bcxfz3956309jth6qtmmxi&s=0&company.domain={{domain}}&user.firstName={{first_name}}&user.lastName={{last_name}}&company.name={{company}}

In this example, we added:

• Company Domain
• First Name
• Last Name
• Company Name

5. Finally, create an email cadence and use your link to automatically customize each demo.

Check out our example personalized interactive demo here.

Top demo automation software

There are a lot of choices out there for demo automation software. Here are the top ones:

Navattic’s guided HTML/CSS demos empower any team member to create demos without having to consult engineering or IT. Our drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to build and personalize interactive demos for mobile apps, desktop apps, and web-based tools.

Navattic interactive demos can be used in follow-up material post-live demos, email sequences, ads, or on your website. Besides integrations with Salesforce and HubSpot, we have integrations with G2, Twilio Segment, Marketo Google Analytics, Mutiny, Chameleon, and more.

Consensus is a demo automation video platform that focuses on reducing the number of unqualified demos for your sales and presales teams.

Consensus offers features like analytics, which allow sales to see who has viewed your video and when, and gives you insights into when sales should be engaged.

Loomi s more of a DIY demo software solution that helps users with screen recording and converting them into demo videos. This is not limited to just demo automation but can be used throughout your entire organization for video creation.

Loom can be used as a post-mortem of a sales demo so your champion can use it to help with organization onboarding.

Like Loom, ScreenRec is another video recording software that users can then convert into demo videos. ScreenRec also offers an analytics feature that allows you to keep track of who has watched your video, when, and for how long.

With the right tools, which include demo automation software, you can shorten your sales cycle, save on resources, and ultimately, convert your prospects.