by Will Looney Senior Manager of Content Marketing at CertifID, as told to Contrast
CertifID is growing fast. The company makes wire fraud prevention software for real estate closing firms. These are the companies that handle the transfer of funds when a property changes hands. They were running more webinars, bringing on more team members, and trying to move faster than Zoom would let them.
Marketing held every session. Adding co-hosts or giving other teams access meant navigating Zoom's per-seat licenses and account structure. Every time CertifID tried to expand, they hit friction that had nothing to do with the webinars themselves. "We were growing, things were moving faster," said Will Looney, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at CertifID. "We needed something that was simple to use and gave us great data." That solution was Contrast, a webinar platform built for HubSpot-first marketing teams.
After switching to Contrast, CertifID's Spring and Winter Product Launches reached the top 1% of all Contrast customers by registrant volume. Their attendance rate hit 52%, well above the platform average of around 46%. And their webinar completion rate was unlike anything their Contrast account team had seen: meaning the people who showed up stayed through to the end.
More importantly, the program itself has grown. What started as a marketing-owned operation is now expanding to sales reps hosting their own sessions, with Marketing Ops spinning up new webinar initiatives on Contrast without hesitation.
Results at a Glance
Metric
Result
Registrant volume
Top 1% of all Contrast customers
Attendance rate
52% (platform average: ~46%)
Completion rate
78%, when people showed up they stayed until the end
Webinar program reach
Expanding from Marketing to Sales and Marketing Ops
About CertifID
CertifID makes wire fraud prevention and closing software for real estate professionals. Their customers are the closing agents, title companies and settlement firms that process the financial side of property transactions. Founded in 2017, they work in a heavily regulated, high-stakes environment where the wrong wire transfer can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars lost to fraud. Will Looney leads content marketing, overseeing the webinar program alongside broader internal and external production strategy.
Why CertifID Left Zoom Webinars and Switched to Contrast
By the time CertifID started evaluating alternatives, Zoom had created problems at every stage of running a webinar.
CertifID's attendees kept getting locked out of webinars
CertifID's customers are title companies and closing agents. That industry has a lot of protections around the tools it uses, and Zoom regularly ran into those security controls. Every webinar generated a parallel stream of support tickets that the ops team had to manage in real time, while the content was running. "We would spend a significant amount of time just managing tech stuff that was really on the Zoom side," Will said. "It had nothing to do with what we were doing or what we were producing."
Zoom changed their tiers without warning
On top of the access problems, CertifID hit an unexpected registration cap mid-cycle. Zoom had changed their pricing tiers and the team had no idea. "They switched their tiers on us and we didn't realize," Will said. "We had more people than the webinar could hold and people were like, 'I can't get in,' and we didn't know. There was just no clarity in that whole experience." Unlike Zoom's seat and tier-based model, Contrast's pricing is usage-based with no hidden licence fees, so CertifID always knows exactly what they're paying.
Zoom had support issues
When CertifID escalated support request, the response was slow and shallow. "Zoom support is really, really difficult. They're slow to react. They just don't feel like they have deep technical knowledge and couldn't really solve my issue."
The replay took 90 minutes to process
After every webinar ended, the team had to wait for Zoom to finish processing before they could download, edit, upload to YouTube and distribute. A team trying to move fast was structurally blocked after every single session.
Two webinars couldn't run at the same time
CertifID's account ran off a shared marketing login. When a second webinar kicked off while one was already live, it created login conflicts that locked attendees out of both. This happened more than once and was the final push to look for a new platform.
No way to get data into HubSpot without manual work
Throughout all of this, data was a growing problem. CertifID runs HubSpot as their core marketing tool. On Zoom, getting webinar data in meant exporting a CSV, cleaning it up and uploading it manually every time. There was no way to connect webinar engagement to sales follow-up in any meaningful way. "We needed something that would give us better data," Will said. "We wanted something that was linked really closely to our internal analytics tools."
The combination of access failures, unexpected costs, slow support, processing delays, simultaneous session limits, and a broken data workflow made the decision straightforward. CertifID switched to Contrast.
What CertifID Needed in a New Webinar Platform to Support Its Growth
CertifID now runs it's webinars on Contrast
CertifID evaluated several platforms. Their requirements reflected where the company was heading, not just where it had been.
Pre-recorded webinar support
CertifID was already pre-producing content for its product launches. They recorded at peak quality, then ran it on a set day so the audience experienced it as a live event. On Zoom, that required a plan upgrade. On Contrast, it's available at every tier.
Simple multi-user access without licence headaches
Marketing was running everything, but the goal was to enable anyone in the company to host. "We needed to make sure we could enable anyone else who got into that software," Will said. "Being able to add most of our team and not have to worry about all these crazy licenses or seats. We kept hitting some weird roadblock or red tape in Zoom for what seemed like no reason."
Native HubSpot integration
CertifID runs HubSpot for marketing and Salesforce for sales. They needed webinar engagement data flowing into their CRM automatically, not exported, cleaned and uploaded by hand every time. Every registration, live attendance, poll answer, CTA click and watch time percentage now syncs directly to HubSpot as contact properties.
"We were wanting to jump in fast and move fast," Will said, "and Contrast was able to get there with us." Contrast is rated the easiest webinar software to use on G2, which is part of why onboarding new hosts across teams happens without friction.
CertifID's Webinar Results: Top 1% for Registrations, 52% Attendance and 75%+ Completion
Top 1% for registrant volume
CertifID's Spring and Winter Product Launches hit the top 1% of all Contrast customers by registrant volume, measured against more than a million data points across the platform.
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Curious where your webinars stand? See how your attendance and and other stats compare at Webinar Benchmark
52% attendance rate
Their attendance rate reached 52%, well above the platform average of around 46%. More than half of registered attendees show up live. It's a consistent result, not a one-time peak.
On Zoom, attendees regularly struggled to join at all. Tier changes, IT restrictions and login conflicts meant a portion of every audience never made it through the door. Removing those barriers directly lifted the number of people who actually showed up.
78% completion rate
The completion numbers stood out most. CertifID's Director of Product Marketing joined the company mid-program, attended a Spring Launch and immediately flagged what she was seeing in the data: "There's like 78% completion, like to the end. That's unheard of. I never see people stick around that long."
CertifID's completion graph. Flat, not sloping. 78% of attendees watched to the end.
In typical webinar data, completion graphs slope downward from the first minute. CertifID's are flat. The Contrast account team confirmed they hadn't seen graphs like it before.
Two things drive this:
The content is sharp because the team has time to make it sharp. On Zoom, Will's team was spending significant time managing tech failures, processing replays, cleaning CSV exports and troubleshooting join issues. That time is gone on Contrast. Setup is fast, data flows automatically, and nothing breaks mid-session. The team can put their energy into the actual program. "I think it's just the simplicity of what you guys have built, which has really been easy to get people to adopt," Will said. The result shows up in the content. CertifID's customers come specifically to learn about fraud prevention and real estate closing workflows. "To the average watcher, if you're not in this industry, it's probably pretty boring," Will noted. "We just try to speak the language as best as we can. And I guess it resonates."
The platform gets out of the way. On Zoom, attendees were dealing with access issues, buffering problems and confusing interfaces throughout sessions. On Contrast, none of that is happening. When the experience is frictionless, people stop looking for a reason to leave. That's what a 78% completion rate reflects.
How CertifID Turns Webinar Watch Data Into Sales Briefings
Before Contrast, the handoff between a webinar and the sales team was a manual, error-prone process: find the report, set the right parameters on the CSV, clean the file, upload it to HubSpot. Now it's automatic, and CertifID uses it deliberately.
Contrast tracks watch time, CTA clicks and poll responses for every attendee, whether they joined live or watched the replay afterward. That data flows directly into HubSpot. A sales rep can look at a prospect's contact record and see not just that they registered, but how much of the webinar they watched, which CTAs they clicked, which polls they answered and whether they've returned to the replay.
"We can pass that information to our sales team and say: this person's consuming a lot of information on this topic. They might not have attended the webinar, but they're still watching our content, going back to it several times. Just having that information helped us arm our sales team better — getting to meet the prospect halfway with what they're interested in." — Will Looney, Senior Manager of Content Marketing, CertifID
CertifID uses in-session polls to sharpen this further. A poll toward the end of a webinar might ask: "Which product are you most interested in?" Another: "Would you like us to reach out about X?" These answers sync to HubSpot as contact properties. The rep going into a first call already knows which product the prospect flagged and whether they came back for the replay. "We just have more clarity in that handoff process," Will said.
Contrast is the number one rated webinar tool on the HubSpot marketplace
Running Multi-Speaker Demos Without the "Can You See My Screen?" Problem
Two days after each product launch, CertifID runs an Office Hours session. It's a live webinar where multiple product team members demo specific features for customers. This format lives and dies on reliable screen sharing between presenters who have never touched the platform before.
Will's briefing to the product team before each session is minimal by design:
"I was able to tell all of them who had never been in Contrast before and never used it: when you jump in the session, go ahead and share your screen and it'll live on a sidebar that I can pull to when it's time. And it wasn't that awkward — 'hey, can you guys see my screen? Is it sharing now? Oh no, I don't have the right permissions, I gotta restart.' There was never any of that. I knew it was gonna work because it was already sitting on the side and I can see it." — Will Looney
On Contrast, a speaker's screen share pre-loads into a sidebar panel before the session starts. The host can see it and pull it live at exactly the right moment. No coordination, no permissions reset, no mid-demo scramble. For a session with multiple presenters from different teams, none of whom host webinars regularly, that's the difference between a professional live demo and a technically painful one.
Why the Same Audience Engages More on Contrast Than on YouTube
Before switching, CertifID was premiering its top-of-funnel webinar series on YouTube. The views were acceptable. The participation wasn't.
"Even on YouTube when we were premiering it, they just — it wasn't really conducive for them to feel comfortable and respond. Maybe it felt too public, or not intimate enough," Will said. "We haven't quite diagnosed that."
The same content on Contrast generates consistent comments, questions and back-and-forth. "We started seeing a lot more people commenting and really feeling comfortable sharing," Will said. "These professionals love to share and love to interact — we're seeing engagements on a regular basis more so than we ever have before."
That shift matters well beyond the session itself. Every comment, poll response and CTA click on Contrast syncs to HubSpot automatically as a contact property. So when engagement goes up, the quality of the data going into CertifID's CRM goes up with it. A sales rep following up after a Contrast webinar doesn't just know someone attended. They know which topics that person engaged with, which polls they answered, whether they came back for the replay and what they asked during the session.
That's the chain: a more engaging platform produces richer behavioural data, richer data enables more personalised follow-up, and more personalised follow-up converts at a higher rate. YouTube gave CertifID views. Contrast gives their sales team something to work with.
Quote from Will Looney Senior Manager of Content Marketing at CertifID
"In today's content marketing, context is so important because people consume so much before they ever get to sales," Will said. "Anything we can do to help fine tune and personalise that experience — webinars are a great indicator of interest. That's very beneficial for us on the marketing and sales side."
How Contrast Fixed the 90-Minute Replay Delay
The operational improvement CertifID's team noticed most immediately: the replay is available as soon as the live session ends, at the same registration link, with no processing delay.
"The same registration page will eventually take you to the replay — just keep it really simple. And it's also available immediately after we host. That's been a really valuable benefit because of speed. We're never a bottleneck for someone getting the webinar content that they need." — Will Looney
Previously, a registrant who missed the live event had to wait for Zoom to process the recording (up to 90 minutes), then wait again for CertifID to download, edit, upload to YouTube and send it out. Customer Success Managers who wanted to forward a replay had to ping marketing and wait.
On Contrast, the moment a session ends, the replay is ready at the original registration URL. Watch time, poll responses and CTA clicks all generate the same engagement data as the live session and sync to HubSpot automatically.
The operational simplicity has spread to Marketing Ops too. When the team needed to build a new webinar initiative recently, there was no debate about which platform to use. "The immediate response was: no, this is absolutely easier to set up in Contrast instead of Zoom. Being able to duplicate the workflows without any weird connectivity — the Marketing Ops team has been able to get started easier."
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See how other companies switched from Zoom to Contrast CertifID isn't the only team that made the switch. See how other B2B companies improved registrations, attendance and sales pipeline by moving to Contrast. Browse all case studies →
What's Next for CertifID
The webinar program CertifID started with marketing running every session is now becoming something broader. Sales reps are currently ramping up to start hosting their own webinars independently. Marketing Ops is building new automation flows. New session formats are being explored.
The underlying logic is straightforward: a platform simple enough that a product team member with no prior experience can pre-stage their screen share and deliver a clean demo is simple enough for a sales rep to run their own session. "I'm confident he'll be able to run it," Will said. "We're figuring it out and it's been good."
That's what a scalable webinar program looks like in practice: one that doesn't require a marketing manager to supervise every session, that hands the sales team data they can actually use and that the entire organisation can access without a licence negotiation each time someone new needs to host.
Ready to build a webinar program like CertifID's? Book a demo and we'll show you how it works.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do companies switch from Zoom Webinars to Contrast?
The most common reasons are access and reliability problems for attendees, unexpected tier and licensing costs, the inability to run multiple simultaneous sessions, slow replay processing and the absence of a native HubSpot integration. CertifID experienced all of these. After switching to Contrast, they eliminated every one of them and reached the top 1% of all Contrast customers by registrant volume within their first major launches.
What is a good webinar attendance rate?
The average attendance rate across webinar platforms is around 46%. CertifID consistently achieves 52%, meaning more than half of everyone who registers shows up live. Attendance rates above 50% typically reflect both strong content and a frictionless attendee experience that doesn't create barriers to joining.
How does Contrast integrate with HubSpot?
Every registration, live attendance record, watch time percentage, poll answer and CTA click from a Contrast webinar syncs directly to HubSpot as contact properties. This happens automatically, with no CSV exports or manual uploads. Sales teams can see a prospect's full webinar engagement history on their contact record and use it to personalise follow-up before the first call. For a detailed breakdown, see how Contrast's HubSpot integration compares to Zoom's.
CertifID makes wire fraud prevention and real estate closing software, protecting property transactions from fraud. certifid.com
