CUSTOMER ADVOCACY SUCCESS STORIES

Transcription

1 9 g n i n n i W d A war CUSTOMER ADVOCACY SUCCESS STORIES E D ITI O N Award-winning B2B marketers and business leaders reveal how to harness the power of your advocates to drive growth across every area of your organization INFLUITIVE.COM

2 9 Award-Winning Customer Advocacy Stories 2018 Edition TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction...3 Most Engaged Advocate Community...4 Best Advocate-Generated Content Campaign...5 Best Use of Advocates for Events...6 Best Advocate Impact on Product Development...7 Best Use of Advocacy to Support Customer Success... 8 Biggest Sales Impact by Advocates... 9 Best Program ROI...10 Advocate Marketer of the Year Advocate Marketing Program of the Year

3 INTRODUCTION WHAT ARE THE BAMMIES? The Best Advocate Marketing Awards (BAMMIES) recognize the fantastic achievements that leaders at customer-powered organizations make when they put advocates at the heart of everything that they do. The fifth annual BAMMIES awarded honors in nine categories from advocate-generated content campaigns to product development. This year's entries showed us how leading companies deploy advocacy programs that fuel their entire organization, leading the way towards becoming a customer-powered enterprise. Many winners have expanded advocacy beyond Marketing into other departments and objectives that support Product Development, Customer Success, and Sales. We celebrated the winners at Advocamp Field Day 2018, the biggest customer experience, engagement, and advocacy event of the year. In this ebook, you ll learn how award-winning B2B advocacy professionals are harnessing the power of their advocates to drive value across their organizations. Learn how to build your own advocate community through an interactive, educational experience where YOU become the advocate. Join VIP 3

4 MOST ENGAGED ADVOCATE COMMUNITY Product Marketing, to develop dynamic content for the community. Collaborating with other teams has allowed Cvent to offer webinars, industry reports, and beta testing opportunities to their community. Inviting Celebrities to speak at Cvent s monthly customer success groups to promote the program and attract new members. Cvent is a leading meetings, events, and hospitality technology provider with more than 3,600 employees and 300,000 users worldwide. In 2015, Cvent launched Cvent Advocates, a community where customers learn best practices, connect with their peers, and build their personal brands as Cvent experts. They rebranded the program to Cvent Celebrity in July One of the most important metrics for any successful advocacy program is how engaged its community members are. Historically, Cvent s advocate community has had an engagement rate of 15% since launching in Cvent wanted to boost this number to 40% in Launching a Celebrity Scavenger Hunt at their user conference, Cvent CONNECT, in Las Vegas. This not only helped recruit new members, but also re-engaged existing Celebrities. 34% engagement 1,516 new advocates 4,257 total advocates in the program 514 product reviews 111 customer references 445 referrals, two of which have closed To achieve this goal, Cvent invested in their customer marketing team by hiring a customer marketing manager and senior marketing associate to join forces with an existing employee who was focused on growing their advocacy program. Together, they would give the advocacy program a strategic roadmap. Here are just a few of the ways that this power team works together to engage advocates: Running themed, monthly campaigns. Each month, Cvent offers a prize to an advocate who completes all of the campaign s challenges. Posting at least five new challenges in Cvent Celebrity each week. Partnering with internal stakeholders, such as User Experience and We ve seen a regular flow of new advocates this year, as well as a massive uptick in engagement. The increased engagement has helped us across all areas of our marketing, especially the product reviews that are critical to influencing prospects. - Melody Tang Leatherbury, Customer Advocacy Marketing Manager, Cvent 4

5 BEST ADVOCATE-GENERATED CONTENT CAMPAIGN Mobilizing longstanding advocates to share how creating content for Cisco helped them gain visibility in their professional networks motivating new Gatewayers to do the same. Creating exclusive opportunities for advocates who attended Cisco Connect events. For example, advocates could submit content on site for the chance to win rewards. Worldwide technology leader, Cisco, understands that their biggest marketing asset is their advocates. Cisco s campaign and content marketing teams love to shine the spotlight on their customers showcasing their expertise and the amazing things that they have achieved using Cisco s products. Cisco launched an advocate marketing community, The Gateway, in 2016 to engage and mobilize their most passionate customers. In 2018, Cisco wanted to take advocacy a few steps further by embedding it throughout all of their sales and marketing efforts. In particular, Cisco wanted to build a library of advocate-created content that would influence prospects across every stage of their sales cycle. 4,000 pieces of user-generated content in ,724 social shares of customer-generated content generating 33,041 clicks 18 Upshot stories with 46,300 total views 36 Upshot stories in the pipeline as a result of Cisco Live US onsite interviews 9,871 Upshot social shares that generated 965 clicks Here is how Cisco mobilizes advocates to generate authentic content: Regularly posting challenges in The Gateway that encourage advocates to create content, such as testimonials and blog posts. Asking advocates to tell their stories via Upshot, a service that makes it easy to create and share customer case studies. 5 Our customers are at the center of everything that we do. The Gateway has helped us get to know them, so we can provide advocacy opportunities that align with their educational and career goals. In turn, this has allowed us to generate thousands of pieces of advocatecreated content that influences prospects and drives demand. - Jessica Highsmith, Advocate Marketing Manager, Cisco EMEAR

6 BEST USE OF ADVOCATES FOR EVENTS VMworld is VMware s annual global conference for virtualization and cloud computing. It brings 22,000 attendees together to accelerate their journey to a software-defined business from mobile devices to the data center and the cloud. VMware recently began using the event to help grow their Champions advocate community. In 2018, they set an objective to increase recruitment and inspire more customers to serve as references. To do this, VMware planned to provide an amazing on site experience that Champions would never forget. VMware made the Champions community a one-stop shop for all things VMworld from pre-event updates to post-event takeaways. Before the event, VMware posted information on sessions and guest speakers. They also encouraged attendees to state if they planned to attend and download the event app in advance. This allowed VMware s staff to target content to attendees. During the event, VMware gave Champions VIP treatment as a way to thank them for being part of their community. Here are just a few of the ways VMware recognized their advocates: Created a lounge where Champions could relax, meet their peers, and 6 pick up swag. VMware s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, even stopped by to meet Champions and thank them for being part of the community. Ran contests through the event app. For example, VMware gave prizes to advocates who completed the most challenges each day and made it to #1 on the VMworld 2018 Experience leaderboard. Featured 13 Champions who led seminars and breakout sessions. Encouraged Champions to meet with VMware s on-site writer to tell their stories. After the event, VMware used their AdvocateHub to maintain their momentum and keep their engagement high. For example, they shared playbacks from the sessions and asked Champions to provide feedback. 508 new advocates 86 of whom were recruited by existing Champions 426 engaged advocates 7,332 activity completions with 1,152 a record number completed in one day 15 on-site interviews conducted 75 references submitted 9 testimonial videos for the Champions program 31 advocates indicated interest in speaking at VMworld 2019 Throughout the event, Champions engaged not only with us but with each other. It was heartwarming to hear about their love for our community, their love for VMware, and how they are changing the world through their work. - Maria Munoz, Director, Global Customer Reference Marketing, VMware

7 BEST ADVOCATE IMPACT ON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT For almost 70 years, ADP has been a leader in business outsourcing. In 2015, they launched ADP Ambassador Rewards, an online customer and advocate community, to help boost their customer referrals and references. Since then the community has been central to their strategy to regularly ask their customer community for feedback. In 2018, the customer advocacy team expanded their vision for success. They wanted to partner with various internal teams, including Product, to get even more value out of their customer community. They created a plan to harness the power of ADP Ambassadors to help inform their product development strategy. ADP s customer advocacy team reached out to more than 10 internal teams that could benefit from customer feedback, such as Product Management, Sales and User Experience. The Product Management team was particularly interested as they heavily rely on customer input to shape their roadmap. After they aligned with internal teams, ADP used their community to ask customers for product feedback specific to projects that Product was working on. For example, customers could complete surveys or volunteer to participate in feedback sessions, ranging from high-level Human Capital Management strategy to user experience details. Since ADP opens its Ambassador program to all customers and not just happy promoters, they are able to collect the balanced, varied feedback that Product Management can put into action. Here are some of the other methods that ADP used to engage advocates and collect feedback from Ambassadors: Targeting opportunities to specific advocates whose feedback is most needed. Giving advocates points to incentivize their participation. Awarding customers badges for different levels of engagement with the product team and to encourage ongoing participation. Sharing product news and updates with customers after they provide feedback, so they can see how their input is shaping the future of ADP. 215 survey completions 251 customers participated in interactive interviews 258 customers participated in other online feedback opportunities Reduction in time it takes ADP s product team to find participants for studies currently takes a few hours, as opposed to weeks 14% higher NPS for engaged advocates, compared with the score of ADP s general customer base 359+ hours of saved administration work $8,000+ saved since they no longer need to offer customers monetary incentives to participate in studies The Ambassador program is a win-win for both ADP and our clients. ADP product and user experience designers now have unprecedented access to customer feedback. Meanwhile, our clients partner with those teams to support enhancements that make their role easier and help them excel in their careers. - Sarah Schreiner, Sr. Strategy Analyst, ADP 7 Read more about ADP s award-winning strategy in this in-depth case study!

8 BEST USE OF ADVOCACY TO SUPPORT CUSTOMER SUCCESS Engage new customers with onboarding challenges. Gather product feedback via surveys. Expand usage of their current platform through Tuesday Tips where Wiley experts walk users through a new feature and discuss how to incorporate it into their teaching. In 2018, Wiley s newly-formed Customer Success team had a lofty goal. They wanted to scale their advocacy community, the WileyPLUS Studio, and use their AdvocateHub to support customers across every stage of their journey. This would help Wiley improve retention rates, increase adoption of their current platform, and boost conversions for their revamped WileyPLUS product. Here are just a few of the ways that Wiley used their AdvocateHub to achieve their goals: Connect users with product team members and Student Partners to learn best practices that would make them more successful with Wiley s products. Ask advocates to sign up for a limited free trial of the new WileyPLUS product, then nurture them into paying customers in a private group where they could reward advocates for product feedback. Hold a series of EdTech Events where current and potential customers could discuss technology and the classroom, while getting a preview of Wiley s latest developments. Reduced churn by 14% on WileyPLUS Studio member accounts 98% validation rate on WileyPLUS Studio member accounts, compared with 81% validation for Wiley s general customer base 600 Student Partners mobilized 98% retention rate for accounts paired with a Student Partner 90% of limited free trial users converted to the new version $6,120,445 in new business closed from Spring EdTech events 48,000+ enrollments across their Fall 2018 Next Generation courses 200+ new customer orientations completed through the community We started 2018 with a mature advocate community. But we knew that we could do more with our community and make it an essential part of our workflows. Putting WileyPLUS Studio at the center of every customer touchpoint has allowed us to reduce our churn rates, boost conversions, and drive upsells. - Christine Moore, Customer Success Advocacy Manager, WileyPLUS Studio 8

9 BIGGEST SALES IMPACT BY ADVOCATES As a workforce engagement software company, Calabrio understands the vital role that advocates play when it comes to growing their business. In 2018, Calabrio set out to expand their reference program and deepen relationships with customer advocates. This would help them harness the power of their customers voices to influence prospects and drive sales. They wanted to identify more customers interested in participating in activities, such as reference calls, as well as video case studies, analyst reports and more. Finally, Calabrio hoped to increase reviews on Gartner Peer Insights, a site where many prospects begin their buyer journeys. Calabrio s customer marketing team reached out to happy and engaged customers in their advocate community, the Champions Network. Their focus was on building relationships with customers, and they did this by holding a variety of user events. From there, they asked customers about their willingness to share their Calabrio experience through reference calls, video testimonials, speaking engagements and analyst reports. They also engaged Champions by: Offering networking opportunities with other Calabrio customers and prospects. Prompting discussions to better identify strengths and areas for improvement in their software. Offering them opportunities to speak at trade shows and other industry events. 50+ customers engaged in the reference program 40+ reference calls 22 customers participated in analyst report surveys 39 reviews on Gartner Peer Insights 30+ customers spoke at Calabrio s user conference 9 customer organizations received ONE Awards and participated in a press release demonstrating their successes with Calabrio The Champions Network is a win-win for both our advocates and our business. Our advocates benefit from networking and learning opportunities, while we are grateful for the invaluable support that they provide us. - Julianna Thomas, Customer Marketing Specialist, Calabrio 9

10 BEST PROGRAM ROI Pair certain new customers with power users where appropriate in a mentorship program called HCMentor to help onboarding, while ensuring all customers have opportunities to network with their HCM peers other Ceridian customers. Ceridian is a customer-powered enterprise that uses their XOXO community to drive results across their entire organization. In 2018, Ceridian sought to harness the power of their customers to increase brand awareness while shortening sales cycles. In particular, Ceridian wanted to quickly onboard new customers into the XOXO program to ensure their long-term success. This would accelerate customers success and turn them into advocates. In addition, Ceridian wanted to use their program to solicit product feedback and continuously improve their offerings. Not a day goes by where Ceridian doesn t cultivate customer advocates. Here is how they include all customers in their community to maximize ROI across the customer lifecycle: 30-point higher NPS for XOXO members than non-participating customers 500+ peer-to-peer XOXOMatch networking connections, alleviating more than 1,500 Support tickets 10,220+ social shares that generated 14,400+ clicks 100+ advocates posted online reviews 580+ advocates gave product feedback 85+ advocates spoke at Ceridian events in 2018, actively influencing new business, such as cross- and up-sells to other customers and prospects who attended the events 511 reference customer contacts, impacting hundreds of new sales opportunities Support Ceridian s IPO in 2018 Immediately invite all new customers to join the XOXO community. Present customers with different targeted opportunities, depending on where they are in their journey. (For example, they might ask new customers to participate in onboarding training, while they may ask more seasoned advocates to provide product feedback, or speak at an event.) The XOXO program consistently transforms customers into highly engaged advocates who benefit from opportunities to learn, network, and receive recognition for their HCM success. In return, they promote Dayforce as a core foundation of their HCM strategy. - Nick Venturella, Customer Success Operations Manager, Ceridian HCM 10 Read more about Ceridian s award-winning strategy in this in-depth case study!

11 ADVOCATE MARKETER OF THE YEAR Sarah leveraged Influitive's Campaign Content Library to save time on launching fun, gamified campaigns. For example, she ran an outer space themed campaign designed to drive smooth and successful product onboarding. WHO: This year s winner is Sarah Schreiner, Sr. Strategy Analyst at ADP, and a consummate advocate marketer. With years of experience as a communications professional, she brings a deep understanding of the power of effective communication to build relationships and advocates. It s this expertise and determination that helped her elevate ADP Ambassador Rewards to accomplish incredible feats. Sarah recently moved into a Client Experience role with ADP, where she took ownership of the company s Ambassador Rewards program. The program was already successful, but Sarah had the vision to bring it to the next level. Sarah also used ADP Ambassador Rewards to solicit feedback on ADP s products. The Product Development team can now collect valuable feedback without reaching out to customers one-by-one. Other teams within ADP have seen how Product Development is engaging customers at scale, and they ve decided to invest in five more AdvocateHubs to achieve similar benefits. 4,000+ Ambassadors (a 147% increase from last year) 5.7 clients join the Ambassador program each day 9,000+ administration hours saved, as ADP doesn t need to source customers for feedback manually via Customer Success 14% higher NPS for engaged advocates, compared with the score of ADP s general customer base 5,075 pieces of ADP content shared, generating 33,435 clicks ACCOMPLISHMENT: ADP already had a successful AdvocateHub that they used to engage customers within their business unit. In 2018, Sarah played a vital role in integrating advocacy across ADP s entire customer lifecycle. To achieve this goal, ADP made the AdvocateHub available to all customers via single sign-on. When they log into their ADP product, they gain immediate access to the Ambassador community. Not only does this introduce advocacy in the context of other impactful tools, but it gives non-promoters the opportunity to join the ADP Ambassador Rewards. Opening the Hub to all customers has given ADP diverse feedback that helps them make the Ambassador program and their products better. Running ADP Ambassador Rewards is fulfilling both personally and professionally, as the program makes a difference for our business and clients. We ve achieved incredible results, and I see more opportunities that will continue to drive our business growth in the future. With advocate marketing, the best is yet to come. - Sarah Schreiner, Sr. Strategy Analyst, ADP 11

12 ADVOCATE MARKETING PROGRAM OF THE YEAR Connecting with customers on a deeper level by giving them a place where they can share their joys and sorrows. The Staples team identified key moments in advocates professional and personal lives, so they could reach out with a gift, a personalized note, or recognition in the community. Mobilizing Insiders to create content and then using it to acquire new advocates. The winner of this category is determined by popular vote. Staples rallied its advocates to submit an impressive 2,572 votes and take home the title. The Staples advocate community, The InsidersNetwork, has been going strong for more than three years with rapid growth and high engagement. In 2018, Staples faced a unique challenge: providing a community that feels warm, personal, and close-knit while growing a sizeable customer base. In particular, Staples wanted to deepen the sense of connection amongst advocates while engaging more customers within their target segments. Staples started by building on the basics that they had established over the last several years: Posting educational and fun content daily, engaging advocates in discussion forums, creating exciting quarterly experiences, running special events, and offering meaningful rewards. In 2018, Staples used big data and customer personas to engage advocates. Here are just a few of the ways they scaled their community, while still giving advocates a personal experience: Launching a Welcoming Committee where the most-tenured advocates welcomed new Insiders and answered their questions. Offering more charitable donations as advocate rewards. 220,807 completed challenges in 2018 YTD, an increase of 80% from the same period last year 393 referrals, an increase of 163% over the same period last year 4,112 social shares that generated 19,210 clicks 932 discussion topics posted, an increase of 80% from the same period last year 43,894 comments and replies in 2018 YTD, an increase of 109% from the same period last year 34 blogs, articles, and infographics featuring advocates $7,500 in charitable donations as rewards 200+ customer participated in product trials When customers engage with a brand, even as B2B buyers, they put their personal trust in your business. In return, you must show that you have the same trust in them. Customer advocacy can build trust in both directions by putting a personal face on a potentially impersonal business. - Amanda Salem, Advocacy Manager, Staples 12

13 READY TO HARNESS THE POWER OF YOUR CUSTOMER ADVOCATES? Check out this practical Playbook for: 7 strategic guides tailored to various departments of your business 9 inspiring case studies that demonstrate how customers can fuel your business 7 tactical worksheets to help you start integrating customer power into each of your departments An overview of the different technology solutions that are available to leverage the power of your customers Download Now