#general

This is funny and such an odd experience!

Thank you, Lauren. I'll be here once you're back and would love to chat.

I like the Tableau story format at Salesforce. Example https://www.tableau.com/solutions/customer/british-airways-enables-insight-everyone-tableau

THISSS!!! ^^ Have fun!!!!

To everyone at CustomerXCon -- HAVE THE GREATEST TIME! And send us lots of pics! ❤️

If there are any key targets/objectives you've been given for the first 6 months or so sharing that can be a helpful level-set as well. Customer marketing is so broad that every person you speak to could potentially create a new priority for you! If they know what your initial mission is, they could offer good insights into what inputs you need to be successful, what roadblocks you may face AND how their part of the organization could be impacted. If they don't see your initial goals/projects as meaningful to their team that's useful information to have.

Does anyone have any advice on how they valued awards and activities in Influitive? What point values did you assign?

Good morning! Is anyone paying for Buyer Intent with G2?
If so, I’d love to learn more about how/where you’re utilizing the data!

I have! Happy to chat next week but I’m at CustomerXCon this week.

Last call of the week: Lifecycle Advocacy!! Now with Captivate Collective and @Liz Richardson <!channel> https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639

Registered, but will have to catch the recording. Thanks @Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly)!

Have you registered for today's call with Nicole Dingley and Captivate Collective on our regular weekly zoom? https://lu.ma/j4g80vy9 <!channel>

Hey all, we are hopping on with @Joel Primack to talk about Community Strategy and Ops - join us now. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81311333405?pwd=2kjtbM4wKPOKYIt1JnUV2aTNngbZ6N.1 <!here>

I started a new job this week 🥳! My first priority is meeting with a LOT of people across product, marketing, sales, customer success, etc. I'd like to have a standard 3-5 questions I ask everyone, and I was curious what you all would ask your cross-functional stakeholders during your first 30 days. Here's what I have so far:
• What role should customer advocacy play in the organization? Does it serve that function today? Why not?
• What are the biggest pain points on your team related or unrelated to customer advocacy? What questions or problems come up most frequently?
• How do you normally interact with customer marketing and advocacy? What worked well and what needs improvement?

We're on with Emily & discussing Scaling Stories! <!here>

Join me for a Mastermind on how to scale your customer story program with AI. Starting in 10 minutes!

Register here: https://lu.ma/14yml8wf

Hello! does anyone have any guidance or scaffolding around SLAs for fulfilling advocacy requests. We're struggling right now with various teams throwing a ton of requests at us with tight timelines that they feel are ALL high priority. It's less of an issue from sales re reference calls etc and more so from marketing/PR/comms who seem to be juggling a ton of competing priorities and it's all rolling down hill, but would be helpful if anyone has set SLAs for various activity/advocate requests!

We're trying to set some documented boundaries and expectations about how much lead time they need to be giving us for some of these requests (speakers for webinars/panels, quotes, permission for media mentions from higher profile customers, etc.)

Does anybody have examples of b2b storytelling they've seen work for supporting cross-selling efforts? We are a previously one-product b2b company that has launched a (growing) suite of complimentary products on top of the original product, with just under 20% of customers using multiple products.

@Jenna Feldman - See some proof here for a sentiment/quote for our Laudable biz case. 🙂

@Kaveri Mekerira ^^^

Thanks @Katlin Hess That sounds like something we really need to check out.

@Shelly Ryder I haven't used the Gong functionality so I might not be the best for this specific question, but Laudable surfaces specific quotes from our customers and then right from their interface I can send a request for approval/share internally. You can also set up specific filters for mentions of your competitors or for me I was looking for people who specifically used G2 with their sales teams. It proactively sends those to me via email or Slack.

It also creates "Auto-stories" and recommends specific customers who are ready for stories, so based just on the aggregate of Gong calls I can generate a first draft of a case study. You can also work backwards, so I will upload my case study interview recordings and use Laudable to create a first draft of a case study for me and pull out key quotes to include.

We also use their Customer Proof Slackbot and our sales team has been loving it. You can ask it specific questions like "do we have any customer proof for this use case in this segment" and it will pull from case studies, Gong calls and even G2 reviews.

Oh wow -- thanks @Katlin Hess! (and Mary for the ping) Can you briefly describe how it differs from the built-in capabilities that Gong has?

We are on now. <!here>

Talking with @Kristine Kukich in 18 mins about AI prompts to aggregate data (our AI chats are always fun). https://lu.ma/cmbqek5q

@Shelly Ryder

Me we use the whole darn thing lol we also just rolled out their customer proof slack bot and it's been a HIT!

Let me know if you have any questions about it!

So sad I had to end up missing it, @Jeff Reekers - I ended up with a dang migraine and took the day to rest. Looking forward to joining next time!!

Don't miss today's call with @Kristen Kaighn and @Jeff Reekers discussing Expansion and Revenue. I think it's going to be a great call. <!here> https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639

Hi all! Anyone using Laudable to mine Gong calls for customer testimonials, use cases, etc.?

Hi, I'm building a new community from scratch with zero budget and a lot of enthusiasm. In two weeks, I have collected 35 active members and am looking for the best use cases to create a community with limited resources. Would you happen to have any suggestions?

He is just SO SWEET. Love that smile!

Yes! What a handsome little pumpkin

LOVE IT, he's so cute. It looks like he has your smile.

I’m just sitting over here looking at beautiful baby pics. Work can wait! 😉

Hey all, I hope everyone stays safe in the storm coming today and tonight in FL. I'm watching the tracking and then trying to distract myself with work. Please take care of yourselves!

Anyone going to CustomerXCon? I didn't think I was going to be able to make it this year but just registered today!!

👋 Question for you all: How many requests for advocates to take part in some sort sort of activity (webinar, event speaker, quote, talk to media, etc) do you get per month, roughly?

This info will be helpful to many in the community. Take 60 seconds to respond.

Hi all - still looking for more responses to this survey. I promise you it will take you about 60 seconds (or less). https://forms.gle/1HbGoneHEFviHiGz8 I promise to share the results!

Hey everyone! I was reaching out to founders on LinkedIn and one them said he would like to see my results and would be "open to a conversation about my services."

Shall I share the case studies right away or shall I ask for a call first?

Great list of ideas above! A couple other frequently asked questions at our customer conference include lunch/food options, if there is / how to book meeting rooms for meetings, any industry meetups planned, where registration is happening.

Anyone have a list (share ideas below to make a list 😅) of virtual event ideas for customers that are value-add, not customer appreciation focused?

• Hi Tim - here's what i've done in the past. what (do you send them a gift basket? something more personal) - be careful with food allergies etc, especially for entire family
• why (just because it's the holidays? because they're amazing and this season is about giving?) - I chose to sent something at the first of the year, and focusing on the partnership we've created and what we can look forward too for the new year (or more)
• how (tied into the what - is there a way to make it more exciting than traditional gift giving?) - this was mostly to say thank you for being a valued member and partner with us, etc

I personally prefer to tie gifts to Thanksgiving (thanks for being a great customer) because it bypasses awkwardness around religious winter holidays.

Depends—are you looking to send the same thing to everyone, or are the gifts personalized? In either case, you’re going to want to make your decisions on items and budget in the next 2 weeks in order to have delivery for the holidays. Most swag will have a lead time of a month or more if it’s being made in China, and then you have to account for mail service backlog over the holidays.

Has anyone sent customers gifts for the holiday season? I'm curious what other people are doing in terms of:
• what (do you send them a gift basket? something more personal)
• why (just because it's the holidays? because they're amazing and this season is about giving?)
• how (tied into the what - is there a way to make it more exciting than traditional gift giving?)
Thanks in advance!

Thank you @Taylor Page!

Just completed! Definitely want to see the results!

@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) Thanks for that idea. I will be ready to discuss that in about six months. 🙂

Actually now that I reread your post, maybe I'm completely off. I'm sorry.

@Jenna Feldman - @Laurie Timms is working on a project to help sales enablement. Maybe the two of you (or all of us) could chat on how to make sure sales is aware of these resources and uses them most effectively?

great ideas @Rebecca Grossman and @Heather Foeh

For me, I want to know all of the extracurriculars that are happening, so a list of the activities like XYZ company is having a meetup or someone is hosting a dinner.

Thanks!

TYSM @Piper Wilson I did have someone message to say they'd cover the call. I'd love to have you sometime, let's DM.

@Laurie Timms - just completed for you!

Do you work with Sales? If so, can you help @Laurie Timms with a quick answer to her poll https://forms.gle/PV9hBDVRPNntqV5t5 <!here>

@Laurie Timms I didn't respond because I don't have direct contact with the sales folks. I hope others hop in and answer those 4 quick questions!!

Wow - not a single woman on the intercom first page of stories :(

New question. Which company has the best web format for customer stories? I need your opinions! Best response gets a Starbucks card, on me!

Hi all! I'm looking to reformat our customer case studies to make them more dynamic - redesigned quote blocks, overall layout, font/style, etc. Has anyone else gone through a similar exercise, and if so, did you report any change in overall performance of the case studies (readership, page views, form fill conversions)?

I’m looking for someone to be a guest this Friday at 2PM (any topics):
• advocacy - reviews, references, customer stories
• working with other teams - sales, customer success, product or partner marketing, executives
• customer marketing - expansion, upsells, communications/email, abm
• lifecycle: adoption/retention, journey, onboarding, messaging, doing these at scale
• technology - saving time, spreadsheets, ai (but specific to a use case), optimizing usage in any related software
• other areas: community, engagement, education, events, awards

Do we have anyone who has created and managed a sales enablement customer content program? I’d love to pick your brain if so. Thanks!

Hey there - I'm starting to work on my budget for 2025, in years past i've been under the greater marketing budget and now I'm splitting my own out. Curious what others are budgeting for so I can make sure I'm not missing anything! Anything would be helpful!!
Currently I've included gifting, annual customer event, outsourced videos..

Hey folks! Does anyone have any docs or guidelines around surprise and delight gifting they'd be willing to share? E.g. what activities and what level of gifts

Happy Friday! Curious if anyone has nailed down a strategy for when they source for GPI peer reviews vs G2 peer reviews. Both are important at my organization and sometimes create competing customer asks. I know GPI has limitations on the reviewer's company size (has to be 50M+ annual revenue) and only accepts reviews in English. But other than that, what other perspectives have y'all taken into account to determine which peer review site to prioritize and when? #question

TY @Taylor Page for hosting and I’m sorry about the older graphic. TY Maura for asking and Kristin for getting on and sharing on the call. It was a great call.

Getting on with @Katlin Hess to discuss Reviews in 2024 - https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639 - JOIN US <!here>

Hey y'all! In about an hour, I'll be hosting a roundtable discussion about Adoption! Hope some of you can join 🙂 https://lu.ma/fa0ahfom?_bhlid=fcea53c29bf0a0ac96e443817f1c91731d01c540

I remember at Influitive, our CSMs would write all of their own customer speakers a handwritten thank you note (and guessing the CM team may have threw in a gift as well.)

A nice award/plaque for "Chargebee Trailblazer" and a short hand written note from the leadership team member that lead the presentation would be nice.

Looking for an impactful way to say "thank you" to customers who traveled across the country to join us on stage for a huge event. Other than sending swag or some other gift, how have you said thank you? Thank you for your ideas :)

Anyone at Inbound? I’ll be bopping around and would love to say hello.

Our sponsor Champion (@Jeff Reekers and @Gianna Scorsone) released a Slack update this week, so I figured I would share it in our Slack 😄 - check it out https://www.championhq.com/blog/champion-slack-integration
You can now get updates in your Slack about advocates changing jobs - that’s easier than going to run a report and see who’s moved around.

We’re talking AI and CMA to make your jobs easier with Kristine Kukich, right now!! https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82407073026?pwd=1vsA75gAUVK0mAPaqZp0cXQvM42b1Z.1

🏆 Awards program question for those that have done it:
1. For a "scaled down" awards program, could the timeline be shortened to 1-2 quarters from starting to finish - any hacks or time-saving tips? How about budget-wise?
2. Also.... do you feel that the benefit of an awards program outweigh the amount of work it takes. speaking from a customer marketing team of 1 here

I don't think it's going to be a problem. Things change and people get more info. What you learned about the role and expectations is that they pay more than you originally asked. That's true. This is all kind of a game anyway. I truly can't imagine they'll second guess you. An org will always try to get the best deal--it's business. But if they're giving you a hard time because you want their listed rate, then that's not a great impression of them.

Makes sense @Sarah Miller! Also, since the job description is clearly outlined on their website, would it seem insincere if I ask for more details before giving a more informed answer? Would it seem like I didn't bother to go through the job description since I am putting up this question?

"I've gotten a some clarity about the role and expectations and I think X is more in line with this than my original response." I don't think they'll ask though. If you know they pay significantly more than your original ask, they know it too.

Thanks for your thoughtful responses @Sarah Miller @Evan Huck! My concern is, what if they ask why I am raising it from $1200/month - $2.2k? What do you think should be the ideal response in this case?

I always at least try to see if the interviewing org will share first. "I'd need to learn more about the role and expectations before I'd be prepared to give a set number. Do you have a budget in mind, based on how you've defined the role?" If that doesn't fly, maybe "I'm interviewing for roles in the range of X." And I most often aim higher, like Evan said.

Hi everyone,

I recently applied for a job. How should I respond when asked about my salary expectations in the interview, given that I initially mentioned $1200/month in the job form but have since learned from the company website that they are offering $2000/month for the role?

Yes this is powered by base

Congratulations!! @Kevin Lau is this Base?

Yes, would love that

@Nicole Saunders we could hop on a call as I have too many questions to ask to give an Async answer

Hi all! Happy Thursday. I’m looking for examples of your favorite single slide customer story formats for use in sales enablement. I’m looking for ease of readability and favorite design. Thx.

This is a little bit of a shot in the dark, but does anyone have a videographer they've worked with in India who they would recommend? This would be for the photography/video only, not production.

Congrats!! BTW, what program are you using for this? Eg for tracking rewards, etc.

Amazing!!

Congratulations Kevin and team!!

LET'S FREAKING GOOOOO!

For the past few years we've used this Etsy vendor: https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/UDAwards?ref=shop-header-name&amp;listing_id=1209672502&amp;from_page=listing

We're currently evaluating a shift in the look/feel and looking at this vendor: https://www.bennettawards.com/

@Kevin Lau I’d love to have you run some kind of call for advanced CMA’s managing all of the things you’ve listed. Would September or October work for the first call?

Usually a short blurb about the community and benefits of joining, with a link to join.

Thanks @Lauren Turner - when you say in - product prompts - are you just providing a link to the channel or do you have them fill out a form?
Understand where we should be promoting, but just curious in what format you are using to get them signed up!

How to create a business case for additional headcount. (If they haven’t seen the full value but continue to add projects to the team.)

👋! Speaking of community…how are you inviting clients to join your community?
We will have some of our CSMs send over a link invitation but I would also love to know if anyone is using a form of some sort.

Are you interested in hosting a monthly topic/roundtable around any of our biggest topics? If so, let me know and I’ll add you to the monthly host channel so we can plan for Oct/Nov/Dec

Further if you are itnerested in hosting a Friday and have a topic or guest in mind, LET ME KNOW 😄

Hi everyone! I've been pretty lucky to manage case study approvals with our POCs over email, but I'm looking at getting a little more formal and sending over something at the beginning of the process to set expectations around timelines, where we can/will use logos, quotes, stories, etc. Can anyone share how they are doing this today and any templates or examples? Thank you!

Want to find out which customer story interview questions elicit the best responses?

Join me and some of your CMA besties for a lively discussion on our favorite must-ask questions for creating compelling customer stories.

Here’s what else we’ll cover:

• How to set up and prep for a productive interview
• How to ask the right questions
• Handling unclear responses
• Capturing great quotes
• Interview mistakes to avoid

When: Wed, Sept 11 @ noon Eastern

🗺️ Where: The next CMAweekly Mastermind session

👋 How to attend: Register here: https://lnkd.in/gw2mXu9m (It’s free)

Will I see you on Wednesday?

Hey @Rachel Ward - sorry I missed your response here! 2 of the heads report directly to me, and then 4 of them report to one of those individuals. At least, for now. I can pretty much structure it however I want

We’re on https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639 we’re actually talking about References and cleaning up your database of references.

<!here> anyone interested in chatting about gifting platforms today in our weekly meetup? https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639 in 15 mins.

Hi all, I am curious to know what platform your companies use for Community? If you can share your company name (so I can 👀 your community) and platform you use, that would be greatly appreciated! I am doing an analysis of communities to help us improve our UX and I am evaluating if we are using the right platform. Thanks! #question

How’s the Summit going? What are you learning? I’d love to some takeaways 😄

@Kate Kresowik Would you elaborate a bit more on what you mean? More detail about products/features in use?

😄 Welcome new members: @Arlene Covarrubias @Kelly Lynch @Sara Livingstone @Trisha @Lee Densmer 👋

Please share what you are working on and any blockers you have. We’d love to help.

Is anyone at the CMA Summit in San Francisco this week?

Hi everyone. I am very interested in best practices for onboarding customers for customer success (not specifically for advocacy or customer marketing). This effort would be to welcome new customers, make sure they have the resources to be successful. Anyone know of a company that has a great program in place (and ideally a contact I can connect with)? thank you!

Hi folks! There is a scheduled call today for References, but I'm still recovering from Covid and won't be available to host. I apologize for the late notice—I was hoping to be back and at it by today!

Sorry team I was OOO last week! Here's my email if the call still hasn't been scheduled: madeline.coke@docebo.com|madeline.coke@docebo.com - timezone CST

Hey all! Sruthi & I were talking this morning about working on some community-driven playbooks for CMA. What part of the customer lifecycle are you tackling right now?

📣 Unlocking the Power of Community: Purpose, People, Platform 🧑‍🤝‍🧑
This episode of #mixology is an amazing chat with @Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) and @Shannon Howard about building community! Wanted to share some key takeaways:
1. 🎯 Define your purpose: Your community should serve both your org and your customers
2. 💻 Software isn't always necessary: Meet people where they are
3. Ownership matters: Customer marketing or customer education are great fits
4. 🌱 Start small and iterate: Pilot programs and roundtables can be powerful
5. 🤝 Cross-company collaboration is crucial for success
💡 Pro tip: Community isn't just about forums. It's about bringing people together and facilitating connections. Start small, test, and show value before scaling up!
📺 Watch it here
❓ What's your experience with building community? Share your thoughts in the thread!

Hi all -- happy Friday! For those of you running CABs or similar-named customer advisory boards, what kinds of topics do you cover with C-level customers? We are a very product-driven organization and sometimes struggle to keep the agendas appealing to C-level, without going too deep with product roadmap demos & feedback sessions. Our attendance has been poor lately -- except for this week where we had near perfect attendance for an AI roundtable discussion. We do have a relatively new Technical Advisory Board (TAB) with lower level/functional job titles and can certainly move some of the product heavy CAB topics to the TAB. But to fill the gap, I'd love to hear some example topics you have on your C-level advisory boards.

We do 4 CAB and TAB meetings per year (8 total). One of the CAB meetings is in person, and all the rest are virtual, about 2 hours long.

Hey all! <!channel> join @Tiffany P. Nguyen in 15 mins to talk about creative ways to partner with and reward your advocates.

She has a lot of great ideas. https://lu.ma/gwoyyqon

Or have you not hired for them yet?

Do any of your headcount report into one another or do they all report directly to you?

I am happy either way, I don't have Madeline's email to go ahead

Hi @Rita Caruso -- can we all be on the same call vs. you and me on one call on Tuesday, and I'd miss the call with Kristin & Madeline?

Okay let's do one call, @Kristin Blye and @Madeline Coke if you drop me your emails I will send you an email and we can schedule some time together. Please also mention your timezone 🙂

I have 6 headcount

Yes that's why we did it with a follow up campaign, asked for permission (they asked their managers) as it was easier. But gifting with the right tool is possible, we use Reachdesk and people need to "accept" the gift in order to receive it.

Be careful of state laws when gifting in addition to your award - there are some states that prevent employees from accepting gifts of particular value (especially if your gift has financial value, like flights or vouchers).

Thank you, @Perri Chaikof! This is very useful!

This year a trophy and I sent some vouchers for a follow-up campaign but next year I may think about trophy + branded merchandise! I am sending you an email now so we can connect :)

Speaking of awards, what do you all do for gifts for the winners? We currently give a trophy, but would love to see us do something more -- like a gift for their team.

Sure thing Rita! Anyone else want to join? We can pick it up via email. I'm sryder@egnyte.com|sryder@egnyte.com

Hey all, does anyone here manage customer awards? I managed our customer awards this year and am looking to connect with colleagues who also manage awards to exchange ideas and best practices. If you'd like to chat, let me know, and I’ll share my Microsoft Bookings link. Thank you!

In our case is mostly via social, website and email campaigns but Customer Success really helped this year. Do you want to connect and talk about awards? Let me know and I'll share with you my Microsoft booking

Hi folks - looking for different examples of Product Customer stories vs. more top of funnel marquee partnership stories - do you have templates or examples you can share? Thanks so much in advance :)

A few ppl asked about org design - here's a template you can use as a jumping off point. One caveat I wanted to make sure to point out, there is no such thing as a perfect org chart - it's organic and grows in stages based on ebbs and flows within your company and incremental resources that become available. I've used this same framework as I built my own team over the years at various companies while also learning from peers. Happy to answer questions as they come up

Hi everyone! My team is in the process of establishing a more streamlined reference program to replace our current manual process. We’re focusing on setting clear metrics for success, including the total number of references, ARR influenced by references, win rate for reference supported deals, and fill rate as we roll out the new program.

While we’ve tracked these metrics manually, we’re now looking to establish realistic targets moving forward. If anyone has benchmarks they can share for these metrics, we’d greatly appreciate it! I understand that benchmarks can vary depending on the specifics of the reference program, but leadership would like to see how improvements can be measured effectively.

For instance, if we consider our fill rate (the percentage of reference requests that are fulfilled out of the total requests submitted), what is considered a solid benchmark for a successful reference program?

Thank you in advance for any insights!

@Lauren Turner - I'm working through something similar and I'd love to see your structure!

thank you!

Yes, I’ll get it.

Is there a recording we can catch of this one somewhere?

Oh that's right -- we also did a trophy.

I think it was Marketing this time (it was a joint project for CS and Marketing, I’m in CS) - this is the first time we’ve done any kind of prize other than a custom trophy!

Wow! We're not offering a prize. Just recognition at our virtual Global Summit in December. Whose budget covers the trip?

@Shelly Ryder Yes, we did! We ended up surpassing our award submissions goal this year so something in there worked we have a pretty cool “grand prize” this year too with a trip to Austin, TX which I also think sweetened the deal for some

@Maura Frost we can certainly incentivize customer submissions via an Influitive challenge. Did you get any video submissions?

@Rachel Ward love the idea of incentivizing the CSM (and AE, or there will be fights 😆) whose customer wins.

We just did our awards program and I’d say it mostly came from CS nominations/nudges. But, to help with self-nomination this year, we used: incentives in our customer advocacy program, kind of like Alexie said, our Customer Education team volunteered to meet with customers to do an interview instead of a written submission if the customer said time was a constraint, we also allowed for video submissions from customers instead of just written as we’ve done in years past!

Def need to check this one out!

Hey <!channel> we are live discussing Expansion with Shetal and Irwin https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84329368081?pwd=Ns4fP79BbJHA0iWS27fObFGmF1HuJR.1 and Ashley Ward 🙂

Hi 👋 Does anyone here know or manage customer comms for a large company with a large product line (companies that come to mind Snowflake, ServiceNow, Datadog, Atlassian, etc.)? We're in the process of building out a more dynamic & proactive customer comms process and would love to see how other large organizations with big customer bases are handling this!

👋 Hi Everyone! I'm hosting the monthly expansion meet-up tomorrow (register here), where we discuss our challenges, share ideas, and sometimes go deep into a particular topic. If you're joining tomorrow, please add topics in the thread you would like to cover, and we can go around the Zoom room and share. See you tomorrow! 🙂

Hop on to join Emily talking about getting customers to participate in customer stories. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81355216779?pwd=QHFp02rbZZLqiDbkwJ0MAO6a4WcAkS.1

Hi Friends…you may have seen me post this question in another channel so my apologies... I am running a review campaign and got a frustrating review from a customer, although she have us 4 stars, it is mostly negative. One negative in particular she has the ability to change. I have attached a screenshot for context. How would you all handle a review like this?

Hi all! I have a #question. I work for a SaaS company and we have the desire and need to start an online community…. We are already doing smaller community type events like digital round tables (yes @Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) they are finally happening thanks for everything you learned me on it) but the request tof our customer is an online form. Our management team is almost on board but would love to hear from another saas company on their experience with having a community, the why, how, what, successes, failures, lessons learned etc . Is there some one there that is willing to jump on a call with us on this?

This would be interesting to see. Could I please get a copy

I can provide how I structured this as well

Happy to help - I can send you sample org charts on structure or give you current examples on how I built my team to 30 ppl

I can as well

Who can help?
Team structure - how did you decide what your team structure needed to look like for Customer Marketing, Expansion, Advocacy, & Community?

Some people I know have ideas on this: @Kevin Lau @Amanda Peacock @Liz Oseguera @Liz Richardson @Rachel Ward @Jessica Noland @Shannon Howard @Ari Hoffman - Amplitude

We have a member here that moved into a new position and this is top of mind for her - let’s help her out, please 😄

Hi all! Potentially looking to incentivize some internal folks (namely, Sales and Customer Success) to help us with some advocacy initiatives. Anybody done this before and find that one type of incentive works over another? Thinking along the lines of “trying our reference request functionality, give us feedback, and get coffee on us” but unsure if there is something else that might work better. Thanks!

Hello hive CMA weekly mind.

I'm hoping to draw on this group's collective insights and experience to help with advice, contacts, introductions, and pointers for a career-related leap I'm making.

After an extended period trying to secure a permanent position, I'm now looking at freelance or contract opportunities. Specifically, I'm currently exploring customer advocacy and growth marketing opportunities in India and between UK & India.

I'll be traveling to India between October and December to identify and meet with Indian tech companies that may benefit from additional customer advocacy and demand generation/growth marketing support. I have a visa that entitles me to live, work, and travel to and within India without restrictions.

Question for the hive mind:

I'd like to better understand the landscape and mindset of Indian companies and how they approach customer advocacy and growth marketing. Are there people in this group that could shed some light on this and, if so, could we set up a call please to chat?

Are there Indian companies and contacts that people know may require help and support that they could introduce me to?

Thanks in advance and in anticipation of an avalanche of advice, and offers of help.

Ajay

We have several new products launching over the next few months and want to find interactive, fast, and easy ways to illustrate the value of the product to existing customers for expansion. Does anybody have any examples of interactive campaigns they've run to introduce existing customers to new products that give them a sampler taste of the product value?

Debate

Happy Friday, all! What was a highlight of your week? Drop it in the thread~!

Hi all! Struggling to find customers to participate in customer stories?

Join me Wednesday, August 14 at 12pm Eastern for a CMAweekly Mastermind session on how to identify customers to participate in customer stories.

We'll run through 41 effective ways to identify customers, and I’ll share tips and advice from other CMA practitioners. Join us and share your ideas as well!

Register here: https://lu.ma/1vuztl3h?tk=1UofP9

How do you swag?

We’ve got a question about preferred swag companies in <#C04KPMMKQSF|> (if you promise to respect the privacy & no share nature of the channel, DM me to join).

hey everyone! Does anyone pay for TrustPilot? Struggling on how to drive reviews without an incentive through this platform, as they do not allow them. Seems that they only allow us to drive reviews through email from their interface. Would appreciate any advice on this platform. Thank you!

hey all. A quick question for you:

I was wondering if anyone has built and launched an “alumni” program, to stay in touch with individuals at a customer who left for a new role to a place that is not a current customer, or to an advocate at an account that has churned.

If so, would you be willing to share what that looked like and how you have made that program a success? Thanks and talk soon.

This would be such a great resource. Thank you!

Anyone have any customer stories that touch on adoption?

Cant wait to watch the recording, thanks Mary and Taylor!

Wouldn’t it be great to have 1 place to visit to learn about the Platforms in our space, <!channel>?

Yes? Great - I’ve been working hard on this and will be launching August 20th(ish). I’d love to have some volunteers to check out the resources I’m including.

Right now I have:
• a Vendor selection spreadsheet with the categories of features
• a tab for questions to ask the customer references for each platform (including the biggest most common challenges for new software purchases in our space)
• a list of things to consider internally as you consider a purchase
• a chart of existing platforms and their features today
• An updated guide to replacing Influitive
• the top 8 scenarios for purchasing advocate/reference software and my recommendations for each
• community reviews and comments (anonymous)
• concerns mentioned in the yearly Advocacy software survey
I’d love to have 10 people take a look as I finish these resources - some available now - and contribute ideas, feedback, content. Are you interested?

PS - Potential sponsors, I will be including your solutions in some exclusive manner, so if you haven’t decided to sponsor, get on board!

So you can see what it looks like -- the "read more" takes you directly to the review so it makes it super easy for them to reply too:

@Katlin Hess That's genius

I agree with all of the above!! @Amanda Schulte one thing we do here is have all reviews feed into a Slack channel that the PMs have access to so if we get something product specific I tag them in that Slack message and they're able to go in and respond. They've found it super helpful and now we're at the point where they usually respond before I even get a chance to tag them. (Full transparency I work at G2 so it's an easy sell to the product team, but might make things easier!)

For those who were on today's call with @Taylor Page or anyone else who focuses on adoption, I'm looking for 1 or 2 examples of customer stories that focus on adoption or at least have a section that touches on it. Pretty please, send me what you've got! 🙏 😀

Thank you to all of the amazing CMAweekly community members who joined (or registered to get the recording) of my session around Onboarding!! ✨

I'll be back on August 15 to talk more about Onboarding and Adoption - register here if you want to join the fun! I'm thinking we'll dive a bit deeper into how you can make onboarding simple even for complicated products -- it's a wild west out there .

I second what @Shannon Howard said, and it is a lot of work. I'm trying to get our PMM team more involved to respond to direct product feedback, but they're overloaded. I just make sure to share the direct feedback with those internal teams that need to see it and respond to the customer with an action if I can. A response is better than a non response and shows the customer you're engaged with their reviews. And prospects reading those reviews!

I do think this is human nature. People don't think about WHERE they're giving the feedback (user interviews, support tickets/emails, CS conversations, reviews, etc.)

What I do is I share everything we get internally. I copy all of the reviews into a Google Doc so we have all that raw data, and I also compile top pieces of feedback for both product and education (some things can be solved with better training, some are product/feature ideas and feedback).

When I reply to comments, I just let them know I passed along their comments to our product team. I can't guarantee anything (can any of us? 🤪 ). I also pass along insights to CSMs so they're aware of anything their customer has shared.

It's a good amount of work, but it makes sure we're covered. I have yet to hear a customer say, "I gave feedback through a G2 review and no one ever built it in the product."

I've personally never experienced this or think any reasonable customer would expect action on their feedback (somewhat dependent on what that feedback is).

A good middle ground is to respond to every customer review to let them you know that you've heard and appreciate their feedback (and then deciding internally if it's worth acting on). With that I think you'll be ahead of most companies who solicit reviews.

Looking forward to catching the recording!

⬆️ Let me know in Direct Message if you want to vote anonymously.

Are you interested in CMAweekly run Software User Groups? No recordings, No vendors allowed.

I'm a fan of "all of the above". I think that longer white paper-style has a place for backing up research when I'm looking for a product and putting together a discussion with other decision makers. I think shorter formats - written, audio, & video are great attention-getters that can laser focus on a particular attribute or functionality in a way that showcases the use case.

OK I’m adding it to the newsletter.

i have not yet!

Hi Taylor, did you get any suggestions? I’m marking this post in the newsletter today so people can come leave a suggestion.

Hey y'all! I'm leading a series on Onboarding & Adoption starting this Thursday -- hope some of you can join! For those who are registered (or even if you're not), I'd love to source some questions or challenges you have around onboarding & adoption that would be good for us to tackle on the call. Feel free to reply here or DM me! I'm putting together some info from my experience, but would love to incorporate some of what you're looking to learn!

looking for email subject line helpppp ... I write/send all of our customer comms as part of my role and have been struggling with subject lines lately 🫠 anyone have any protips or sites they use or recommendations?

We are on with Jeni Asaba https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639 <!channel>

@Maura Frost one trick is to ask a customer "can you please share any reason why you would not be able to give us the highest rating" or something like that.

Is anybody utilizing G2 beyond seeking more positive reviews? Their lead capture and buyer intent functionalities are interesting, as well as their traditional review outreach tools. I'm wondering if anybody has gone hardcore into a G2 strategy that is delivering ROI (and is worth the $18k). Thanks!

Hi All - Does anyone have experience running User Groups and have established a customer -> product -> marketing feedback loop process to capture the discussion post-event and action on next steps? I've run CABs in the past, but I am launching a more product focused User Group later this month. Looking to see if anyone has experience with this, and would be willing to chat! Thanks all!

Couldn't agree more @Irwin Hipsman! I also think having executive buy-in is the secret sauce that will elevate your ideas. Executive sponsor provides a seat at the table. Without one, you’ll have to drag in your own chair and do a lot of extra legwork to get your customer marketing strategy adopted. While everyone thinks they know marketing 🙃, having a C-level ally will keep the opinions at bay and champion your process.

Would love thoughts from your diverse perspectives!

Do customers/prospects actually read and get value out of 1,000ish word case studies that take 4-5 minutes to read???

It’s the industry standard. Long written case studies that get published on the website.

But then they sit there. I’m a huge fan of slicing them up into bite sized assets that can be used for sales enablement, deal closing, marketing campaigns, success enablement, upselling, etc.

But if the slices are what’s important, is it worth the time to create the really long written case study? Should it be a quick summary to post on the website to support having social proof and good logos?

Hi all - looking for ways to encourage prospects and customers to join our VIP events at Dreamforce. These are VP and C suite Finance and Product execs. Curious how you have driven attendance at intimate meals with your execs as bigger events. Or what you have seen others do at these large events. Thank you!

Had so much fun tackling the crazies of sales references today with everyone 🤪

Thank you to those who joined and thank you to those are who are interested in catching the recording! We talked about getting in front of sales, enabling sales to use your process, and figuring out how to solve the tricky challenge of getting the black book out of the hands of sellers who just don't want to share their contacts.

We'll be back at it next month! Hope you can join and bring some questions/topics for us to discuss! We'll also be getting an update from @Kaelie Lund (they/them) @Meg O'Hearn and @Maura Frost on their progress! 🥹

She’s on https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85667748869?pwd=bJc8SoP3Cqa1Sb4dcxBvDXshlJLj8D.1

We are on with @Alexie Glover NOW https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85667748869?pwd=bJc8SoP3Cqa1Sb4dcxBvDXshlJLj8D.1 <!channel>

Hi @Rebecca Grossman. I don’t have anything formally written down, but we have a speaker request form built in Monday that we ask people to fill out for their event. The form asks for the event details, session title and abstract, if there is budget for travel+accommodations, requirements for the type of customer, and how many speakers are needed.

Essentially, we put the ownership of all the event and session details on the person leading it (i.e. Events or PMM) and Customer Advocacy owns securing the customer + sending the gift. Of course, some events have speaker approval processes, so we work closely with the person who submitted the request throughout the process.

Hi All! If you were planning to join the expansion meet-up today, I was not the host of the meeting, so I was unable to let you in. Sorry about the mix-up. @Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) has given me access, so we've moved the next meeting to next Friday, 7/26. If you're interested in joining monthly, give me 👍 , and I can send you a recurring invite from my calendar. You can also sign up via CMA Weekly. The format is an open discussion where we share ideas, best practices, or challenges. If there is a specific topic, please add it to the thread, and we can discuss/share examples on the next call. Also, feel free to join #expansion, where we can keep the conversation going. Happy Friday 😎

I’ll look tonight

Anyone have a “User Group in a Box” template that you’re willing to share?

I think this is the deck you're referring to?

i would love to hear more about the value of a CAB if someone can share! I am proposing it for one of our products and want to be able to specify the benefits to my leadership 🙂 sorry if that's a noobie question

Good morning/afternoon Marketers! How do you drive reviews, manage references, etc. and what platform are you leveraging if you are using one? Curious what people are doing without Influitive. Thank you in advance. I have done the following: requested one in a lifecycle/nurture campaign, requested them after a positive resolution of support tickets, executed contests with CSM's, and worked with G2, TR or the various review companies to drive campaigns. What am I missing?

Hi @Kevin Lau @Lauren Turner, can you please share the decks with me also? My email is tiffany.nguyen44@gmail.com|tiffany.nguyen44@gmail.com, thank you! I will email @Emily Coleman for your deck, thank you!

@Mason Sokana check with Lauren Turner to request her slides.

Does anyone have a doc you are willing to share that outlines all the steps (and who is responsible for them) for customers speaking at events? We need to document the process and roles as we have had some confusion recently - I'd love to see how you all are handling it and if you have any good template examples I can share with my org. I'm talking soup to nuts, from identifying the requirements for the customer down to sending a thank you gift afterwards. TY!

@Mason Sokana if you'll email me at emily.coleman@solarwinds.com|emily.coleman@solarwinds.com, I'll send it to you.

Happy WINS day. Any recent wins you're celebrating?

In a Community, likely a customer-only one, does any know know of active “Showcases,” “Show & Tell,” etc. style programs where users of product(s) share their use case with peers in the community to help them be successful too?

These are great!

The link in the invite doesn't seem to be working, so use the one above!

Using AI in your practice? Come and join the discussion Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82407073026?pwd=1vsA75gAUVK0mAPaqZp0cXQvM42b1Z.1 starting at 10am Pacific/11am Mountain/Noon Central/1pm Eastern today, if you can make it.

I’d also love to see these decks/presentations as well. Do you mind sharing @Kevin Lau @Amy @Emily Coleman ? Thank you!!

During Covid there was a company that arranged bourbon tasting parties over Zoom. 😁

Any words of advice for getting a super-busy customer to schedule time with us for a case study interview? I'm thinking of sending him a gift via Reachdesk to win him over. I've been chasing this guy for over a year. We know that he likes fast cars and bourbon, that's about it.

Another Friday night share, does anyone have anything they could share on how they justified getting a customer marketing person to work under/support them? I am in that position and have a business case written up, but REALLY want to do this right and succeed- so open to seeing how others did it 🙂

Hi - one more from me on a Friday night 🙂

How do you manage reimbursing customers when they attend your events and they do not want you to book travel for them? We are having a really hard time with finance on this. We had a top customer who spoke at an event book his own hotel/flights and finance is asking for a W9! Yikes.

Has anyone held a super high end CAB meeting - like the Phoenician in Scottsdale?

If so, what did your cost per person look like? Where was the event? Also, do you think the high end venue got more customers there?

My President recommended this - and I think it may be out of budget and a ton of work - wondering if the engagement is worthwhile. TY

Have any of you dealt with fake reviews from G2 and their invite program? I'm kind of at my wit's end with monitoring a couple of our listings that contain pretty obviously fake or chatGPT generated reviews from customers and accounts that don't exist in our CRM.

👋 Who here has reference logo management down to a T?? Would you be willing to hop on a quick call to share best practices?! Pretty please?? 🫠🤝

Hi everyone - I'm brainstorming ideas for the engagement and advocacy booth at our annual customer event, and I'd love your input. I'm thinking of setting up a station with laptops where customers can complete various actions to earn points redeemable for cool swag. These actions could include: Registering for the Community or joining a forum, signing up for the Advocacy program, leaving a review, sharing a customer quote, recording a quick video testimonial, posting a selfie on LinkedIn with a specific hashtag. All the activities would be completed within the booth area. More completed actions = more points = better swag.

Has anyone tried a similar approach at an event before? I'd love to hear your feedback!
Do you know of any platforms that can help us track the activities and points? We're not interested in a long-term gamification platform, just something to streamline things for the day.

Hey everyone! I'm doing my first CMAweekly Mastermind tomorrow on how to share customer stories on LinkedIn. I've rounded up 23 LinkedIn post examples to show you from companies like Gong, Okta and Talkdesk. We're going to look at examples with carousels, videos, images and more. We're going to look at what works best, as well as do's and don'ts. Join us at 12pm Eastern tomorrow (July 10). Here's the link to register: https://cmaweekly.com/course/customer-stories-mastermind. Hope to see you there!

No call today!

Happy 4th Y'all! Does anyone have a good example of a video testimonial combined with a short/brief written case study? I'd like to experiment with that format rather than a long form case study for our next story, and am looking for some examples to reference with the customer! thanks much!!

I was actually able to do this via Zapier! 🙂

Has anyone ever integrated G2 and Hubspot via Zapier? I’m trying to build a list in Hubspot with all public reviewers from the past 6 months

@Kevin Lau wins. 😂

But love this thread and idea, @Rebecca Grossman !

1) H1 customer marketing-wise: Most proud of releasing our first customer story video.

2) Launching our first customer awards program and conference

Mary has organized different monthly masterminds for the community. I'll be facilitating some sessions on customer stories. Here's the schedule:

• July 10 - Different ways to share customer stories on LinkedIn
• Aug 14 - Customer story interview best practices and questions
• Sept 11 - Finding customers to participate in customer stories—and how to ensure permission to publish
• Oct 9 - Customer stories and AI
All of these will be held at noon Eastern. 🌟 Please enrol here: https://cmaweekly.com/course/customer-stories-mastermind 🌟

Planning on having a blissfully quiet day in the office on July 4 while all of my American colleagues are celebrating! (I'll be at our cottage on July 1 though! )

ugh i had a great slide with this gif at a previous company but i cant find it -- will look on my personal computer tonight!

Does anyone have an internal slide, visual or guide that explains all of the ways to engage and work with Customer Marketing/Advocacy? I essentially need to convey to my marketing org that if it involves a customer, it needs to involve me.

<!here> So i'm leading on a session this friday on our weekly call about one of my favorite (and i suppose controversial given my take on the situation) topics...How we show/define value of our CMA programs

In anticipation of that, I have a quick ask (well two asks since it's two questions) so we can set the stage properly.

• What is the top line value metric that you have to (or feel like you have to) report on to show your value?
• What is the top line value metric that you wish you could use to show your value instead?
If you could spare a few quick seconds over the next two days to answer here in a 🧵 that would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Now that’s good news

Another tip is inviting execs to a community, execs LOVE connecting, mostly in person with their peers so that can not be ignored when connecting the first time.

We have sent travel gifts to executives to thank them for all that they do and invite them to simply connect with a c suite exec aka a peer at our company via an in person meeting in the coming days. We do that by requesting an email stating the days and times they are available and ensuring that all of the information will only be shared with the executive and the team coordinating the meeting.

@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) is this still on? Zoom says waiting for host to start the meeting.

We'll catch you next time! 💚

Oh shoot, I didn't know about it and I've got a call.

Anyone who has done customer awards… we are looking at doing an “advocate of the year” award, a customer from our advocacy program. We would love to do “Innovator of the Year” (that is the name of the members of our program) but have received some pushback internally that it’s not super meaningful. We’ve been asked what we might name this category if the focus was more on what the individual/organization can “tout” as being our most engaged advocate? What have they done for their peers and the industry that they’d want to share far and wide? (think like why would they want to share this on LinkedIn) - any ideas or examples of what you have done for a similar award at your org? Other thoughts have been like “Community Contributor of the Year”, etc.

Also, I suppose this will also serve as my apology if I disappear from this wonderful community for a good long while.

@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) Not getting ready for a 4th of july party over here, more like getting ready for fireworks at the end of July...

It’s too quiet in here. Who’s getting ready to have a 4th of July party?

We are meeting today with @Angela Ferrante - I hope you can all join us in just under an hour https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639 <!channel>

There are now several different customer marketing communities, and I lurk in most of them. But I participate here, and that's because of all of the work you (@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly)) have done to make this a safe space for questions and conversation, to kick out the vendors who won't stop selling, and to make all of us practitioners feel welcome. You've built something really special, that's helped me be better at what I do, and that's introduced me to so many others that I never would have met. Customer Marketers are often on small teams, and it can be lonely, but having this space has meant access to others who really get it, and I think the fact that it was built by someone from within the space is a huge part of the magic. I'm so glad you are putting yourself first, but wow will I miss you here!

Thank you! I'm going to advise my team to go back to Gartner to make sure we're not misinterpreting the ask. Seems like you guys are scratching your heads as much as we are with this request.

Hey @Megan Donaldson at Zoom just confirmed with my team. Our experience has never been that customers are asked to reach out to Gartner proactively. If customers are connecting with the Gartner analysts it's always in response to a report where Gartner is requesting specific references, which we provide. With GPI serving as the avenue for customers to provide "proactive" feedback. Sorry to not be of more help!

We broker the conversation. I wouldn't feel comfortable asking our customers to reach out to Gartner. I'd offer to facilitate a conversation.

@Emma Hanevelt in the case of forrester, infotech etc...do you broker that conversation and intro? Or are you asking customers to proactively reach out to the analyst?

Hey, @Megan Donaldson at Zoom! I've never heard of that happening for Magic Quadrant reports, but I've reached out to our AR manager to check. Like you, they've leveraged our reviews, so I run a review campaign before the reports are written. We've had that request from other AR vendors before (Forrester, InfoTech Research) but not Gartner. I'll follow up if our AR Manager shares anything different.

@Megan Donaldson at Zoom this is a new one for me, personally. I'm going to touch base with my larger team though! I'll let you know if I hear of any advice for folks in your situation.

@Alexie Glover is this something you've come across with your clients before? @Emma Hanevelt I saw that you work closely with AR at Grammarly in another post...have you come across this?

I haven’t, but I have had customers on calls with Gartner in the past :). Personally, I’m not sure how you would tactfully ask or find customers with Gartner seats (I.e., a customer who pays for Gartner reports, etc). Instead, I’d propose pre-arranged calls with some of your top customers.

Thanks @Lacey Butler - as someone who crosses AR and CMA...have you received this advice from Gartner before? Any info on the "Gartner seat"?

Happy to chat about the program I was getting ready to pilot last year, if you're interested. Ping and we can chat.

@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) thank you for all you've done to create this community! It's the most helpful and genuine community I'm involved in.

You could also see if your AR folks can set up a call where you join WITH the customer to (a) set up intros and (b) make sure the call doesn’t go off course. I agree with getting the questions or topics in advance and having a prep call with your customer(s) to outline the call and what to expect.

<!channel>
All Good Things Must Come To An End…

TL;DR I’m exhausted from running the community, and financially need a break, I’m looking for a buyer, then taking the summer off. Please help me find the right buyer.

Two years ago I started CMAweekly with weekly zoom meetups.

In the two years I’ve learned a lot of things about myself, the tech space, relationships and people.

Like many others in the space, it’s been hard to monetize the community and hard times and emotions make it even harder. Simply put, I’m awful at selling myself, my services and my knowledge.

I’m awesome at giving it away for free. And, I had hoped that would eventually lead to offers for work, sponsorships, etc. Unfortunately, those offers haven’t panned out, save for a 6 month successful sponsorship pilot with Champion, who they didn’t have the time to benefit as much as they could from the engagement, but assured me they had wanted to continue.

That’s business. It’s exciting, often rewarding and other times harsh, painful and exhausting.

What’s Happening?

So while it’s been wonderful to build the CMAweekly community, it’s time for a break. I’m looking for a buyer, one who will continue to grow the community and support CMAs.

What’s included: newsletter, YouTube channel, recordings, website, Slack workspace, CMAweekly name, list of members/subscribers, accounts on Grain, Zoom, Luma, Beehiiv, and anything else I dig up. Be sure I’ll be looking out for the community’s best interests while evaluating offers.

I want to thank everyone who has been supportive, especially those who saw the value and supported the community financially. THANK YOU. It’s been a pleasure to meet, help, and learn from you all. But, I need a break!! :)

Please share this message, tag people who might be interested, and send companies my way. And let’s discuss below!

Hi all! I'm looking for solid design examples of customer pages in action - the listing page of all of a company's stories, then the individual pages showing a case study or video. Please share what you think are great examples!

We run a summit annually for our customers, prospects, and community — I manage our customer speakers but am heavily involved with the whole event and am happy to share my learnings.

TYSM 🙏

@Brittany Burgess absolutely not! Connection info is above!

@Alexie Glover is it too late for me to crash this party too? 🙏

I can hop on for the first 30 today!

I'd love to join tomorrow as I'm looking to launch a customer awards program too! Thanks!

@Marie Elliott we're tightening this up here currently! Would be happy to share what we have so far, and would be good to catch up in general, I'll dm you!!

Hey all! Another question (I am clearly in new program startup mode 😅).

We're planning a virtual conference. This will be the first time we do something where we highlight our product updates publicly. CEO wants to do a bit of a product showcase/keynote. I'm planning to weave in some product-agnostic content & customer highlights as well. We'd like to involve our PMs, and this is where my question comes in: For folks who have done this type of event, how have your product teams been involved? I've been thinking: deep dives/demos of functionality, having them lead a customer spotlight session, etc. But curious what others have done/found to be effective.

On my calendar, thanks for scheduling, Alexie!

i just got approved for the CAP summer session, so i won't make it 🥲 thank you so much alexie!

I've scheduled for Tuesday!

Awards Program Chat
Tuesday, June 18 · 1:00 – 2:00pm
Time zone: America/Vancouver
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: +1 587-688-6279‬ PIN: ‪820 882 372‬#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/szh-ewnc-dvk?pin=2288535106360

Customer Onboarding Change Management and Internal Comms

I've been looped into an exciting project to help our onboarding team with creating a slide deck and 1 sheeter that our champion would use to help their org get aligned right before implementation and onboarding. Think advice to the champion as well as collateral they could use themselves for cross-functional meetings.

Anyone have this /do this before? I've got some ideas but would love examples of things that have been successful.

Hopping on today’s call with Irwin Hipsman https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639 <!channel>

Happy to!

Thank you for taking charge on organizing, @Alexie Glover!

Some options:
Mon, June 17 @ 11am PT/2pm ET (💚)
Tues, June 18 @ 1pm PT/4pm ET (💙)
Thurs, June 20 @ 9am PT/12pm ET (❤️)

Share your availability with the emojis?

I'll do my best to get a time everyone can attend. Also, I'm in Canada so not off on Wednesday for Juneteenth but know that's a holiday for the Americans. Could do an option that date if others are available?

happy to share them on that call next week if i can join it. Though the caveats of my schedule certainly apply as I don't want to leave y'all hanging. @Alexie Glover can you add me?

@Shannon Howard i definitely still have the process doc that we presented as part of the creation of the Golden Grot Awards.

Hi there. I'm looking for a PowerPoint presentation for presenting to the company to consider implementing a formal reference and advocacy program. Why should they consider deploying a formal program and how the structured program can benefit them over the informal/ unstructured reference and advocacy program?

I'd be grateful if you would be willing to share any existing presentations on this topic.

Happy to arrange a call for next week if y'all want to discuss?

Anyone going to CustomerXCon this year?

I dont have a brief but Im happy to chat with you about the one we just did!

i would love to join you all if you do end up speaking!

Does anyone have a customer awards program brief?

Would love to hear:
• How did you decide to open submission vs. have internal team members nominate customers?
• How did you decide which awards to create?
• Who judged award submissions? (Internal, external, etc.)
I've been part of a few industry awards initiatives, but never strictly customers. Looking to get our V1 stood up this year.

Hi - I need a video card to go in a mailer that I want to send on July 15 and I have not even scripted the video yet 🙂 - does anyone have a vendor who can turn these around super fast? My usual go to says he needs 30 business days after we deliver everything and I do not have enough time for that.

Our customer MinIO really does a great job of this - additionally linked to our examples page where you can see a few good social campaigns!
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/minio-inc-_the-success-of-our-customers-verifies-why-a[…]200705957888-3l5p?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/minio-inc-_our-customers-are-the-reason-that-minio-is-[…]588602208257-oA5q?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
https://userevidence.com/customer-examples/

Does anyone have a favorite source for event badges + lanyards?

Thanks for sharing those examples @Katlin Hess!!

@Randy Ksar You could use or adapt these 4 slide designs: https://www.upliftcontent.com/blog/4-case-study-slide-examples/

I think every award criteria is going to be different from company to company, but I’m happy to do a quick zoom call and go over it with you

Hey all! How’s everyone doing today? Would anyone be open to sharing a scorecard that they used for their judging panel for their Customer Award Program? If so, that would be greatly appropriated. Thanks in advance and talk soon! 🙏 🙏

Love the shares @Katlin Hess - Awesome!

Thank you @Katlin Hess for sharing. Great info

It's super fun! We also partner with some "power referrers" to give their referrals deals they wouldn't be able to get elsewhere. So, all in all it's a partnership that's worked extremely well. They've branched it out to our suite of upsell products now, too. But they get a trip for that and not a car lol

That’s absolutely epic, @Emily Smith 👏 👏 👏

The payout is pretty wild. We give our advocates an additional kicker, too, which is nice

It's on the winner. Which they're typically OK with because of the thousands of dollars they get with the referral bonuses that get them to the point of being the winner. Winners are referring like 20-30 closed deals so they're already getting a ton of cash ahead of winning the car

Legit was thinking this too!!

So perhaps dumb financial question, How do yoy handle the taxes that come along with it? Do y’all pay them or is that on the winner?

Oooops lol sorry!

And my next browser advertisement after I opened this up? Tesla.

Here's a video of our most recent winner. And our referrals page! Our referrals team is always happy to meet if anyone has questions on how the program runs! We use Saasquatch to manage it. Customers get $500 for every referral that takes a demo and then more money if the deal signs up. And then the most at the end of the year gets a car! It used to be a Ford150 and now it's a tesla

Wait what?! We gotta hear more about this!!

Sorry, was going to send this and then got pulled into something else

Here are a few examples:
• CMOs Drop Facts
• Review Milestone Celebration
• G2 Review Example
• Case Study post - customer testimonial
• Case Study post - stats
• Ads: 1, 2, 3

Yes we just gave the Tesla away to our winner a few weeks ago!

I'm from ServiceTitan lol

If anyone from ServiceTitan is in this community, their referral program includes giving away cars! I'm pretty sure its a Tesla 3 right now 🤪

@Liza Elder and I could possibly chat about lifecycle later in Q3 (if she's down).

Happy to chat about in-app messaging, though it's been a while since I've used Pendo and we are just implementing at my new company so it would probably be better to wait till later in the year.

Anyone out there doing amazing things with a referral program, would love to hear about that!

Our social strategy is that 20% of all posts will be customer voice related. We do a mix of case studies, video snippets and G2 reviews!

@Ray Rhodes @Emily Amos @Evan Huck @Shannon Howard might have some examples

Hi folks. Happy Tuesday. I'm looking for some examples of how companies are leveraging customer win stories in their social and digital channels.

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll go ahead and repost it

This post is probably better suited for #open-share

@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) anything on starting a program, designing customer journeys, stakeholders buy-in, program metrics

Heck yeah!!

We are launching out first customer awards program this year and I can talk about that process

@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) I'd be happy to lead or co-lead a session on customer stories.

@Taylor Page can I suggest you look at Reachdesk as well? 😛 Let me know if you have any questions about us/our platform

Hello everyone! I'm searching for a customer marketer that is willing to share their experience with me in creating case studies from their customers in the cyber/security industry? Thank you!

Hello! We're a small customer marketing team, and I want to create a 'kit' to help our events team engage with customers at events, since we're not currently equipped for User Groups. Have any of you tried something similar before?

Add me for cross-functional collaboration and self-advocacy please

Was anyone using influitive primarily for the challenge’s / gamification functionality?

Masterlist for new monthly calls (I’ll keep this updated)
So far, it looks like:
@Jeanne Talbot on CABs
@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) on Community
@Shetal Shah on Expansion
@Val Geisler on Lifecycle
@Alexie Glover on References
@Katlin Hess on Reviews
Mary & @Evan Huck on Technology
@Kristine Kukich on Using AI
@Alison Bukowski on CMA+ (6 years of experience or more)
@Taylor Page on Adoption
@Gianna Scorsone & Mary on CMA 101 for Newbies 🙂
@Emily Amos for Case Studies

I will add more information soon as I bring these calls together.

Has anyone used Postal? I have someone that needs to ask some questions about it.

Non-platform vendor rec would be Nadel. If you wanted to just have a convo with someone I have a good friend who would be down to talk with you just to understand what you need! She’s super creative and just has fun ideas (if you wanted to innovate a bit) Jessica.harrison@nadel.com|Jessica.harrison@nadel.com

☎️. Hopping on the weekly call https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639

@Kyle Harris I recall @Shannon Howard talking about the unified communications calendar

Hey <!channel> - we are restarting monthly masterminds - come vote!!

I’d love to start up monthly topic calls again! What mastermind topics do you want to discuss & attend? Limit your response to 1-2 topics please. (Please comment if you are interested in hosting)

Please do!! @Kyle Harris

I missed the Wednesday fun but I'd love to add what I've been working on!

• Customer referral program (MVP version with a landing page and a new email request from AMs after NPS scoring)
• Templates for B2B customer expansion activities for our Customer Development Leads... if anyone has examples they'd love to share - please send them my way 🥹
• Also auditing other customer marketing activities the company already does but may need a little extra love or a level up
I'm honestly interested if anyone has ever worked on a customer communications calendar that involves ALL other departments who may have touch points with customers... there's a LOT right now from surveys, to reports, reviews, customer newsletter, etc. If anyone has any advice or a framework of how to include product, customer success, account management, and general marketing comms for a company-wide calendar, please let me know!

Goodness, COVID? Gah, I am so sorry. What a stinky time to get sick.

Dublin (left), Edinburgh (now & have covid), & London (up next)

@Emily Amos I love the idea of getting your training teams involved, cross collaboration is such a huge part of successful customer marketing & advocacy.

I’d love to hear more on the rewards program. What rewards are you offering?

@Kati Jacobson, A Gartner Symposium & a CAB. I definitely need to see your notes from Gartner, and I’m hearing so many companies revisiting CABs, how is your planning coming along?

@Joel Primack VACATION? Where did you go?

@Alexie Glover, I love the Bridgerton crossover, I’ve watched the new season 2x so far and can’t wait for next Thursday.

@Andrew Sevillia congrats on your daughter moving up, I can tell you are nailing the parenting/work balance by doing dishes and laundry…. Some day we will be past these moments of cleaning every day, but it’s such a pleasure to raise kids.

@Evan Huck very funny, but honestly everyone uses Spreadsheets for all sorts of things so we can’t really praise the spreadsheet for market share. It’s like saying pens own the market share on business ideas, but I included it so people could see.

@Emily Amos - Instead of flying back to California, I'm going to stay on the road between Singapore and Paris. I built in some time to explore. I haven't been to Singapore, but I've been to Paris several times. Turning off work is always a challenge, but I'm doing my best to focus on the truly important things in life. Family is at the top of the list, as well as doing the things I love.

Working on wrapping up a couple of "Views on Reviews" interviews with @Axel Lavergne and @Alexie Glover . My one question would be, who would you like to hear from on their views on reviews? (i.e. who do you think would be a good interviewee on the topic of reviews?)

🌟 I'm creating a new resource for the community on must-ask questions during a customer story interview. I'm including practitioners' favorite questions so hit me up with yours - and why you love the question so much! 🌟

@Andrew Sevillia Love the work/life balance you displayed in your response. And Paris and Singapore to film customers? I hope you get some time to explore!

@Amy You could create an ebook that compiles a few customer stories that have the same focus - like the same use case or same initial challenge. You could gate it and promote it as a lead magnet. (I'm with @Shannon Howard that it's usually not a good idea to gate customer stories, but fine to gate an ebook or the PDF version of the story.)

What’s <!channel> everyone working on this week?

If you could ask this group 1 question, what would it be?

❓Question for the group. What are your thoughts about how customer evidence (case studies, quotes, videos, etc) can support lead generation and sales? Examples welcome!

Dreamforce!

Who has been? How have you engaged with customers before/during/after the event? I'd love to brainstorm with you all. This is our first time attending. At a high level, here is what I've been thinking about:
• Tell all customers we will be there - tell them to stop by to get special, customer only swag
• Find a customer with a cool product to give away to any prospect who will take a demo with us
• Invite VIP customers to exec meetings, meals, etc
• Invite customers with open expansion opportunities to talk to someone on site
• Invite all customers to large events, eg happy hour
• Identify strong customers as speakers
• Showcase big brands in our marketing onsite
• Ensure onsite team is equipped to talk about customers who use our integration
What else have you seen work well - or what has flopped? Thank you!

New Director of Community Engagment role is LIVE in #jobs

How do your companies think about product adoption? Who is involved and do you have a process you can share?

I lead customer marketing, and lifecycle marketing is part of my team. I would like to see us play a bigger role, but we do not have bandwidth to do it all - right now we announce new features in our newsletter, but that's about it for 1:many. To be more specific, when you roll out a new feature, who determines the TAM, how do you drive adoption with those customers? How do you determine what is 1:1 and what is 1:many? What role does product and product marketing play? Who is accountable for driving adoption? Who determines the go to market strategy, and then organizes all the teams to execute? If anyone has this mapped out and could share, that would be a huge help!! Thank you!

Hi Mary and Jennifer - yes I have, but it was through a Gartner PI reviews, and they did not share the results with me (as the vendor). I was able to get tech support for the customer and it was resolved in a timely manner. End result, the customer was able to provide a PI review on our behalf.

yes!!

Working on a conference presentation (CustomerX Con 👀) and I'd love to share the amazing work you folks are doing with your customer stories. I'm looking for examples that you're super proud of where you've atomized content or created modular content (1 interview/story into a number of different assets). If you'd like to be featured, please let me know! All credit will be shared at the time of presentation and ideally this will drive some traffic to your assets! Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Well, GPI has been strict even before the SEC ruling. But 100% agree with what Angela is saying. Most of the rules apply for B2C companies, so as long as you are keeping the amount low (as in $25), you should be okay for B2B. Also, it should be framed as a “thank you” for sharing your feedback/opinions.

Thanks @Amanda Peacock! Lunchtime spicy margs in San Diego next time I'm there on us!

@Jennifer Lyons GPI are SUPER STRICT on the FTC rules. You cannot offer anything more than a $25 gift card, and cannot ask for a 5* review, and cannot only target high NPS etc. I know of someone who had big trouble because of this and all their reviews for their campaign were removed.
G2 follow the same principles but not as strict. For G2 you can add an additional incentive on top of the $25 gift card e.g. an additional gift card, or swag etc.
For our reviews I target the entire database for the products we want reviewed. I also ask our customer advocates. And we ask people after a positive CSAT to leave a review. We do some in-product asks as well.
Hope that helps.

Hi all — does anyone work with a swag vendor they really like? We’ve recently switched to a new vendor who came highly recommended, but is not working for our purposes.

We’re very global and many of our customers and users work from home, so we need to be able to ship to international, residential addresses (including India). We’re typically sending a t shirt, socks, other small and pre-produced swag items. I figure many other companies are in this situation and our previous vendor didn’t have these issues, so I want to see what other customer marketers are doing and who you love working with!

Hi - how do you tell an advocate who agreed to a reference call that they are no longer needed - bc the prospect keeps changing their mind who they want to talk to!!!

Wondering if there is a good "relationship building" way to approach this

Thank you

Will it be open to folks in SF, Kevin?

If yes, I have a GREAT referral for you 😊

I'll take a look and see what I can find. I believe I only have stories that include implementation.

@Alexie Glover Ideally a story that primarily focuses on implementation, but if I can't find one, I'd settle for a story that includes implementation. :-)

FYI - I'm working on getting a Director of Community role (NA) posted this week and 6 other positions. Will post them in #jobs once live

Hey, all! How do you reflect in Salesforce that an account has an ambassador? Currently, we’re adding them to a Salesforce campaign, which then adds to a contact on the account and will then email the CSM or AE. My current worry is that if the contact is buried in the contacts list, it still won’t be quickly seen on the account’s page at one glance.

Hi all! Does anyone have an example of a customer story that focuses on the implementation aspect of the story?

Question: How are you measuring success in your advocacy programs? Retention rate? NPS? Pipeline? TIA 🤓

Question for the group: We are currently building out a new client advocacy strategy and one of the ideas that came up was an opt-in period for advocates – where clients could opt in to be advocates for X numbers of years, with the expecation that they complete certain actions during that time (webinars, client stories, etc.). Has anyone tried something similar before? If yes, what was the period of time you landed on – 1 year seems too short, so we were thinking two? TIA! 🙂

Curious how you all deal with permissions when it comes to atomizing or repurposing a customer story. For example, you get sign off on the core customer story, video and two LinkedIn posts. But then, a month later, you want to create some other snippets and assets from that original story. Do you then go back to the customer each time you want to publish another snippet? Or do you have language in your contract that covers the core asset and any subsidiary assets you create from it?

I frequently partner with Customer Success and Sales to identify champions. Often times Sales will have worked with the decision makers (higher title) on the account, while CS can identify power-users who know the product well.

i have a few indicators:
• positive NPS score (sent out regularly by our CS team)
• renewal/expansion deal closes - I like to build on momentum, someone buying more of our product is definitely happy with us!
• I rely on laudable to identify positive quotes in our recorded calls, and I follow up with the speakers

I’m hopping in this thread to hopefully get some ideas too! This is definitely a timely topic for me 🥹

Hey all! I'm currently prioritizing ways to identify champions in our b2b accounts, specifically our targeted or key accounts. Has anyone had any success identifying champions and inviting them to your advocacy programs? If so, what channels or campaigns have you found most successful. Thanks!

Hi hi- not sure if this has been asked before but has anyone either started over or started from scratch with a "Customer Resource Center"? Basically a customer portal for education/learning/product news? Ours has been abandoned and I'd like to propose we reimagine it and potentially start all over. Ours is built on Hubspot and is a pain to update so I'd also be interested in hearing how you've built yours/what tools have been helpful and generally how you approach this. Thanks in advance!

Congrats Shannon! So nice to get those reports out into the world!

@Becca Snee Here are a few examples that I've seen over the past year or so:
https://www.dixa.com/customers/dott/ (from @Perri Chaikof)

https://upshotstories.com/stories/elevating-the-human-experience-through-predictive-ai (from @Alexie Glover)

https://www.aprimo.com/resource-library/success-story/hachette-book-group-success-story (from @Marie Elliott)

https://www.shi.com/testimonials/bush-brothers-modernizes-their-networking (from @Christa Niering)

Hope these are helpful!

Ooo Iterable! Been eyeing them for years.

Hey @Jeanne Talbot I hope you had a great PTO 🙂 any chance you can share this week?

what's the link to the post? i can try but not 100% sure if the type of gartner account i have will work.

@everyone Does anyone have a template or an example (redacted if needed) that you use when preparing for trade show to prep booth staff on key taking points, lead capture, etc.?

Yes, I know someone who does.

Does use gainsight to host their customer community?

Has anyone received outreach from Sourceforge about your company's review profile? I thought they were an open software download site and am confused...

Hi friends- QQ: has anyone built a launch plan for a customer community? I'm proposing a phased launch plan for our new customer community (we're using gainsight cc), starting with a small group of select customers who will be our founding members, and then slowly rolling out to all customers. Curious if anyone has suggestions on the best way to present/organize this? If you're open, I'd love to see an example launch plan or template just to see how others have structured this.

I think it depends what industry youre in but also could add something around

1. How are you approaching AI in your business?
2. What are the biggest business challenges you're solving in the next 18 months?

Thanks all!!

Anyone have access to Gartner Research? There’s a post I wanna checkout, but can’t access 😩

Hi everyone 👋 For those who run Customer Advisory Boards, I would love to pick your brains about meaningful prompts/questions you've asked to facilitate peer networking and relationship building among customers. While a key focus is of course on product feedback, I want to ensure that we are dedicating time for our customers to get to know — and learn from — one another.

Our first CAB will have breakout rooms segmented by role type. Dropping some questions I'm considering (besides the usual "Tell us about your role and company" and casual icebreakers) in 🧵 — would love to hear your thoughts as well...

They are out @Ryan Gutierrez, Community Agility Specialist https://cqyc604.na1.hubspotlinks.com/Ctc/5D+113/cQyC604/VW319C3nSZTpW4GP56H7Cm9bRW76My975fb[…]W8gMkR5W5Yqw2v4KpsNTW68G0z85Dv0MBN4ZRvx-gDfM_f7_HVFM04
https://cqyc604.na1.hubspotlinks.com/Ctc/5D+113/cQyC604/VW319C3nSZTpW4GP56H7Cm9bRW76My975fb[…]Cs13R-rhLN34WFXPK9Xb4N6PDdww5xssMVlQsRW9kglVWf5JR1WR04

No I don’t believe it is out yet.

Do you have a recording handy?

Yes. I’m on PTO but I’ll make a note to post on Monday.

@Jeanne Talbot - would you be willing to share the spreadsheet?

Marketo + Iterable (just left Pardot, @Amanda Peacock feel your pain 😉 )

Day # Speed Dating

For these types of stories we usually ask a little bit about each company, then ask about how using them together makes an impact in the business.

It’s time for the Vendor Speed Dating Event - I’ll post updates in this thread. 😄

Oh fun, I’d love to check out the pitch deck.

I'm modifying my Storytelling with Data workshop to include best practices for deck design and layout along with some exercises...also procrastinating on building my pitch deck

It’s Monday!!

What’s everyone working on this week?

Anyone going to events? Working on an awards program? Playing with new tech?

I’m finishing my stand alone course for Scaling Advocacy with Community - I can’t wait to share it.

Just curious what tools folks are using for email marketing?

We are redesigning our case study and customer quote slide templates. I'd love to see your examples for inspiration! Post them here! Thank you so much!

Are you using spreadsheets for advocacy? Can you come Friday to show your spreadsheet off? I need 3 people!

We are seeing a lot of posts in the #open-share channel. If you aren’t a part of that channel head on over and check it out.

Hi Everyone!!! We recently started a Denver channel here so we could plan CMA happy hours to meet other peeps locally. We've had several meetups so far and they have been great. Just a handful of us each time. I wanted to start this same thing in Houston, mainly because I visit family there throughout the year and thought it would be cool to duplicate what we are doing in Denver. I am going to be visiting the last two weeks in July so was hoping to get it going by then.............and then the Houston peeps can plan their own happy hours! So, if you are from Houston or near there, come join the Houston channel and say hi!

Hi everyone. QQ. Has anybody created any case study videos that don't include interviews with customers but highlight the story and maybe the data points / outcomes? Looking to see creative ways to tell a customer story without filming an interview.

Hi all! Has anyone purchased a video camera and tripod that they bring to events to film customers on-site (in place of contracting with a company to come on-site to film, but use the footage to share with a vendor afterwards to turn into a testimonial video)? If so, could you link them here? thanks!!

ty ty

Now that I’ve bugged you all to take the survey, can you please share it with others? Here’s the link bit.ly/cmanps - we have 215 submissions right now and can use more!! Every submission helps because we are telling others what has worked and what hasn’t. TY!! 🙂

Who is creating first-person blog posts and LinkedIn articles (ghostwritten) in the customer's voice? I'm working on some of these and am wondering what plays best, especially on LinkedIn. If we're already telling the primary story in a traditional case study, then do you create something different for these other pieces? For example, a best practices piece or a focus on one use case or angle?

Shannon was great to interview! She had great insight to share, and gave me a laugh in our chat, too. 10/10 guest!

Happy to help! And please feel free to reach out if any questions. I'm always happy to chat and it's never a pitch slap, promise 💚

And then if I do follow ups I say something like "Just wanted to follow up. I've reached out to a few other customers as well but, based on XXX you are at the top of my list – wanted to be sure you saw this and had a chance to consider"

I put this at the bottom of those emails: "We're contacting several customers about this opportunity, so please understand that time is of the essence and while we would love to have many customers join us, we only have space for one on stage."

TY @Alexie Glover that was a perfect answer. This community is so lucky to have you.

@Alexie Glover I will take you up on that!

Thanks so much, Alexie! Super helpful for me to understand all of the different factors you consider as I start having these conversations with writers.

I'd prefer not to ... because without all of the information about what Daniela is looking for, I'm not sure a rate is useful information. 2 pages is pretty subjective because it depends on what the text layout looks like or what the web/PDF layout looks like. So I quote by word versus page count. It also depends on how specialized the product/industry is. My proposal/quote process also includes the flexibility of pricing based on a one-off story or a batch of stories (batches are cheaper). If I understand more about exactly what Daniela is looking for, I can try and provide a quote. My understanding of industry rates right now is you'd be looking at $1600-3500 USD, dependent on all of the factors above.

And - @Shannon Howard my experience with CMAers moonlighting in case study writing (especially women) is that they're drastically undercharging! Happy to chat if you'd like advice on how to price for your future freelancing projects!

OK, well, I was radically undercharging to write case studies. 😂

Agree with Alexie that it depends on the length, type of story, etc. My freelancer would charge about $1K.

Alexie, can you share a rate for a 2 page story with 2 rounds of edits? If not, completely understandable, it’s hard to put a public price out there.

@Daniela Chesser in a recent call with the community, someone mentioned paying $1800 for the writing part of the case study. This was maybe 6 months ago and it was from a role they were in a year before, so I would expect to see an increase since everything has gone up in price in the last 2 years.

I've got lots of thoughts 😂 the answer is: it depends! It depends on: story length, number of revision cycles, style of story, location of the writer, seniority/expertise of the writer, industry of your company, etc.

My reference for this is from an agency POV as well, so I'm not intimately familiar with the going individual freelancer rates. I'd need more information to be able to provide a realistic range of just the writing. From an agency POV, my rates will generally be slightly higher than an individual contributor as you're receiving both writing and editing and the benefit of a team versus an individual contributor. Always happy to chat though!

@Shannon Howard @Jacqueline Gu @Rachel Ward @Wendi Wolfgram @Alexie Glover any thoughts on this?

New member topic by @Erin Koerpel:
Tell me about the interplay between analyst relations and peer reviews- can these initiatives be mutually beneficial?

Yes a full story

Thanks Valeria! Was that for a 2-page story?

TY for sharing @Christie Avila 😄

@Derek Bolen Our OP is 53% with a CTR of 11% - happy to chat more about this if you'd like!

Thank you all!

Happy Monday, everyone!👋 Has anyone worked with a reputable customer journey mapping vendor they'd recommend? Thanks in advance!

cc: @Lauren Sanborn @Sophie

We’re on to discuss events https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639

We averaged about 34%

<!here> Hey everyone 👋 This is a long shot, but about two years ago there was someone in CM who had gifted their CAB members with really beautiful and personalize caricatures and shared them with everyone as an idea for gifting. I’d love to do this for our members this Spring. Any chance that person is in this group? I’d love to connect with you and see who you did them through. They were really well done and the idea was so thoughtful!

If anyone else has really fun, personalized ways you celebrate your CAB members I’d love to hear from you too!

Thanks in advance ☀️

Hi - I'm doing a deep dive on reviews sites. Does anyone focus on Capterra? We spend no time there, but are getting a decent influx of positive reviews - we've had 4 in April.

Wondering if others focus on that site - the other sites we don't focus on tend to have negative reviews as people are complaining - so wondering why this one has so many positive reviews. Thank you.

Hey all - I've been invited to this slack group because I hear there are some global 🌎 customer marketers here. Does anyone have any examples of how they've managed to engage customers on a global level, with programs that are both scalable AND regionally relevant?

Hey hey - for those running a customer awards program — do you let the finalists know if they did not win the award before the award winners are announced? 🏆

Open rates will vary based on the number of subscribers. But for up to 5000 people I would say 30-40. For over 10000 I would think 20-30. For click thru I love to see up to 20% but I’m ok with it being lower with a large base.

That would be great, @Evan Huck. Would be thrilled to join your Monday night event!

I’ll DM you with my contact information. Thanks and see you out there.

Throwing an event Monday night as well if you’re interested

I’m going!

Our social media person keeps eyes on it with keywords, but we do not have a brand account. she found a post asking about our customer conference, and sent it out way. So we made an anon account to reply and share info plus a discount code, but we haven't seen anyone use it yet.

I have worked in a role where our customers flocked to Reddit to talk about us and our competitors. I monitored the threads and reported back internally but never tried to get any advocates involved in the conversation.

100%. We don't maintain a brand account there but there are entire subreddits dedicated to our vertical and we inevitably come up in discussion a lot so we're always monitoring for mentions and sharing internally. When necessary, we'll activate some of our advocates to reply

@Derek Bolen our unique click through rate is ~7% for customer newsletters

For context: I’m in the B2B space / financial services software!

@Evan Jacobs in past years that’s what I would organize. Oh well. You may want to reach out to Amy bills and have her reach out to the customer marketing team or the event team to ask them to pull it together.

Thanks @Lyndsay Merbach! How are click rates?

@Irwin Hipsman used to work there, he might know some people who are going.

Hey Derek! Our customer newsletter open rate average is ~28%

Hey all! Is anyone going to Forrstser’s B2B Summit in a few weeks in Austin? If so, would be great to connect with this crew out there!

Hey friends, does anyone here manage your company's customer newsletters? What kind of open rates/CTR do you see on average? Looking to set some benchmarks but would love to know what other people are achieving

I guess that one's kinda settled, lol!

ty @Janelle Glover and @Matt Basil, I see you 😄

Can I get more responses above ⬆️ <!here>

What is more recognizable ReferenceEdge or Point of Reference?

https://www.zendesk.com/luminaries/
https://www.experityhealth.com/alist/
https://www.gozego.com/zego-advocate-program/
https://terminus.com/terminus-rock-stars/
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/cisco-insider/advocacy.html#~explore-programs
https://sendoso.com/supersender/
https://www.alteryx.com/customer-center/alteryx-advocacy
https://dropeverything.com.au/post/become-a-customer-story

I’ll grab the list for you 🙂

Hi Rebecca! I just went through an extensive exercise here at Upwork to create a branded identity + external/public assets for our customer advocacy program. So this is a topic that's very top-of-mind and near-and-dear to my heart!

I really like these examples and I referenced this to our creative team when we were exploring initial concepts for landing pages:
• Asana Ambassadors
• Zendesk Luminaries

Hi all - does anyone have a list of links to public facing customer advocacy programs? @Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) I feel like this may exist?

I'm looking to make a landing page/one pager to share with customers about the benefits to them of participating in advocacy programs and would love some inspiration - I had chat GPT write the copy and it was pretty good - but I would like to see what others do as well. TY!

Hi! Has anyone here attended the customer marketing alliance conferences / did you find them worthwhile? I’m debating whether to make a case to attend :)

We’re on to discuss CABs. Https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639|Https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639

Anyone interested in hosting today? The topic is CABs.

fyi. Great resource. Virtual CAB Program - More Tips on How to Run Your CAB
Irene Yam | Mar 27, 2024
[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/virtual-cab-program-more-tips-how-run-your-irene-yam-clmbc>

Shared via <http://mobile.linkedin.com/)

How do you handle colleagues not following customer request protocols and working AROUND you when fulfilling a customer speaker request? This tends to happen at my company because so many people are “touching” customers in marketing efforts, and I don’t want my team to be a roadblock, but there needs to be a system of governance to control customer burn out. Would love any advice here.

<!here> anyone interested in having a networking zoom call on the topic of CABs?

I’m looking to refresh my NAMER CABs after 7 years of doing them and also expanding CABs globally into EMEA and APAC. I would love to swap best practices in general but also discuss any localization nuances if relevant. I’m happy to set something up for either this week or next or even doing a bit of a networking series!

Let me know if you wanna join (aka dm me ur email address so I can add ya to the invite!)

We have 905 members - YAY! On our way to 1000 soon 😄

You’re all the best!! ❤️

Wow @Ashley Ward love that! I would echo waht others were saying... 3+ months is usually the turnaround time for us. Would love to shorten that!

My company was acquired by Vista a few years ago and we are still a portfolio company. TBH a lot has changed since the scquisition, but changes in structure and leadership were over time and felt more natural with direction of the business vs. drastic PE changes. As @Lisa Young and @Jennifer Gladden said - I wouldn't stress too much right now.

FYI - working on opening up a few roles on my team - you'll find the posting in #jobs
• Manager, PM (live)
• Customer Advocacy Specialist (live)
• Sr. Manager, Community Engagement
• Sr. Manager, Lifecycle & Retention Marketing
• Customer Education Specialist

That is a huge win, thank for sharing Ashley. I’ve missed seeing you around. Please let me know if we can help you at all.

I probably spend an hour on the outline, maybe 30 minutes on edits. My last story I was able to send a draft to the customer less than 24 hours after our interview. 🙌

I usually listen back to the interview and draft a rough outline (like bullet points). This is my prompt:

Hi! I'd like you to write up a compelling customer story for the software LeanData. Please review these pages to learn about our style. Then I will submit an outline that I'd like you to use to write the story. While I'll be providing mostly bullet points, please write something that is aligned to the example format. Target tel:500-1000|500-1000 words.

Examples:
Add 3-4 links to your best stories

Oooh, what does your prompt look like @Ashley Ward?

My experience is usually 1-2 weeks to have a writer turnaround a first draft. I’ve been using Gemini to turn around first drafts immediately after the interview. GAME CHANGER.

When I send the draft to a customer, I usually ask for a timeline on their end. Like “is approval by next Friday realistic for your team?”

Once approved, we have graphic templates but that can take 3-4 days and can probably be done while the draft is waiting on approval from the customer.

I would hope for no longer than 4 weeks from start to finish.

TY @Erica Ross

@Sharon Rosa-Bohrer I might be able to help. I’ll message you separately.

I’d say a similar timeline to @Sarah Howell
If you set and align on objectives and key players from the onset, it can move faster
Big brands/big companies, means lots of reviews and brand protection so these can be significantly longer, like a year or 2

@Daniela Chesser feel free to DM me to find a time!

How do you all conduct post-program feedback surveys? What kind of questions do you ask?

We are wrapping up a product feedback program that has been running for about 4 months. I'm planning to send a feedback survey to both customers and internal stakeholders to assess impact. Would love to understand how others have approached this

@Shetal Shah you are welcome! Good luck! You have your head on straight so it will be a great success ✨

New round up available on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marygreencny_roundup-of-tips-activity-7185692841958907904-wK7M?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
https://app.tipstory.io/preview/44600130-7926-4d4b-89ae-954135177456

That is quite long. Good luck with the next ones. I hope the chat with others helps.

@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) way too long. I was working on three video, full production case studies that took 6 months. but most of the time they take 2-3 months from start to finish.

Hi all! Happy Monday 👋 I am hosting our first in person CAB next month and I am trying to figure out what is the best way to "record" the meeting. We will have a note taker, but I want to make sure we are capturing all the details. What is everyone using or doing? Thx!

@Sarah Howell and @Mindy Lyons Blackstock I’d love to hear how long it takes you both on the average case study as well.

I’m sorry you didn’t get a response for this @Sharon Rosa-Bohrer, I’m not sure we have a lot of experience people in here 😞

I’ll think on these and get back to you @Melissa DiBernardo 🙂

@Amy and @Joel Primack, I love the "VIP briefing" idea and also capturing it on video. The new product is actually from an acquisition, and we do have a couple of mutual customers, so there is a case study opportunity. However, we all know how long that process may take, so this is a great idea for a "quick win." Thank you 🙂 .

@Irwin Hipsman, we are starting pretty small with a subset of our customers trying to cross-sell this new product. Later in the year, we will expand to a larger group of customers and prospects.

Hi all! I'm launching a customer-only campaign for a new product. I have a plan from previous product launches, but I would love to get out of my bubble and get some fresh perspectives and creative ideas. If you've launched a customer-first product launch campaign and have any ideas you'd be willing to share or be open to getting on a quick call, please let me know. Thanks so much!

Hello all! Has anyone run a large scale Customer Advisory Board at an all inclusive resort?

A follow up related to the potential of the UserEvidence platform. I found this information about how Gong is using UserEvidence to be very helpful (and I plan to steal these ideas, lol). Connect with @Evan Huck if you are considering UserEvidence for your program. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/evanhuck_customermarketing-activity-7184549727714070528-9TUs?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_ios

Could not have made this happen without UserEvidence ✨

Anyone have a 30-60-90 day plan on building out customer marketing from scratch? I thought we'd shared something in here but I'm not finding it.

Would love to chat with you both!! Lmk what your schedules look like in the coming weeks and I'll set something up 🙂 appreciate it so much!!

Me too! Let me know if you’d like to chat

I was part of an acquisition and my company is also owned by Vista. I wouldn’t stress too much. Vista is a solid organization

oh hey 👋 always down to talk case studies

Hi! I'm (re)buliding a business case to invest in our customer community. To strengthen my proposal, I'm hoping to leverage some industry benchmarks.
Does anyone have access to recent data on customer community metrics? Any insights or resources you can share would be greatly appreciated!

Notes from Gartner Vendor Call Today. For questions, contact peerinsights@gartner.com|peerinsights@gartner.com

Gartner Peer Review (GPI) Collection Option:
• 4-part email campaign
• Vendors submit customer list (min 5, max 1000)
• Multiple lists can be submitted throughout the year
• 75% Gartner approval rate on reviews
• 100 vendors currently using this
Incentives: Vendor Paid
• Three options provided by Gartner (1) $25 available in 25 currencies, (2) $25 to use with 250 merchant options, (3) $25 donation to 1 of 4 charities. Vendors can use one or all options.
• Government, public sector customers can not participate
• Vendors submit a credit card or wire transfer to cover costs. 3.5% processing fee. $10K per year limit. Balance rolls over to the following year.
Incentives Sponsored by Gartner
• Twice a year Gartner will cover the cost for fifty $25 gift cards. Vendors will need to submit required information in order to participate once the program is announced.
Gartner Webinars
• Next webinar TBS will cover content and marketing.

I worked for a company that was acquired by Vista too. Overall it was not super impactful but happy to answer anything else directly.

(If it helps- if I went through it again I wouldn’t be stressed)

New role posted on my team in #jobs

Hi all! I'm taking a look at my team's case study creation process efficiencies and inefficiencies - would love to get some examples of how long your average timelines are to create a 2 page case study from start to finish, and how long the actual writing portion takes on average

Rebranding can be a painful process. Determine what the plan is and the requirements. Start early. Any new content produced going forward should take into consideration if/when it will need to be rebranded.

Does anyone have Cx overview slides that visually show what is meant by Cx, what drives Cx and customer satisfaction, and the link between customer satisfaction/retention and service? I need to build a presentation for internal folks not as familiar with thinking about the customer experience and how their service role is critical. Thanks in advance!

I feel like someone has asked this before, but couldn't find it - announced that we are being acquired by Vista today and would love to hear from others their experience with being acquired

If you also want to create a blog post from a customer story interview, what questions do you include in the interview so that you have some different material for the blog post? (I'm working on a little resource with Diana Yanez Pastor - coming to your LinkedIn feed soon!)

Thanks Mary!! @Ari Hoffman yes, basically link back to G2 (or whatever site) from your site increases that review site's domain authority for your company and the term reviews. So yes, most often review sites pop up anyway, but this just helps ensure the sites your spending the most time/effort on are populating first.

@Katlin Hess

How can the community help you this week? What roadblocks are you working on?
We’re here to help!

@Justine Winkler love this threads suggestions. CABs are my superpower- both in person and online. Happy to connect on Zoom and share 23 years of expertise from building + running Palo Alto Networks, Atlassian, HP's, and smaller brands CABs. My email is sarahlmoody@gmail.com|sarahlmoody@gmail.com

@Erin Emery Excited to meet you on April 9!

We’re live https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639

@Sarah Moody I responded to your LinkedIn message!

Wondering if anyone would be willing to share their org chart/list of positions they have in their Customer Marketing vertical? Trying to think through what those roles would be (I have ideas - references, success stories, etc.) but would love to hear what's working for you all in real life.

Hey all! We're looking into building a customer education cohort as a pipeline for customer stories/pilot to help leadership feel comfortable with further investing in a true Academy. The general idea we have now is to have an application process where customers agree to join our advocacy program in exchange for a masterclass around building their internal programs using our product, with some additional hands-on support for the duration of the cohort.

Has anyone done something like this? Would love to learn from you!

Long shot question here - is anyone familiar with iorad for product walkthroughs?

We are trying to build in the product but really struggling, and finding that some of their tutorial videos don't match what our dashboard looks like. We also haven't gotten a response to our support tickets.

Would love to spend a few mins with someone who is familiar with this product to hopefully unblock us!

Hi everyone, still struggling to get some momentum and quick wins for our customer marketing program. We've identified supporting events as a potential opportunity to show some momentum and are looking at creating some sort of activation with current clients and prospective ones at Cisco Live in June. WHo has experience with creating an event attached to a bigger event where the goal is to get our internal champions to bring their colleagues in other business units to meet with us?

Okta used to do a one-minute case study as an infographic: https://www.okta.com/blog/2020/07/okta-one-minute-case-study-emerson/

Also following! Love this idea!

Hello 👋 - we are considering rolling out a “refer-a-friend” program. We’re looking at Referral Factory, Extole and Referral Rock. Does anyone have any experience with executing a similar program and/or with these platforms? Appreciate any insight/feedback good or bad. Thanks! 🙏

Thanks @Amy!

@Katie Aamodt We had a 10% response rate on a 'three email send' using the UserEvidence platform. If you want to send me a pm with your email address, I can send you a copy of the content we used which includes subject lines.

Looking 👀 for an example or two of infographics used to tell one or more customer stories. Could be focused on just one customer story or several (e.g. by industry). many thanks!

@Erin Emery Highly recommend Sean Geehan ph937.271.3914

Update if anyone is interested:
I put together this email template that we're using for this small set of customers. CSMs/AMs are sending it out for this initiative.

Moving forward I'll use this or something similar to proactively reach out to customers who have had success. (I have alerts set up in our call recording for key words and get other signals via PS/CS/AM teams.) Wanted to share in case anyone needs something similar:

I hope you’re having a great week so far!

At [Company Name], we're constantly striving to showcase the success stories of our valued customers like yourself. Your experience with [Company Name/Product] has been impressive, and we believe it would be a valuable resource for others considering [Company Name/Product].

With that in mind, we'd like to request your support on a few things:
• Logo Usage: Would you be open to allowing [Company Name] to use your company logo on our website and marketing materials? This would help us demonstrate the trust and positive experiences our customers have with [Company Name/Product].
• Success Quote: We'd love to feature a short quote from you that highlights how [Company Name/Product] has positively impacted your business. Sharing your success story can inspire others and showcase the capabilities of our platform.
• Customer Story Interview: Would you be interested in exploring the possibility of a brief interview with our customer marketing team? This interview could potentially be turned into a customer success story featured on our website and in other marketing materials. Of course, you would have complete editorial control over the final content.
We understand your time is valuable, so we'd be happy to keep any interview concise and convenient for you.

Please let me know your thoughts on these requests. We appreciate your continued partnership and look forward to hearing from you soon.

@Amy - I'm curious: What subject line did you go with and how did it perform?!

It was such a great meeting and conversation. Thanks for coordinating it, @Irwin Hipsman, and thanks for your insights and willingness to connect me to others in our space, @Sue Reukauf!

Hi everyone! I'm looking to quickly gather some customer logo approval and potential quotes for a specific industry. Does anyone have any experience doing email outreach or a logo drive type campaign? My plan is to work through the CSMs to get some quick responses, but I'd love to hear if anyone has done something like this or has a template asking at least for logo approval?

@Erin Emery ☝️

Hello customer marketers. Does anyone have a professional CAB facilitator (individual or company) to recommend? Additionally, does anyone have experience with Ignite Advisory Group? Thank you!

👋 Anyone here interested in helping out a friend of mine with some market research?

Lancey.ai analyzes customer data from your product, CRM, and other sources to understand user activation, conversion, and retention. With this info, Lancey automatically generates high value cohorts for revenue focused product experiments across channels (e.g. in-app, email, and feature/pricing).

I know the founders personally. They're looking to connect with customer/growth marketing teams at PLG companies to learn more about how you current operationalize this type of customer data and insights.

If you're down for a brief chat with the co-founder, DM me your email and I'll connect you.

What are some great ideas for customer appreciation day that you recommend?

@Emily Amos Mostly seen them in monthly newsletters and pitch decks for sales and when CSMs are looking to upsell to existing customers, on additional features or modules.

Wondering if anyone has any recent research on impact of references? Or, a presentation they've used for company buy-in?

Thank you all for your feedback and advice!

Oh thanks for the share @Perri Chaikof!

Hi all! We're revamping our customer page (and individual story pages). What pages out there stand out to you as exemplary - whether your own or others (we're in the SaaS space - but not limiting my search).

anyone run group references? would love to chat! something kinda like an ama/webinar, pretty casual - customer shares some background and reasoning around buying decisions and then there's q and a.

First meeting of the Madison, WI Customer Marketing Association at our favorite bakery. Joining me was Nick Venturella and @Sue Reukauf who are actually in Madison unlike me.

Did you know? I have our public Slack channels backed up. If you need me to search for something, just ask 🙂

hi <!here> does anyone have a RFP/vendor selection brief they're currently using or used in the past for customer advocacy software evaluations? DMs are great if you don't want to share here. 😄 thanks!

Poll of the week on LinkedIn - Are you seeing positive signals for the Customer Marketing & Advocacy space?
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marygreencny_is-the-customer-marketing-advocacy-space-[…]039014203392-4p_m

Come share your thoughts 🙂

Good morning! I am wondering if anyone who runs a Customer Advisory Board has figured out a way to make it more engaging.

The meetings are over Zoom for about 2 hours with the exception of the one at our user conference in October.

I inherited this program and there are some members who are at a different level and so we've tried to make it more broad in regard to topic discussed and when presenting our product roadmap.

Any insight/feedback is welcomed!

Hey everyone!
I'm reaching out because I'm looking for some advice on how to collect nominations for awards within our customer community and how the winners are chosen.
Our team is really excited about recognizing the amazing individuals who contribute so much to our community and to highlight our customers in an award ceremony, but we're not quite sure where to start.
If any of you have experience with this or could share some tips on how to effectively collect nominations and ensure a fair selection process (perks if you have worked with self-nomination awards as well), I would be incredibly grateful!
Looking forward to hearing your insights and learning from your experiences. Thanks in advance for your help! 😊✨

Me asking for examples again! 🔦Customer spotlights this time. 🔦 I'd love it if you'd share some examples of customer spotlights with me. I'm interested to see how different companies create them in terms of content, design/layout and where they live (newsletter, social media, blog post, etc.)

Hey all 👋
I’ve seen two dates around customer appreciation day in both April and May, and while every day is customer appreciation day in my eyes, curious where others have landed. With April 18 or May 17? Thank you! 😊

Wow. 2024 is definitely the year of consolidation. Testimonial Hero soon acquiring Case Study Buddy! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joelklettke_my-announcement-first-lets-get-this-activi[…]290972504064-bppG?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Congrats, @Joel Klettke!

Is anyone using Zendesk for building/managing a customer community?

Does anyone have an onboarding campaign they run with best practices, content, etc. for new customers?

Thanks Mary!

You might want to ask in the <#C04KPMMKQSF|> channel as people are more willing to share about a vendor in that space.

Thank you all for these amazing suggestions! I appreciate it!

Has anyone been to the Obsession Summit conference?

For folks who manage customer comms (specific to email marketing), how do you help inform stakeholders on the data fields or customer attributes available to help create audiences? A large part of my role is to help guide stakeholders based on what is available, but I’d love to help empower them and start from a place of more common ground and I’m curious how/if others are doing this.

Thanks for share, @Kat Breeggemann — appreciate it 😊

Maybe Gainsight?

Like someone just asked ChatGPT to make a clone of G2 haha

Good to know, thanks for the insight!

Examples companies that do a good job of integrating community + customer education and telling a “better together” story with them working collaboratively 👀

@Sarah Howell I have not. To be honest, I found their copyediting within the videos and in the transcripts to be terrible. They've promised to add more oversight to upcoming videos.

With the acquisition of Upshot, I'd be a lot more confident in the quality of the writing. But I do written in-house since we have the skills for it.

@Shannon Howard have you used TH for written case studies (since they brought on Upshot)?

One trick I have used with the internal team is to let them know a few weeks in advance when they can expect to receive a case study draft to review. I’ll create a meeting request titled “not a meeting, (name of customer) case study review” and that has helped.

If the customer and the internal team are primed and ready for a fairly quick review and approval process, two weeks is possible. If the customer has a challenging review and approval process is can take much longer. It took me one year to go through an approval process with a government customer in France once. 😑

now back to finding customers who want to be on-camera and talk publicly about our products! 🙂

can be shorter depending on the customer.

Love working with Laudable and @Angela Ferrante’s team where it takes apprx. 2 weeks to create a customer video based upon our template and then another 1-2 weeks for review and edits.

@Shannon Howard I'm in talks with them now ESPECIALLY because they now own Upshot. The combination of case study + video is one motion, with a flat rate is 🔥

Mine is shorter because we work with Testimonial Hero.

It's regrettable how I need to answer this question and it's due to the fact that we use in-house resources for post and we just don't have the bandwidth to be doing that. It impacts the customer experience in a big way.

@Jacqueline Gu @Emily Amos @Jeanne Talbot @Shannon Howard

What goals are you working on this week?

I’m working on getting more subscribers to the newsletter - got any tips?

for those of you that are doing email comms -- whats your average open rate for customers specifically

Beyond Goldcast’s Content Lab (AI), what tools are folks using for pulling out insights from videos (podcast recordings, recorded events, etc.)?

Happy Friday! Does anyone have examples of sales slides they created to promote review results? Looking for examples highlighting quotes, grids and/or badges

Happy Friday everyone! Wondering what, if anything, ya'll do for customer appreciation? Do you host a special event? Just reward them with swag? Would love to hear what creative and fun things others are doing.

We are having an open discussion today, see you in 10 minutes https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639

@Amanda Peacock, I would also love to take a peek also of different ideas. Thank you!

I did a fun thing that was a riff on “got milk” ads that was “got great customers?” but can’t seem to find the graphic in my Dropbox :(

@Kevin Lau do you have memes with fun ideas for promoting customer references with internal teams (if you have a moment to chime in)?

Just something simple that highlights customer references. No action required.

for a fellow Amanda? obvs

@Amanda Peacock would you mind sharing with me as well? I'm in the same boat, @Valeria Gomez! TY!!!

do you want them to submit people to become references or to encourage sales to use your reference process?

Looking 👀 for a fun cartoon, image or meme to share with an internal team to promote customer references...anyone have anything 🥳 FUN?

I'm sorry @Petra William just seeing this!

Thanks @Vera Flores and @Christa Niering !

Hi there crew, wondering if anyone has a template or visual way to map types of advocacy (reference call, event speaker, case study, video, quotes, slides, etc.) to business goals/outcomes as a way to educate xfn stakeholders what to request when they want to request for social proof?

I find that often people want the glitzy stuff like full blown case studies and highly edited videos but end up not using it and don’t get what they need.

Or perhaps you’ve worked out a tiring system for type of content, impact, lift, and budget?

Am I too late to join this call @Heather Elliott @Irwin Hipsman ?

Umeshpatel2030@hotmail.com|Umeshpatel2030@hotmail.com is email.

@Gianna Scorsone @Irwin Hipsman @Umesh Patel sorry just seeing all this. I know I put something on the calendar for today at 3 p.m. ET. I can move to 11 a.m. and include @Umesh Patel. @Umesh Patel please send me your email

Also looking for salary information here, but at a different level (3-5 years experience, associate-mid level). Does anyone have access to the Influitive or SlapFive salary resources @Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) mentioned?

Thanks all. I can do 11am on Thursday.

Hi @Evan Jacobs we did a call a few weeks ago with Jane Menyo who runs advocacy at Gong. She had an interesting slide where she grouped some advocates based on how they are prioritized for her program. It wasn’t tiered in that the advocates knew, but it might be helpful.

Thank you @Amy and @Marie Elliott! These are great!

Happy Monday! Can anyone point me to an example of a customer story that shows a partnership? (For example, a software company and a service provider that collaborate on a solution for the customer.)

Hey ...wanted to ask if there was anyone using Customer Marketing to help cross sell? Would love to here how people have used Campaigns to help cross sell or if there were other initiatives used?

Happy intl women’s day to all the cma pros in our community that continue to elevate our industry to new heights and inspire me and so many others daily. Thank you 🙏

I don't know how Rippling does it but I do know of companies who have shut down for an entire day to make outbound calls to customers to get them to complete surveys. I also know of companies who have paid big incentives to their internal teams for completed surveys. Not that I would recommend these approaches but it does happen.

can confirm it does -- but on the brightside that means it's FTC compliant! lol

@Amanda Schulte I maintain a deck of case study slides (one slide per customer with the "customer story" summary) and public "quote" slides that can be amplified in social or in presentations.

@Allison Hughes would love any ideas you have as well, catchy subject lines to encourage customers to take a survey. thanks!

haha YES @Amy!! @Allison Hughes what a cool experience! Yes, we'll have to share some stories sometime!

@Amanda Schulte - this is such great advice. I need to be better about doing that during the case study process as well. And 100000% am having the same problem with where to store & how to categorize.

Amazing @Evan Huck I also want UE but don't have the budget atm. I do all the above but also:
• If they're open to it - I ask to sit in on cadence calls with certain accounts with our CS team and use a few minutes at the end of the call to ask pointed questions to get quotes/testimonials.
• I listen to sales calls or ask sellers who I know have just had conversations with clients to let me know their feedback. Draft up some quotes and send to customer for approval (with an explanation first of course) This is helpful for higher-level champions who don't have time to survey/respond back in writing out answers.
• I'm also in charge of case studies, so when I'm interviewing customers I write down a lot of extra quotes and send to them with the case study draft for approval that way we have extra to pull from for content.
My current problem is now where/how to store quotes to make them accessible and not a ton of categorizing work for me 🫠

@Jeff Reekers. We could have had tons of fun writing bylines together. I did live blogging for 7 months where I had to create these catchy one liners every two-three minutes during my shifts. It was a little bit insane, but looking back - fun that I got to experience that time period in the Internet's evolution when live blogging was just so cool. Ha.

You are HIRED @Jeff Reekers...thank you!

Hi all, 👋
Part of my charter is to create a exclusive customer newsletter through Linkedin.
I would LOVE to hear feedback from the community- Pros and Cons?
Was certain templates you could choose from?