#discussions

Hi Everyone, We have some case studies that have quotes from client contacts that have now left that company. I’m curious how others handle this so I thought I would post this here and ask if anyone else has experienced this and if so what did you do? Did you go back to the client and try to get a new quote? take the case study off the website? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

What platforms are people using to run the application process for their awards programs? For reference, we use typeform and that has worked well enough over the first two years of the Golden Grots. But in the name of evolution, I wanted to see what else was out there before we launch year 3.

Many years ago (when people were more centrally located in offices) we sent a swag kit to the implementer. In it, there was a 'treasure map' we created with specific onboarding milestones in it. If they completed all the steps in the map before 30 days we gave their team a pizza party. We had a few customers hit that milestone and they all enjoyed it. I know that things like this are much harder to do today though... 😢

@Kelly Miller @Shannon Howard I’m a big fan of Sendoso & branded apparel that folks will actually wear. When I worked at Salesforce we had a swag store, & I purchased a jacket for myself that I kept in the office for chilly days. Recently I shipped a box of my former employer’s useful swag to a friend who was recently hired, just before Dreamforce.

Love the idea, @Kelly Lynch!

@Kelly Miller - haven't done new client welcome gifts in a while, but what we just did for a different program was established a budget and a few options that fit that budget. We then offered customers the option to pick which gift they wanted. That seemed to go over well!

I’m not sure if this has been done before, but the idea struck me as a good one. What if when a customer begins implementation & training, we introduced them to an “onboarding buddy - a like-minded customer, who has successfully implemented & is up & running tracking ROI in a similar use-case?” I’m modeling this idea from my own experience of onboarding into my role & having the comfort of a buddy I can reach out to & exchange ideas, learn through their mistakes & rearview mirror lens. This customer connection could be a gift through the introduction & curated interactions for growth & community.

@Andru Creighton and I built these last year!

I do not seem to have any in the resources database (idk how this is). But @Alexie Glover @Matias Vivone @Emily Smith @Tiffany P. Nguyen are all well versed in this area.

Hey everyone, I’m looking to connect with anyone who’s worked with or managed global customer marketing teams, especially outside of North America and the UK. If that’s you—or if you know someone who has—please reach out! I’d love to pick your brain and explore different areas for customer marketing, particularly around team structure and distribution of work. Thanks so much! 😊

Would anyone be willing to share their reference request email templates? Building them out for our program, and don't want to start from scratch if I don't have to!

Does anyone have examples of successful emails they've used to gather G2 reviews? Looking to send from Gainsight from our CS lead. We would prefer not to offer a gift for reviewing. What has worked for you all?

Has anyone been part of/run a successful referral program for the enterprise SaaS level? I haven't seen it work at scale for larger/enterprise accounts because the sales cycle tends to be longer and include a number of stakeholders - but would actually LOVE to be wrong!

anyone here from Madison, Wisconsin? looking to buy a gift card to a nice restaurant there for a customer and hoping this group has some recommendations.

Hi everyone - I am looking for some good examples (past or present) where you’ve used customer story material in “derivative” content / “snackable” content. Looking for examples of quote cards, customer slide templates, and other creative and alternative way to feature a customer other than a case study. Also -if you have a customer quote or approval to use a logo, but no written story, how have you been able to promote it? I’m looking for screen shots / links to look at for some inspiration. Thank you! #question

Hey everyone. I'm working with our CS and clinical team for our annual customer event. We're brainstorming on a few things: A feedback corner (we're thinking an interactive type of area where customers can submit product feedback or contribute to a wish list) as well as an interactive type of booth or area where customers can share their stories with our product, or AI technology in general. Has anyone done something related to these two things and had success? Even technically, how did you do it? Thanks! #question

Hi Kaveri! We just had an event with our customers and we hosted an appreciation luncheon - this was just for our most engaged customers - (a special, "invite-only" event). Our CEO, CCO and CPO were in attendance to thank folks and took time to answer a Q&A session. We had flowers as centerpieces and the person at the table with a sticker (it was a sunflower sticker) on the bottom of their chair, got to take the flower with them. We also had candies on the table, plus selfie props and a selfie photo frame for them take photos with and tag our event. Additionally, upon registering, we provided a simple one pager where we highlighted all of the fun things we had in store for them at the conference. This included not only what was described above, but we did an amenity drop to their room (chocolate covered strawberries with "Thank You" written in chocolate, or macaroons) along with a thank you card, front row seating at our general sessions (they LOVED this - we had a lighted "lollipop" so they could find us and then we guided them to their seats), We also passed out lanyard pins with the name of our program - they loved this too! Relatively inexpensive. We had a charity walk on one of the nights and we highlighted to those that were participating that we could all walk together - it was great to mingle with our members. We also texted our customers in the morning to let them know what we had in store for them that day - they loved this also. Hope this helps!!

Hi everyone, I'm looking for ideas on how to recognize and celebrate our customers at in-person events. What can we do to make these moments truly memorable for them, and how can we surprise them with something fun and useful? Thank you in advance :)

Hi everyone.

I have a question about customer growth marketing in your experiences.

My role was originally designed to focus on strategy in terms of customer lifecycle marketing and crafting emails to enable CSMs to upsell, cross sell customers and manager customer events.

Recently my role is now creating customer emails in Pardot 90% of the time.

I’m concerned that spending most of my time in Pardot is giving me specialized experience but not allowing me to grow in my career. I’ve shared best practices, such as focusing on me managing the customer reference program, focusing on beta testers, increasing online reviews and supporting product marketing.

With that said, how should I continue to voice the value to the business of me focusing on the total role of customer growth marketing and not just writing emails and sending in Pardot everyday.

I manage a community of director-level and above, mostly executives/CMOs, with monthly calls and we have a very hard time keeping them engaged in the times between calls in our Slack community. What tips and tricks have moved the needle in your executive communities?

I didn't, unfortunately!

Hi @Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly), my membership to the CMSweekly LinkedIn group is still in pending status, just a nudge to admit me when you're able.

@Nick Venturella @Rebecca Grossman I'd love to engage in this discussion as well

Hi @Sam Harrison did you get any answers on LinkedIn? I'd love to see some different customer story approaches myself.

You should post in the Influitive channel too, and in the LinkedIn group or ask @Diana Gabroveanu if you can post in her slack.

@Perri Chaikof I'd love to learn more about your experience with Deeto if you're open to chat!

A destination-based program is its own platform where customers, as members, log in, or it may be set up as single sign on from your product or elsewhere, but it is its own destination for customers. Influitive, Zealot, Base, these are all destination-based advocacy platforms.

I run my entire program in Deeto. It's basically our advocacy CRM and social proof database. I'm very happy with it.

Nick what do you mean by "destination-based"? I'm putting together my thoughts on an advocacy program - but do not plan on having points or a rewards catalog - would love to hear what others are doing.

Anyone out there running a destination-based advocacy program solely incentivized by intrinsic value and some surprise and delight? No self-serve rewards catalog one can redeem points for. The last few advocacy programs I've worked on were moving closer to this model, but now I'm in one that's just about there, and want to validate.

If you're in the boat I described, I would love to better understand what's working for you with such a model.

Posted this on LinkedIn but would love to get recommendations from the CMA crowd as well: Which companies are creating cool or unusual case studies and customer advocacy content? I'm hoping to get inspired.
I love Mutiny’s Playbooks, who else is creating great stuff?

Hi all - let's discuss customer advocacy programs, as in "hey customer, become a (named champion) or join our (named) advocacy program." If you have a named program, do you also have Influitive or Base or some other place for customers to log in to? Or do you just maintain a list of everyone opted in? If not Influitive/Base, what tech do you use to help you manage your advocates and keep track of what types of activities they want to participate in? I'm working on some ideas for 2025 and want to see how others are thinking about planning their programs for next year. My goal is to have a group of customers I can easily invite to participate in advocacy activities. Thank you!!

Has anyone here used custom objects in SalesForce for advocacy tracking/nominations? This is for very early stage "program" - I'm not ready to introduce any new software as the initial focus isn't on building out a formal broad advocacy program, but do want to move out of spreadsheets and google docs for tracking. I've seen it done pretty well at a previous org and curious if others have opinions or examples or warnings 😁

KPI help request! What are you tracking in the realm of retention / adoption / engagement? I don't own advocacy or expansion.

Hey Taylor! Thanks for your input. Totally agree - I was a bit surprised when I was asked to look into "late stage" contraction mitigation. Thankfully adoption team did agree to also partner on this and focus on earlier areas like your suggestion.

Working on a new newsletter and wondering how to distinguish it from other customer comms as customer-focused news and not things like product updates or other types of campaigns. Does it need a recognizable banner, a catchy title? I'd love to know what has worked in your orgs, or even what you've seen and liked as a customer.

Hi Joel, how are you? So one community team wants to curate all the posts from their members (at least in the beginning) before they are publicly visible in the community.

We use pardot for customer newsletters, customer marketing, product updates, etc. Not a fan.

Curious if anyone has had success with any contraction mitigation campaigns? (Sales assisted or digital).

Specifically for license-based SaaS where the main driver of contraction is low license utilization.

We already have playbooks for CSMs to reach out if license utilization drops below a certain threshold at any time, but was wondering if anyone has taken a more nuanced (or completely different) approach to this.

Appreciate the responses!

We have a similar structure - transactional notifications through a separate tool that our product team owns, then marketing team is using MAP. I think there's appetite for a tool that's more personalized for scaled customer success emails (not necessarily marketing comms), but good to see a mix of tools are used

Out of curiosity, would love to hear what email systems/platforms people are using for customer-focused comms (either marketing, digital CS or product comms) - multiple systems? Just one? Pros? Cons?

Hey all! One customer wants to curate all posts in their customer community at least for the first three months. What are your thoughts on this regarding the cons and pros, the effect on this or the right policy/way to actually moderate the posts? Any insights to share?

Does anyone have a visual that shows an ideal customer advocacy lifecycle journey? I want to showcase how you can create advocates early on in the customer journey who will be willing to provide quotes, leave reviews, etc. Going to start drafting something but looking for inspo!

Hey all! I was curious about what everyone uses as a resource hub for their advocates/ambassadors. We want to build a destination for our ambassadors to tap into training and learning resources. We were looking at Notion. However, we won't be renewing our license for it. Ideally, don't want to create it in Google Docs, but also want to avoid investing $$$ in gainsight/khoros solution if possible.

Has anyone used &Open? I am going through an RFP for a gifting platform and came across them in my research. The demo has impressed me and they have a short-list of big clients: Airbnb, Atlassian, and Intercom. I have looked at Postal and of course Sendoso (power user for years), but &Open has caught my eye....would love to hear others' insights into &Open!

Does anyone have a Director-level Customer Marketing job description they'd be willing to share? I'm working on one and want to make sure it aligns with how other companies are structuring this kind of role

I'm stuck on a customer gifting idea and need a vendor rec! I want to send a live plant (ideally a money tree or bonsai with our branding) to a small group of customers in Europe. Does anyone have an EU vendor they've used to send plants?

Hi @Anna Bryan, echoing Emily and Tim on their responses. It will depend on how long it is, if it's an agency or a video vendor doing the project will determine a lot of the pricing.

Happy Friday Customer Marketers! Does anyone have video contacts that they know of or have used and would like to refer them? I have a few, but would love to look into some new ones. Thank you in advance.

Hello! My executive team suddenly has a keen interest in customer stories and I’m putting together a presentation to talk about how they are captured, where to find them, the impact they have, and priorities for the second half of the year. What tips do you have for how to kick off a presentation like this?! I feel like that’s such an important part to nail and I am drawing blanks!

Hey Kate, what type of content and programming are you offering in your executive track?

Hi everyone! I am beginning to put together plans and budget requests for my 2025 advocacy strategy. One new area we'll be investing in is partnering with a video production agency to produce high quality customer case study videos.

It's a bit too early in the process for me to seek quotes from agencies, but to help inform my budget requests for the year I'm wondering if anyone can share a rough estimate of what we should anticipate spending per video?

If your event app has some type of passport game (e.g. visit 'x' number of booths to be entered to win 'xyz'), you could consider reaching out to your event team to add your community booth (if you have one!) to the list to help boost foot traffic.

You could also consider community-specific contests, games, giveaways, scavenger hunts, or meetups to increase your member-to-member touch points at the event.

I've seen some past clients play community Bingo (e.g. 'find another member from the same state as you') while others have hosted their own 'spirit day' where all members come dressed in tie dye clothing on the first Tuesday of the conference.

There are also booth-specific activations like hiring a professional photographer to take free headshots or having a caricaturist or barista to help create a unique onsite experience.

Hey folks, any thoughts, ideas, inspiration, language or examples on how to land snr customer execs to attend an executive experience tract at a yearly conference?

Anyone have some creative ideas for promoting your Community before and during your company conference? We have sign ups in the email promotions, QR codes for the digital screens and registration tables, and pins for existing members to show support

yes I've had CAB members add it to their work experience in the past, here's an example. The only downside of this I've seen is that G2 crowd thinks they are employed by Branch and has rejected their reviews because of it

Hi CMA friends! I am putting together guidelines for our GTM teams on reference call requests and I was wondering if any of you have set a threshold for the # of reference call requests that can be sent to a customer in a certain time frame? Something "a customer cannot be requested more than 6x per quarter" or "1 reference request per 30 days." Is there a best practice or "magic number" that you've seen work to combat reference burnout? Thanks in advance!

Thank you all so much!

Hello! I’m working on launching an advocacy program in the B2B space that will bring together innovators and thought leaders in the industry. We’re starting with a few select customers and planning to grow the community over the next few years. If anyone has experience launching a new community like this, I’d love to chat and hear about your approach and what made it successful!

Hi Everyone! Does anyone manage referrals at their company? Ex would be “refer a friend get $50” campaigns.

1. What tool do you use for this?
2. Do you manage this under customer advocacy or does it fall under customer lifecycle? At my org it’s two separate teams but I know it’s one team at other companies. Thanks!

Hi all! Does anyone currently utilize the SurveyMonkey <> Salesforce or Marketo integrations? We’re evaluating both and would love to connect with someone actively using one or the other.

Question for email marketers. I'm working on setting up a Free Hubspot account, and in the test email messaging in Gmail, the Sender Name is showing up as a really long email address instead of company name with this at the end: hubspotfree.hs-send.com
From what I'm reading it has to do with Privacy updates earlier this year and impacts Google/Yahoo email addresses.
Question - does this mean these email will likely go to SPAM?
Is it worth upgrading to Marketing STarter to avoid this? WIll that fix it?

Hey ya'll! I am currently in the process of putting together a deck for our new advocacy program and I am having a hell of a time trying to map the advocacy journey through slides. I'd love any and all suggestions of what you might have found successful when taking your program to executive leadership -if you have examples you'd be a life saver. We're looking at doing what we can accomplish today (pretty much by myself) and then an optimum journey (which will include many more stake holders).

Hi all! Trying to get a feel for whether folks ever tie customer advocacy activities to sales concessions (a "give to get" approach), and whether these are generally successful in getting customers to share their stories, logos, participation. How about a for yes you've used them, 🔴 for no, and comments about the success/failure... Appreciate it!

I set up an AOA tracking field in SFDC with my sales ops team. One thing I asked for was the option (not required) to attach an opportunity to the act of advocacy. This allowed me to report on influenced revenue from customer reference calls, specifically, that led to closed won deals. I also tracked all other AOAs, had a time stamp to mark the last AOA to ensure I was not over-tapping my advocates. The advocate field lived on the contact record. I would also recommend getting the team you are working with to build you out some preliminary reports so you are ready to roll with metrics once everything is up and running.

Hey all! I am sure there are previous conversations on this, but would love people's recommendations on a Community Platform tool. Some key points we're looking for:
1. Ability to leverage for external display on our website on a community page to showcase maybe certain events or elements we want to make public, but then also the ability to login and get into the full community access
2. Ability to access it via a mobile app or even just a good mobile experience for on-the-go members
3. Ability to house resources to use it as a education hub and courses
4. Ability to have forums, but segment for specific members/groups
5. Potential ability to support groups that are international - i.e. a dedicated forum or view for customers in Mexico and in Spanish - it's okay if we have to do the load in of teh Spanish language, but the flex for international
6. Security - ensuring that it's a secure platform for customer data that we capture.
Of course, open to any other data points you all have recommendations around what we should consider and where you have seen value in creating communities?

Thanks @Amy Ng. @Bianca Del Vecchio do you have any examples of this?

G’Day All, I am working on building a program on strategic partnerships with language hubs/developer influencers/3p sites. We are short of sponsorship budget so looking for avenues that could be mutual beneficial. The main objective is to have more traffic to our platform from 3p pages. Does anyone here has any experience working on such program? Many thanks in advance.

Does anyone have a great Customer Marketing m/Advocacy Value slide that highlights the benefits of partnering with you on marketing engagements. Something that the customer success team could use to start conversations on marketing opportunities, etc.. would love to see examples if you’re willing to share!

Thank you everyone! I might take some of you up on a call about this since I couldn’t make yesterday’s master mind chat once I get a bit father down the line with ops. I appreciate you all!

Allison,

On top of the safe advice in the thread, I’ve had success getting C-Suite to do C-level opportunities that align to their own goals… Global ad campaign - yes.
Speaking to Forbes - yes.
Speaking at a Gartner conference - yes.

Offer them things appropriate to their level and their socio economic level. (ie rewards aren’t enough to click the link in most cases to someone making close to $500k a year as a base salary).

Happy to chat further if I can be of any help. Good luck! 🙌

Hi Amanda! Before I had the funding for a tool, I did this in scdc also. We prioritized it at the contact level, had Check boxes if the were reference-able, activities, and influenced revenue. The real question is how much time is your sales / marketing opps team willing to dedicate to the project? It would 100% be cheeper to buy Okta. Happy to jump on a call.

Here it is IRL via LinkedIn post. I have not gotten budget to make them again 😂 but they were awesome

These are SO fancy!

Yes! Our winners posted them on social as well, which got great traction

Hey Amanda! I’ve built out two reference programs in sfdc. My current one was built via the case management process and is only available on the opportunity level. From there I have a dashboard that includes status of the oppty and status of the references. I can also tag the customer who took the call.

CRYSTAL GORILLAS. 😍 @Taylor Page do you have photos?

Does anyone run a customer community well as a team of 1 with limited resources?

Hi Allison,
Another idea is to develop an Executive Sponsorship Program (ESP) and align customer CEOs with execs from your company. Design the advocacy journey as Vera suggested with multiple touchpoints that are of interest to the C-level contact. They may want to speak at an industry event, connect with an analyst, or mentor another C-suite connection, Finding out what interests them can be very eye-opening.

Hi Amanda, There is a lot to think through, but tracking your advocacy efforts in Salesforce is not a huge lift. It will involve adding some fields at the contact and account levels, and I would recommend creating an Advocacy task to track recruitment/onboarding, request fulfillment, and/or customer evidence creation.
I am also happy to share some ideas 1:1 and show you some that I have created with my clients.

We got gorgeous awards from Society Awards (they were crystal gorillas to match our logo!). They were not cheap (~$1,000 each) but were so beautiful and really special. They do have some lower cost options

I run mine all internally on SFDC! I was not the original person who built it so I don't have the project plan, unfortunately, but I'm more than happy to hop on a call and walk through it with you!

We did it all internally in SFDC at my last place.

Hi @Amanda Schulte - not sure if this will help, but I used to create campaign codes to attach to each activity ( I know, its sounds like alot) but it helped me run a report to share the different stages and advocacy activities of ALL advocates loaded into SFDC. Feel free to ping me, and we can jump on a quick call too

At Gong, we've done both physical awards and digital (times square billboards that we used for social announcements).

I love the trophies that G2 gave out this year. I think they're acrylic but looked super classy and chic.

Has anyone had success with C-Suite customers joining their advocacy program? Is there anything you do differently for C-Suite clients? We are finding that our executive level customers will advocate for us if the opportunity is relevant and something they want public recognition for, but that it’s pretty unlikely that they would ever actually go in and access a portal, claim rewards, etc.

Hi friends! Is anybody doing anything innovative/cool/different with customer newsletters that you might be willing to send me an example of? Or any platforms that you're using to send that are good to work with? We're pretty old school with our current newsletter so looking at all the ways we might be able to shake it up. Appreciate the insight as always!

Hi everyone. Has anyone created social collateral for CAB members to put on their LinkedIn Profile? Would love to see examples of how your CAB members promote their membership!

Hi all, I have a client looking for quick and simple ways to collect video testimonials from clients at conferences without a video crew. I know I've seen a cool tool for this, but can't track it down. Also, has anyone tried something like Opus to grab video snippets from Zoom? TIA

Hi All 🙂
I need your opinions and suggestions, please.
We're looking to explore ways to repurpose case study content on social media. Could you share what you've done other than static images on social media and how effective it was?

Try AI! I typically use Jasper for this but feel Chat GPT has improved lately with email copy. They do great with outreach-style emails.. I usually use a prompt like.. "write me a casual email directly to a client with XXX points and X content"

I am working on putting together customizable outreach templates to existing healthcare clients for our sales team. i am probably ovethinking this but without knowing the type of work we are doing on the accounts (it varies, we do custom software dev), any best practices or how i should approach drafting this? We are promoting a healthcare related white paper and the cta is to schedule a call to learn more. issue is, im not sure which of these clients the white paper is relevant to without going line by line and researching...

Yes, if we don't already have permission to use their logo via our contract. Otherwise we'll likely just reach out as a courtesy.

Will you be seeking permission before posting?

Happy Wednesday! Anyone have any examples of successful customer go-live social media shout outs? We want to start highlighting our customers on LinkedIn as they go live with one of our products, but I'd like to see what direction others have gone in with graphics/copy.

More background: some customers are completely new, some have been with us for a while and added on a new product, and everything in-between.

I might take you up on that offer after the 4th

Makes sense! Good to give ample notice for attendees. Here's what we're working on now in case it's a helpful framework:
We are doing an Executive Dinner Series in Sept (internally we call it a roadshow) in partnership with a company we worked with to produce a retail-focused research initiative last year (any "meaty" topic that's trending in your industry would work of course) So we are going to 3 cities where we have the highest concentration of retail customers and we'll be using that research as the foundation for the dinners. They'll be treated to a high-end dinner/experience and then discuss the topics at hand with a moderator who will keep the conversation flowing. We work with sales to identify the right contacts to invite to these dinners to ensure its mutually beneficial for all attendees--who would benefit from talking to whom (good cross sell/upsell ops, etc.) The dinners will follow "Chatham House rules" which means the attendees will all agree to not repeat conversations outside of the dinner so that everyone feels comfortable to speak freely and have honest conversations. We also surveyed some of our most engaged C-suite contacts last year to see what topics and event cadence would be most enticing for them. They are invited to everything at that level, so we wanted to produce an event that they would be likely to attend.

You could also treat it like a CAB and use the time to ask for feedback about products, programs, etc.

happy to have a quick chat if that's easier or you have more questions!

I’m aiming for October and once I have a place Identified I’d like to get invites out. Ideally 3ish months early.

Nice. I think smaller groups are the way to go for exec events. What's the time frame for your retreat? As in, how much time will be asked of your attendees? @Kati Jacobson

@Bria Jones it will be only customers. The only other people that MIGHT be there but it’s highly unlikely is partners.
I would say 10-20 customers (5-10 employees) is my goal since it’s our first time doing this.

Hey @Kati Jacobson, I've been responsible for the Executive Experience at my company for a while now, happy to offer my thoughts! Couple of clarifying questions though:
Do you know which customer executives you'll be inviting? As in, existing customers, prospects or a mix?
And how many do you anticipate? Intimate gathering or a larger group?

Hey everyone! I'm hoping to get some thoughts on planning a customer executive retreat. I was asked to plan one but I wasn't given any guidance on the goals of the event. I have a few ideas, but I'd love to know what others have done if they have hosted one.

Happy Friday! I'm looking for some knowledge on a couple of ideas I'm working through with our team.

1. We have some blue-chip logos that I'd like to start moving toward doing advocacy activities. My initial idea is working with our CSM, Sales, Renewals, PR, and Corp Comms teams to identify a dozen or more strategic accounts and develop a 12-month advocacy plan for them that we could present and get approval for. Has anyone done something similar to this that they could share?
2. Do any of your organizations build advocacy activities into your sales or renewal contracts? If so, is this something that has converted into actual, successful content or engagement?

I'm happy to share our charter as well. Send me an email at Emily.Coleman@solarwinds.com|Emily.Coleman@solarwinds.com and I can send the file and our strategy deck.

TGI(Almost)F! - Does any have any recommendations for video testimonial agencies or videographers to work with in the Seattle area?

When I launched a CAB, I gave the inaugural members a term of 12-18 months. I checked in with them at the 12 month mark to see if they wanted to continue or drop from the cohort. This worked quite well for me as it allowed me to onboard new members without starting a new group from scratch, which helped with culture and norms. I agree that an NDA is necessary. I also followed the structure of 4 CAB meetings/year (1 in person at the user conference, 3 virtual).

Happy Monday! Does anyone have any documentation on their CABs that they'd be willing to share? We're looking to start one and our exec is interested in seeing how other companies have communicated tenure and removing people from the CAB at the conclusion of the year while also keeping some people in year over year. He also is interested in seeing any kind of 'contract' that they sign as part of joining. If anyone has anything on this, or info on how you structure yours it'd be very much appreciated!

Hi! Morning! Wondering if anyone is using Asana to manage Customer Marketing requests beyond a form? Any additional integrations? or interesting workflows?

@Renata Peña - Sounds great! I have an off site on Tuesday and then on vacation for a week (whoop!). Are you available after the week of July 4th?

Hi @Melissa DiBernardo! This is super interesting. I'd love to chat more in depth about this! Not sure if you'd have 15 mins to zoom/huddle next week and chat real time but let me know and we can connect separately!

HELLO CMA. Question for the group. What is the largest amount you have used for a gift card incentive? (Or another reward?) Exploring the option to offer a big incentive as part of a Slack Community awards program. I would imagine I would need to include a disclaimer that government employees might not be able to collect the incentive due to company policies.

Cusotmer comms sits under Customer Marketing. The PR/Media comms sits under Corporate comms. All are under marketing.

Thanks all! I'm wondering - do you focus then more on media/PR engagement, or do you go cross-funnel? My manager seems to want me to drive activity around the big "moments" but we have a very immature CM/advocacy function, and feel like getting meaningful stories into the hands of sales people and supporting campaigns is more impactful in the short term.

Hey CMA crew! I was wondering, have any of you ever sat in a comms team before? My first time in many years of CM and looking for ways of working

Hi everyone! I am currently putting together a list of requirements for a "Customer Resource Center". Not necessarily an LMS, although my requirements document will definitely include components of one (just probably ranked lower). Right now we just have a landing page on Hubspot with links to different resources for customers. I'm curious if any of you have done this and have a list put together? Or if not, maybe you could just share your top things you look for when evaluating vendors/building out a resource center? My goal is to be able to determine if we can continue getting by with just a landing page or what it would look like to build out a robust resource center for our customers, and what vendors would make sense for us to evaluate right now.

Hi everyone! I am going to be hiring soon for two to three roles in my team and was hoping someone might have some job template templates to share for a community manager. This is the role I’ve got least experience doing myself so I’m hoping to leverage others’ wisdom :) know of any good resources?

Hi all! Wanted to reach out and see if any folks have started a Champion Program from the ground up at their companies? We currently have a community and we are looking to implement a group of champions who will be those driving conversation, responding to questions, maybe hosting ask me anything forums, etc. really just taking on the role of "community leadership" who love our product and in exchange position it as a career building moment, gift swag, etc. Would also be more than happy to do a huddle/zoom to connect and chat more 1:1! Any help would be appreciated 🙂

I've always written outreach sequences in a google or onedrive doc, gathered feedback/edits from SMEs or other marketers (like product marketing) and then plopped them into an outreach tool like salesloft, outreach, gong engage. If you aren't using one of those tools, perhaps you can research a free gmail plugin to give you some analytics on what's performing, getting opens, are they being used at all, etc.

It will be hard to verify if sales people are using the right cadences for your initiatives, IF they're using them at all, and how each is performing so you can iterate in the future without a tool.

Additionally, manually tracked outreach is just hard for the sales people (speaking from experience as I am working to get salesloft for our upsell team now, our sales team has it).

Hi all - so I'm still new in my role and at a start up that is also pretty new to the idea of Customer Marketing. I'm being asked to create templates for our AMs to do soft prospecting to our existing customers along with sequences for cold prospecting... I feel like I may be overthinking it but does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to create these templates? Is there a format I should be following or is this a simple Google doc with an email outline? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

@Madison G Hi. Are you thinking in app messages that can be highly targeted or product notifications that all can see. In general, when someone pays for your product and logs in to get work done, it is probably not the time to market to them. It is tempting. The one group that is an exception are those that purchase on a monthly basis.

@Madison G I'm responsible for all of our in app messaging - happy to chat if you'd like!

@Madison G Was the negative feedback specific? If it's actionable feedback, maybe there's a way to minimize those negative sentiments.

@Madison G I’ve done this in the past too and didn’t get negative pushback from users. My initial thought is to re-evaluate the messaging/offer/ask? Is it already tailored to the persona or company?

did you get any push back from practitioners? The view rates have been great, but the customer experience feedback has been 50/50

I have—it’s been far and away the most efficient means of driving reviews

Happy Friday, team! Curious if any SaaS customer marketers have tried to leverage in-product notifications as a way to market to users and what the feedback was? All input would be appreciated 🙂

We are getting on with Evan Jacobs now. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4029861639 (I just started this channel to drive conversations here).

Thanks for adding me to the channel!