Iron Mountain’s Blueprint for a Successful Customer Marketing Strategy-thumbnail

Searching for the most useful tool in your marketing kit?

Put down your binoculars, because it’s right in front of you: your customers.

Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, but if you look closely you’ll see that your loyal customers are your greatest asset. If you nurture your relationship with them, they’ll help you:

  1. Increase your brand’s reputation and reach
  2. Help you generate revenue and pipeline
  3. Become lifelong, loyal advocates

But how can you uncover these useful brand advocates? We’re bringing some of the most successful advocate marketers to your neck of the woods so you can learn how.

Join us in San Francisco on July 26th and Austin on July 28th to hear how you can harness the power of your advocates to grow your business. (Hint: it’s all about making the experience better for you and your existing customers.)

Here’s a sneak peek at the stories you’ll be hearing around our campfires from some of our presenters.

1. Extend your brand reach to the stars by making customers happier

Genevieve Guerette headshotJust like marshmallows alone aren’t as good as s’mores, relying only on one strategy to reach out to customers and prospects isn’t as effective as using several. In order to engage their loyal fans, Clarizen re-examined their marketing strategy to reach out offline as well as online.

“We really like to put our customers in the spotlight. We want to make sure that they’re the true heroes that shine for our company,” says Genevieve Guerette, Clarizen’s Director of Customer Marketing.

To do this, Clarizen began focusing on what customers wanted to get out of their annual conference. They created an online community for their fans, called Champions League, where they shared timely activities and learned what customers really wanted from their offline conference.

During their conference, advocates had the chance to participate in a scavenger hunt and engage with employees in a VIP lounge. This led to a 93% satisfaction rate with the conference. Engaging customers online before, during and after their live event also paid off for Clarizen—when they asked advocates to write reviews on 3rd party websites, the brand increased its number of genuine reviews by 100%.

2. Accelerate revenue generation faster than an ATV with personal connections

amy bills blackbaud headshotBlackbaud’s customers loved them, but Blackbaud didn’t have a way to build 1:1 connections and show them love back. They were relying on spreadsheets and a LinkedIn group to communicate with customers. They wanted a scalable way to create strong customer relationships.

Amy Bills, Blackbaud’s Marketing Director, knew their customers would love being part of a community. She helped build the foundation for their successful advocate program, called Blackbaud Champions, by getting Blackbaud’s employees a to recruit passionate customers for the program.

Once employees and customers started interacting in one centralized community, it was easy for Blackbaud to engage its advocates and show them how much they were appreciated. This inspired Blackbaud’s influence millions of dollars in revenue by actings as references across 125 sales opportunities in 2015 and increase Blackbaud’s referral pipeline 40X between 2013 and 2015.

Blackbaud’s Powerful New Revenue Stream: Advocates
Download now!

3. Build a customer experience that’s more solid than a log cabin with a community

tracy eiler headshotInsideView knew bombarding customers with marketing messages and product feedback requests would be as well-received as putting a bee in their tent. “Advocates are going to get fatigued,” says Tracy Eiler, CMO of Insideview.

That’s why InsideView created a centralized advocate marketing program, called InsideView Informed, where they could invite many of their customers to give feedback, connect with each other, and become more successful with InsideView solutions.

By building a valuable support system for their advocates throughout the customer journey, InsideView created a better experience—and made their customers more loyal in the process. This new communication channel has also made it easier to collect valuable insights about what customers really want from InsideView products—making it easier to keep them happy.

Live a little too far away to come to our campfire? Don’t worry—we’re heading to Toronto, Boston and Chicago in September, and Seattle, San Jose, and Palo Alto in November. Stay tuned for more updates.

How to calculate the ROI of advocate marketing
Download now