2023 has been a year of stability for customer marketing and advocacy professionals.
This was evident within the data captured in our 2023 State of Brand Advocacy report:
- 95% of respondents said the percentage of their customer advocates increased or held steady compared to the previous twelve months
- 94% of executives rated customer advocacy/marketing as either very important or important to the overall success of their organization
- 90% of respondents are satisfied or very satisfied with their customer advocacy/marketing efforts
- 88% of executives considered customer advocacy/marketing very important or important to their company’s selling efforts
- 86% of customer advocacy/marketing budgets have either grown or been maintained over the last 12 months.
- 72% of respondents believe their customer advocacy/marketing program will have greater importance over the next year compared to the previous twelve months
It was also seen amongst Influitive customers and their programs, where we saw double-digit growth across acts of advocacy and community engagement this year.
Before we head into 2024, let’s look back at what customer marketing and advocacy programs powered by Influitive accomplished in 2023.
Recruitment and Engagement
In 2023, our customers welcomed over 307,000 users to their programs, and more than 408,000 users have engaged with them. It’s important to note that most Influitive customers operate invite-only and exclusive programs, so recruitment is typically strategic and less broad than in public communities.
Collectively, they generated over $193 million in ROI via 8 million acts of advocacy. Customers have completed generated 21% more acts of advocacy compared to 2022.
Discussion and Community
Discussions were buzzing this year! We saw over 23,000 discussion topics posted and more than 666,000 replies logged. Topics posted declined 5% but replies were up 60% from last year.
Some of the top categories across all programs included:
- Welcome and introduction threads
- Campaign and contest announcements
- Product announcements and requests
- Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions with subject matter experts
- Product tips and tricks
More than 689,000 users were engaged in discussions in 2023, which is 56% higher than last year.
Activities and Acts of Advocacy
When it comes to recognition, our customers’ users have earned more than 163 million points and redeemed over 95,000 rewards. To help make this happen, they completed over 7.8 million activities, which is 32% more than in 2022.
Users completed over 339,000 social shares (generating over 804,000 clicks) and responded to more than 567,000 survey and feedback challenges. Over 2.2 million educational acts of advocacy were completed, which included consuming educational content and completing educational certifications. Influitive customers generated $96 million in ROI via surveys, feedback and educational acts of advocacy and over $1 million in ROI via social shares.
Other notable acts of advocacy include making over 84,000 referrals, writing more than 33,000 reviews–on sites like G2 and TrustRadius–and acting as a reference nearly 4,000 times. Each saw a surge in popularity, with 60% more reviews, 34% more references fulfilled and 31% more referrals submitted compared to 2022. Influitive customers generated $27 million in ROI via reviews, references, and referral campaigns.
Wrapping Up
We hope you enjoyed this year-end review of key customer insights and trends. On behalf of all of us at Influitive, we wish you a restful holiday season and an even more incredible year of program success in the year ahead!
