In the beginning of 2015, Namely, a HR, payroll, and benefits software company, had plenty of passionate customers…but no way to reach out to all of them.
Amy Rosenberg, Namely’s Community Marketing Manager, had only a handful of customers to turn to when sales or other departments needed advocates for things like references or reviews. She knew there were many more customers who would love to help Namely—but wasn’t sure how to engage and leverage all of them.
Amy could only maintain a few close customer relationships on her own. She knew without a different approach, Namely risked burning out their best clients with too many requests and leaving other potential advocates in the dark. “I wanted a way to get to know each Namely admin on a more personal level and build lasting relationships with them,” she says.
She knew that if Namely had a scalable way to regularly communicate 1:1 with their customers, her small-but-mighty marketing team could drive real impact for their business and make their customers’ lives better.
So, Amy did what any good marketer would do: she started looking for technology that could bridge the gap.
At first, she thought an online community could solve her problems. However, she soon discovered a different platform that would allow her to influence $1.8 million in new revenue in just one year: an advocate marketing program.
To learn how she inspired Namely’s advocates to help out the brand, download her success story. Or read on for a quick summary.
Creating an advocate haven
Amy decided that launching an online community for HR and finance professionals could help bring Namely clients together and provide them with added value after they purchased.
“We noticed that, unlike other departments, HR professionals did not have a broader community to learn from and lean on,” said Amy. “Instead, they came to Namely Support Consultants with questions spanning from ‘Where do I buy the right kind of envelopes to mail W2s?’ to ‘What process should I use to tie compensation to performance?’ We knew that creating a client community could help us with retention.”
However, she soon discovered a way to give Namely’s customers the connections they craved while driving results for the marketing department: an advocate community built on Influitive’s AdvocateHub platform.
This would give Namely’s customers a way to interact with one another and Namely employees (like most community software) but also make asking customers for references or reviews more engaging and rewarding (a plus for Amy’s marketing team).
Namely’s advocate community delivers
Since starting their Backstage Pass advocate community in August 2015, Namely has generated:
- $1.8 million in ARR influenced by advocates
- $35K in referral revenue
- 500+ joined advocates from over 300 companies
- 10X increase in referenceable customers
- 90+ reviews on third party sites
Want to find out how Amy made it happened? Download the ebook to get her top advocate marketing tips, or watch the video below. (Or, if you’re ready to deliver these results to your team, contact us now.)
