May 16, 2023

Superficial interactions can hinder community building and achieving larger goals. In a large company like Adobe, which has many divisions and over 28,000 employees, those community goals need to be focused on even more.

While I started as the EMEA Community Manager for the Adobe Support Community, during the pandemic I was promoted to manage our superusers, known as the Adobe Community Professionals. My experience working with influencers and superusers at other companies helped me see that there were some massive opportunities to unlock the potential of this community.

Trying to Remedy a Disconnected, Transactional Community

The Adobe Professionals Program began as an influencer program in 2006, and by the time I arrived, the Program’s purpose was focused on providing self-serve support via forums. Support was transactional to members who had previously been more involved in influencer activity, and retention was a challenge.

The more I talked to our members, I realized there was a disconnect between content, influence, and engagement. I began exploring ways to make the program more flexible, recognize members for helping customers beyond support and forums, and ultimately expand the program to other platforms.

The Shift from “Professionals” to “Experts”

This turned into a comprehensive initiative to shift our program from Professionals to Experts, and it was more than just a name change. To start, I created an engagement form to expand the Program beyond our support forums. While retention improved, it led to a lot of manual work verifying member activities.

That’s when I learned about Influitive from other Adobe managers. I saw a demo and realized it could be a huge help to improve and streamline management. With approval, we migrated to Influitive in a tight deadline – 4 weeks to learn how to use the tool and create, test, and launch our new community program at Adobe MAX.

In addition to getting help from an Influitive CSM, I also trained myself through Influitive Institute and started connecting with other community managers in Influitive VIP (Influitive’s own advocate community). We gave early access to 10 Community Expert members to test the new Influitive instance and offer feedback, and then we got ready for launch! 

We officially launched the Adobe Community Experts rebranded program and began onboarding in September 2022. Our “new” name signals that the relaunched program is a familiar space while recognizing our members for who they are and what they want to do—not what they feel they have to do.

Spectacular Returns Every Step of the Way

Since we moved Adobe Community Experts to Influitive, I have a much better view of member activity and we’ve been able to recruit members who were already engaged with Adobe software. We’ve had organic growth by allowing current members to refer new members who are experts in at least one piece of Adobe software. In fact, in just three months after our official launch, we saw a 29% increase in engaged advocates and 10,877 acts of advocacy!

It was really important that we didn’t move away from the support forums entirely, just expanded the overall experience. We used Influitive’s integration with Khoros to convert all forum activity into points within Influitive. This makes it easier for members to see the full scope of their contributions and how it adds to their overall engagement.

We also created a more robust rewards catalog so members can easily use their points to access additional Adobe software, such as Substance 3D, and have fun with creative challenges that serve as nice breaks from their regular contributions.

In just three months after our official launch, we saw a 29% increase in engaged advocates and 10,877 acts of advocacy!

 

Today, I spend about half my time engaging with members on Influitive, and we have Community Managers in Japan and Korea who are also taking care of our members from those regions through our Community Experts instance.

 

Capitalizing on Our Momentum

Given the success of our revamped program, I’ve created our strategy and focus on four pillars to focus on growth using Influitive: 

  • Meet customers where they are and reflect Experts’ activities across multiple platforms, which is now possible thanks to Influitive challenges (targeted asks).
  • Bolster brand awareness of the program so all customers can trust a Community Expert’s advice.
  • Increase diversity and representation. We want our Experts to reflect the many types of Adobe customers.
  • Grow community sentiment within our program by leveraging Influitive’s fun challenges and engaging discussions to keep the momentum going.

Influitive has been essential in achieving our community’s success and future plans. It’s allowed us to expand beyond forums and reach customers wherever they are, while also opening new opportunities for engagement.

These integrations maximize the impact of advocate activity. Without the integrations, rewarding reviews is a manual process: advocates have to upload screenshots of their posted review, and the community admin has to manually validate it prior to awarding points. Integrations automate that process, saving time for our team and ensuring that advocates receive their reward instantly.

Influitive has been essential in achieving our community’s success and future plans. It’s allowed us to expand beyond forums and reach customers wherever they are, while also opening new opportunities for engagement.

All our Program members now have a space to connect and start conversations thanks to Influitive. Its reporting and automation tools have made a huge impact as well; with less manual management, I can spend more time engaging with members. It’s been incredibly rewarding to see the impact of our Program on people’s lives. Members have found new friends all over the world, and that’s something I’m proud to be a part of creating. It’s been amazing to watch all of this happen and be part of the change.

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