Top 5 Fan Favorite Advocamp Sessions thumbnail

Hey campers! You know what made Advocamp Field Day 2018 unique? It was the first Advocamp ever broadcast online.

Broadcasting online meant we could jam-pack the event with even more web-exclusive speakers. Plus, we could run the numbers to discover which sessions our online Advocampers loved the most.

Advocamp, for those who don’t know, is the world’s premiere customer experience, engagement, and advocacy event. Last year’s summer camp-themed soiree in Toronto attracted attendees from all over the world, plus online viewers across three continents—North America, Europe, and Asia.

Head Counsellor Buck

Even Head Counsellor Buck tuned in online from his neck of the woods

In this blog, we’re counting down the top 5 most-watched sessions from Advocamp Field Day 2018. Each session is a master class in a different aspect of customer engagement, from start through to, well—forever. Advocacy is a cycle! Together, these sessions are a fantastic reminder of all that your advocate community can accomplish, plus tips on how exactly you and your company can get there.

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5. 10 tips to ignite your customer-first career with Rapid7’s Carol Meyers

Carol MeyersCarol Meyers is a polymath who seems to excel in every role she takes on. She’s graduated from Product Manager, to Vice President of Sales, to Chief Marketing Officer— thanks in part to her insatiable interest in people.

“Empathy isn’t just for customers. We need to share empathy with those we work with,” says Carol. “Being emotionally aware not only helps you help others, but it also allows you figure out what you’re good at and what environments you thrive in.”

When you know where you fit into the business, Carol explains, you can better support others. Looking back, “there’s nothing that makes me happier than to see people I hired—and who I hope I’ve been helpful to—rise to the role of vice president, chief marketing officer, and CEO,” says Carol.

When you think with Carol’s mindset, you see that your peers are also your customers. If you surprise and delight them, you can propel both of your careers forward. This thinking helped Carol build lifelong relationships with leaders who she consistently delivered on her sales quota for, and with peers and employees who complemented her self-proclaimed weaknesses.

Watch Carol’s full session on-demand to get all 10 tips to own your uniqueness and ignite your customer-first career.

Top takeaway

Grow your career by creating great experiences for those around you—whether they’re your customers, your peers, or your boss.

Get some inspiration by reading how bestselling customer experience author Don Peppers becomes besties with his customers.

4. How to construct your advocacy program from scratch with Compass CX’s Deena Zenyk

Deena ZenykDeena Zenyk is about as multifaceted as a customer advocacy expert can be. She’s a former Influitive admin, turned Influitive employee, turned advocacy consultant extraordinaire. She even co-authored a book about her experience with Influitive’s CEO Mark Organ, called The Messenger is the Message.

If you work with Deena, the first thing she’ll ask you is “What’s your framework for launching an advocate program?” If you don’t have one or didn’t use one, you can borrow the one she uses that originated from Cisco. Deena uses VSEM, which strands for Vision, Strategy, Execution, and Measurement.

As Deena explains, this is the only framework she’s found that forces marketers to think through three critical elements:

“It’s more than a flowchart,” explains Deena. “It’s a communication tool that frames all of a company’s decisions in terms of how to inspire advocates.”

Vision Strategy Execution Measurement Framework

The VSEM framework

How does VSEM work? Deena breaks it down:

  1. You lay out a vision, or an idealized value proposition for what your program offers (for example, becoming a customer-powered enterprise).
  2. You then set a strategy, or a list of concrete steps to achieve the vision (campaigns and initiatives).
  3. Finally, you decide on the campaigns and metrics to measure its success.

Watch Deena’s full session on-demand to hear how VSEM has worked for her clients, and inspired them to do things like launch a customer advisory board.

Top takeaway

An advocacy framework can help you drive top line business goals like revenue and retention.

3. How to make your company customer-obsessed with MongoDB’s Amy Rosenberg

Amy RosenbergYou may know what it’s like to work at a customer-obsessed company, but what does it feel like to be the customer of one? Amy Rosenberg knows.

As Field Marketing Manger at MongoDB, Amy talks about how her customer obsession began with an interaction with the marketing automation software company HubSpot. As an early customer, she found their product and support team’s care so astoundingly proactive that it inspired her own journey to be like them.

“I must have sent a hundred support tickets within my first couple months just trying to learn,” recalls Amy. “I’d get responses instantly. They’d lay out their roadmap, explain why those features were coming, and suggest alternatives I could use in the meantime.”

HubSpot began asking Amy for testimonials, which “made me feel pretty special,” says Amy. “I was happy to give quotes, testimonials, feedback, because I saw it as a partnership.” It set a high bar for how a company could make its customers feel, making Amy vow to inspire the same sense of awe among her own constituents.

Watch Amy’s talk on-demand to see how she applies the principles she’s learned to inspire her advocates at MongoDB.

Top takeaway

Customers know what they need better than you do. Invest in building relationships with them so you can learn from the true masters.

2. Powering the customer journey flywheel with IBM’s Libby Ingrassia and Brad Schauf

What might your advocate program look like if it were designed by rocket scientists? IBM has an idea. The team at the world’s largest design-driven company has carefully weighed every aspect of advocacy—from prizes, to research, to challenges—and produced a program that unites internal and external advocates at global scale.

One of its three hubs aims to engage the entire world. No, but actually—it’s aimed at educating anyone learning to code, and connects them with IBM advocates for mentorship. Over a six-month period, one of its campaigns produced 11,000 acts of advocacy.

Libby Ingrassia“Our most passionate fans run user groups, communities, and events. They also create thousands of pieces of content, and they mostly do it on their own because they’re so enthusiastic about the products,” says Libby Ingrassia, Sr. WW Program Manager, IBM Champions. “Our mission is to recognize, reward, and catalyze their work.”

Brad SchaufWhere do you even begin a program like this? Easy, says Brad Schauf, CTO and Executive Architect for IBM Collaboration Services and Support: “Look at what acts of advocacy are already happening within your environment and see what you can do to incentivize more of that behavior. Then, use a tool like AdvocateHub to solve pain points in your existing programs.”

Watch Libby and Brad explain their advocacy process step-by-step in our on-demand portal, including the goals of the program and some of their biggest lessons.

IBM advocacy program success chart

A look at how IBM measures the success of their advocacy program

Top takeaway

Advocacy should be a cycle, where each of your programs should feed into one another.

1. Inspiring advocacy from day one with SAP Concur’s Ellie Wu

Ellie WuWhat’s your process for enlisting new advocates? Do you have one? If someone walks into your office on the last day of the month and needs a reference, what’s your response?

If you’re not certain, SAP’s Ellie Wu has some advice: “You need to design for moments of advocacy right from the start—from day one. You need to create a process similar to a sales funnel. I call it an advocacy pipeline.”

A pipeline lets you be proactive. Rather than waiting for happy customers to raise their hand, you target new and expanding accounts at the moment of peak satisfaction to:

  • Qualify your advocates: Who has great potential?
  • Audit your content: Any gaps in vertical, size, or use case?
  • Prioritize: What will the sales, product, and support teams need tomorrow?
  • Segment: By region, role, and lifecycle

Advocacy Pipeline

A look at what Ellie calls “the advocacy pipeline”

From there, you can divide your journey into moments of advocacy to target the right people with the right messages and build an engaged group of reliable references.

Watch Ellie’s talk to learn how to build your sales funnel and guide advocates to help you prioritize during product road map discussions.

Top takeaway

An advocate pipeline can power your business by mobilizing the right people.

And you can re-live the experience online!

Sad that you missed out on these amazing sessions? Well, dry those tears, because you can find recordings of ALL our Advocamp 2018 sessions online and on-demand.

Click here to secure access to our online portal, which is full of several compelling sessions and industry leading speakers.

 

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