Download customer success and marketing alignment

CUSTOMER SUCCESS
AND MARKETING ALIGNMENT:
The Key To Unlocking Customer Advocacy
The “subscription economy” is upon us. We’re all bought in. And
while the extensive adoption of subscription models -- especially
software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies -- has lowered the
barrier to entry for customers, the barrier to exit
has also been reduced.
This means as a vendor in the subscription economy, you can no longer rest on
the security of a closed deal. You must work smarter to consistently deliver the
best possible experience and value to your customers.
Rapid and sustainable growth for SaaS companies comes not just from acquiring
more customers at a faster pace, but also from making customers successful and
keeping them over the long-term to:
•
•
Grow their use of your products and associated revenue over that extended lifetime
Enlist them as advocates to help you recruit new customers and accelerate the
sales process
•
•
Impact the development of your brand through word of mouth, reviews, content, etc.
Share their feedback on every aspect of your business, including the product,
marketing, customer success and sales process
According to Jason Lemkin, true customer
lifetime value (CLTV) is probably as much as
2X higher when you incorporate not just
upsell and cross-sell revenue, but also:
•
Champion change -- when your customer
leaves to work at another company and
brings your solution with them
•
Advocacy -- when your customers tell their
friends and peers how much they love you
1
But what you really want to do is igure out the perfect ratio of maximum
possible investment in Sales, Marketing and Client/Customer Success — as
one cohesive investment, not two. All-in. Because the second order efects
compound. They’re more proitable (no additional marketing or customer
acquisition costs). They build your brand. And they fuel your growth.
JASON LEMKIN
SaaStr (CLTV Isn’t The Whole Story. Don’t Shortchange Second-Order Revenue)
Unfortunately, most companies today are not leveraging their relationships with
customers to their full, second-order revenue-generating potential. Furthermore,
they fail to deliver the exceptional customer experience required to delight
customers in the irst place.
Why? The customer experience is fragmented across the organization.
Thanks to the the rise of digital marketing and the resulting skyrocketing marketing
budgets, however, the marketing function is becoming increasingly responsible
for the customer experience. According to Gartner’s 2015 Marketing Spending
Survey, the #1 innovation project for 2015 is customer experience. Another Gartner
report found that 89% of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of the
customer experience by 2016.
The majority of B2B organizations see the customer experience as important to
invest in, but their teams are not prepared or coordinated enough to make this a
reality. If customer experience is a focus, it tends to be pre-sale with a coordinated
efort between sales and marketing. With the rise of marketing automation,
marketing and sales alignment has been a priority for well over a decade now.
But what happens to customer after the sale? How well-positioned are marketing
or customer success to continue to deliver on the promise sales made during the
buying process? They can’t do it alone.
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Customer success is not only at the core
of our marketing but the core of our
business. If customers are not successful
they will not be happy with the product.
SHELBY FARIS
Marketing Program Manager at Connect First
MARKETING AND CS MUST ALIGN TO :
•
•
•
Help each other reach their respective goals
Work toward a common objective of improving the overall customer experience
Create and identify advocates, and then mobilize them
The formula for sustainable advocacy
GET YOUR ADVOCATES ON YOUR TEAM
Develop Advocates
Mobilize Advocates
(Customer Success)
(Marketing)
When both the marketing and CS teams work
collaboratively, they are forced in a way to understand
both perspectives and can better provide the customer
with the best experience possible.
ALYSSA AZEVEDO
Client Marketing Specialist at Virgin Pulse
3
HOW CAN CUSTOMER
SUCCESS AND MARKETING
HELP EACH OTHER?
Both groups need to establish common ground on how they can help each other.
Let’s break this down by outlining how each department can assist one another:
CS CAN HELP MARKETING BY:
•
Cultivating customer delight by kicking the relationship of with an incredible
onboarding experience, providing proactive customer service and working with
the product team to productize “wow” moments
•
Identifying potential advocates and referenceable customers. The customer
success team works with your customers day in and day out. They know who the
top customers are but there may not have been asked by marketing to identify
these nor are they incented to do so.
•
Providing customer feedback on products, marketing materials and their
overall experience
•
Identifying candidates for case studies, testimonials and speaking
opportunities
•
Creating blog posts and other content that helps educates customers and
generate leads for marketing. The customer success team should be your subject
matter experts. They have content gold in their heads – they need to put pen to
computer and get those ideas out to the masses.
You need buy in from the people
that work directly with customers to have
a good pulse of how they are doing.
KEVIN LAU
Senior Customer Retention Marketing Manager
at Netbase
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The ideal universe considers customer marketing and customer success
as intertwined eforts, not separate groups. While customer marketing
inherently reaches broader populations and customer success focuses on
speciic sets of accounts, insights from both eforts can greatly impact and
leverage each other. They are most successful when the two worlds work
in conjunction with each other to creatively and proactively harness
the power of the customer experience.
ALLISON WAHL
Customer Success Manager at Campaign Monitor
MARKETING CAN HELP CS BY:
•
Reinforcing customer delight with “wow” moments outside of
customer service and product, such as welcome packages, event
experiences, spotlighting by press and analysts, perks, etc.
•
Organizing customer events. If you want to ofer your customers more than
just crappy donuts at a customer event, you need to get marketing involved.
They have the budget to help you bam up your customer events.
•
Providing access to powerful tools, such as marketing automation.
Marketing can help customer success communicate more efectively to customers
using these tools that allow for better segmentation and nurturing capabilities.
•
Recognizing your customers. Customer success teams have limited time and
it’s mostly focused on assisting customers in need. Marketing can create a more
centralized function that recognizes your top customers.
Keeping customer success at the core of your marketing
is mostly about LISTENING. A good CS person listens a
lot. Sure, they act, but irst they just listen. It’s easy for
marketers to feel one step removed from individual
customers, but when we remember to listen we become
better marketers and our customers beneit.
HEATHER FOEH
Director of Customer Advocacy at Lattice Engines
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HOW TO GET STARTED ON
ALIGNING CS & MARKETING
Stop taking your customers for granted. Here are the approaches we recommend to
achieve an amazing customer experience by aligning your customer marketing and
customer success teams:
1.
MEET REGULARLY
If you want to improve the customer experience, a simple irst step is to open up the lines
of communication. This can minimize most issues and generate amazing ideas.
Set up a recurring meeting between the relevant members of your customer success team
and customer marketing team. This should be used as way to discuss what each group
is focusing on for that week, what’s working and what isn’t. Each department should also
discuss how they can assist each other. This will build a stronger relationship between the
teams and create a better experience for customers.
We have a panel of folks from all departments
who meet monthly to plan and execute
customer success initiatives throughout
all the departments within our company.
LIZ RYDER
Digital Marketing Guru at Connect First
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2.
CLEARLY DEFINE ROLES
Clearly map out and assign certain tasks to diferent groups. Here’s an example:
CUSTOMER SUCCESS
MARKETING
Customer monthly newsletter
X
X
User groups
References
X
X
X
Generating customer stories
X
Creating content based on customer stories
Updating customer contact data
X
Net Promoter Score surveys
X
By simply meeting and agreeing on roles, you can drastically reduce the confusion that exists
and create a better experience for your customers.
We have a weekly marketing-CS meeting.
As my colleagues on the marketing team are
the pros on all things branding and content
marketing, we rely on them for direction.
They, in turn, rely on us for access to and
information about our customers.
CATRIONA ADAM
Customer Success Manager at Mobify
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3.
CREATE A STRUCTURED ADVOCATE MARKETING
PROGRAM
To get to the next level, you shouldn’t be tracking who your top customer advocates are in
a spreadsheet that rarely gets updated. You need a coordinated, integrated approach to
identifying, mobilizing and recognizing your top customers.
Your customer success team can play an integral role in identifying which customers to invite
into the program and sharing insight about what interests your customers, but marketing
should own and run the program.
At Lattice, the role of customer advocacy
oicially sits in marketing but interacts
almost daily with the CS team. Those open
lines of communication are essential.
HEATHER FOEH
Director of Customer Advocacy at Lattice Engines
Great customers naturally make great
advocates. Customer success has helped
us igure out whom to invite to our
advocate marketing program. If your
organization has the resources, have a
customer success person work on your
advocate marketing program.
JAMES SWEENEY
Outbound Marketing Maven at TrackMaven
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4. ALIGN METRICS
At the end of the day, what gets measured gets done. To create a coordinated customer
experience, all teams that are involved in supporting these eforts should have some joint
metrics that they are measured against. Here are some recommendations:
•
Marketing: Have a bonus metric based on retention and net MRR (assuming you are a
subscription-based service).
•
•
Customer success: Have a bonus metric based on the number of advocates that have
been identiied as well as the percentage of customers that are advocating for you.
Both marketing and customer success: Have a bonus metric based on customer
satisfaction. Many organizations use NPS, but more companies are starting to use
customer advocacy. It’s a more reliable metric as it’s based on tracking if your customers
are actually referring you new business.
The time is now. You can’t put of creating a better, more coordinated customer experience.
Start the planning process now by opening up the lines of communication. There is no better
place to start than with your customer marketing and customer success teams.
Think about it: a customer success manager is a big
asset to your marketing programme. More and more
of what we do is to make our customers our brand
advocates so we can use their success as part of our
marketing eforts. Each customer success manager at
SmartFocus has some marketing objectives in their
MBOs, such as identifying case study opportunities,
promoting webinars, etc.
CYRILLE SAULNIER
Head of Customer Success at SmartFocus
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KEY ALIGNMENT MOMENTS
THROUGHOUT THE
CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE
BUYER’S
JOURNEY
CLOSED
WON DEAL
ONBOARDING
IMPLEMENTATION
ADOPTION
AND EXPANSION
BUYER’S JOURNEY
Surround buyers with social proof from your advocates to accelerate the sales
process, such as referrals, pro-active references, product reviews on third-party
websites, and discussions on social networks and communities across the web.
Getting feedback from real customers is the most effective tactic for evaluating software
and makes B2B buyers 5X more satisfied with their purchases. Source: Software Advice
CLOSED WON DEAL
Introduce the whole team. Don’t be a stranger. In addition to their
customer success manager and executive sponsor, introduce new
customers to your advocate/customer marketer so they’re not surprised
when that person contacts them later on.
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Start sharing customer stories early. Sales reps often share the customers’
desired outcomes, which were identiied during the sales process, with customer
success once the deal closes. Marketing -- speciically customer marketing -- should
be included on these communications so they can get to know new customers and
their goals right away.
TIP: Having access to this information will also save time when
the marketing team eventually writes blog posts, case studies
or other content on the success of each customer.
Surprise and delight. Customer
success may not have the budget
to buy gifts for new customers, but
the marketing team often does.
Send a card and a small token of
appreciation to welcome your newest
customer to the family. Got budget?
Send new customers a welcome kit,
complete with swag, educational
resources and other cool items.
Hootsuite sends branded swag
to new Ambassadors
TIP: If you simply can’t justify the cost or your customers
work in an industry where even small gifts are frowned upon,
go digital: an eCard or a friendly tweet will do wonders.
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ONBOARDING
Invite new customers to become advocates. Capitalize on the excitement of
new customers by educating them about and asking them to join your advocate
marketing program as soon as they start the onboarding process. They may not be
ready to speak publicly about how they use your product, but you can keep them
engaged there until they are.
Host part of the onboarding process within your advocate marketing program.
Customer success can send their customers all the resources in the world and still have
no idea whether they’ve actually read any of it or not. Publish key educational resources
within your advocate marketing program and ask customers to respond to questions
to test their knowledge and track their progress through the onboarding process. Since
these challenges will be mixed in with other fun activities, they won’t burn out easily.
Ask new customers for their irst act of advocacy. Simply request that they tweet
or post on LinkedIn that they’ve started the onboarding process with your company and
they’re excited to become successful. Here’s an example of a tweet from a new Inluitive
customer:
While it may seem strange to ask your customers to advocate for you before they’ve
even implemented your solution, new customers are often the most excited about
your product.
Introduce new customers to your existing advocate community. Your advocates
can be a great source of inspiration to new customers, either 1:1 through a
mentoring program or within a larger online community. Ofer to introduce your
newest customers to long-time veterans to ensure they stay excited about your
ofering, and have the opportunity to pose both strategic and tactical questions to
their peers.
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IMPLEMENTATION
First value delivered (and beyond). Once your new customer has experienced
their irst taste of real value from your product, this is the time for marketing and
customer success to lay the foundation for advocacy. Celebrate the win, both
internally and externally with the customer, and start building their success story.
Keep each other looped in on EVERY success
that happens, no matter how big or small.
KEVIN LAU
Senior Customer Retention Marketing Manager at Netbase
Gather intel on your customers. Early on in your relationship is the perfect time
to do a little reconnaissance on your customers. Pepper occasional personal and
professional questions among other activities -- both CS- and marketing-related -- to
gather important information you can use to beneit you both later on. For example:
•
•
•
What’s your favorite drink at Starbucks?
Which social networks, groups or communities are most valuable to you?
Which opportunities are most interesting to you? e.g., speaking at events,
social sharing, contributing to content, connecting with peers, beta testing new
features, etc.
•
•
What’s your favorite restaurant?
What’s the next step in your career and how does our product/service
help you get there?
•
•
•
Which conferences are you planning to attend over the next year?
How often should we send you emails now that you’re a customer?
Would you be interested in speaking with other professionals who are
considering using our product/service?
Whatever you do, just don’t send out a giant survey asking all the questions at once.
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Create customer marketing events based
around customer feedback. Actively solicit
and take action on that feedback, allowing
customer success insights to drive
advocacy eforts and campaigns.
ALLISON WAHL
Customer Success Manager at Campaign Monitor
Increase the value of your asks. You’ve nurtured your new advocates with smaller
asks, such as tweets, educational content and questions. Now it’s time to start
introducing them to more valuable requests, including referrals.
TIP: You don’t have to leave referrals to chance. Customer
marketing should work with the sales team to pro-actively
identify potential prospects within your customers’ networks.
ADOPTION AND EXPANSION
Identify new advocates within accounts. Once a customer is fully up and running,
there will likely be new users who weren’t present during the initial buying and
onboarding process, but who are now using your product or services. Recognize your
currently engaged advocates -- and your customer success team -- for bringing them
into the fold and inviting them into your advocate marketing program. The deeper
and wider you get within each account, the more likely they are to remain customers.
Bring executive sponsors to the table. Customer executives can be notoriously
diicult to identify, nurture and convert into advocates, but they are critical to the
long-term success of any account. Make them feel valued by matching them with a
relevant executive from your team and/or one of your customers. Invite them into
your advocate marketing program and target them with content and opportunities
tailored speciically for executives.
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RECOMMENDED READING :
Engaging Executive Advocates >
Recruit beta testers for new products and services.
Ask customers if they’d like to be among the irst to test out new and exciting
product and service oferings. While the product team will likely own a signiicant
portion of this process, customer success and marketing play critical roles in
recruiting beta testers, getting customers up-and-running, and then gathering
feedback and closing the feedback loop throughout the beta process.
Get approval to share your customer’s success story. And ask them to help
you distribute it. Content, such as eBooks, blog posts, webinars and case studies.
Social media and communities. Third-party review websites. Industry events.
Even sales references.
Put eligible customers on an expansion nurture track. When relevant,
educate customers about additional product and service oferings that they may
be interested in upgrading to now or in the future to ensure that they are not
surprised when you come to them with upsell/cross-sell recommendations.
It’s a two way street. Marketing can deliver
compelling insights into who is buying and why
they are buying, which should be leveraged by
the CS team during onboarding and adoption
activities. Feedback from CS to marketing should
help drive focus into the right markets and surface
key aspects of the application that add value,
which could have been previously overlooked.
Additionally, marketing and customer success
should be partnering to architect and deliver a
program focused on driving customer advocacy.
ANDREW MARKS
Managing Partner at Servitium Partners
15
INVITE, MOBILIZE
AND RECOGNIZE
YOUR ADVOCATES
Inluitive’s AdvocateHub is a complete advocate
management platform that helps B2B companies
capture customer enthusiasm, and use it to
turbocharge marketing, sales and customer
engagement eforts. With AdvocateHub, you can
build advocate communities where customers,
fans and evangelists can complete “challenges”
like referrals, reference calls, product reviews
and much more.
VISIT INFLUITIVE.COM TO LEARN MORE