CMAweekly Resource Directory Updates!

This week I’ve made more updates to the Resource Directory, Software Directory, a new Slide directory from some of our most popular calls, AND…

A NEW, PUBLIC Slack archive of all non-private messages since we started in Nov 2022. (Remember, the existing announcements channel used to be the general channel where most discussions were started, so you might want to search there. Also, this does take a bit to load.)

CAP Awards Spotlight Series with Lifecycle Advocacy

Last Friday we joined Captivate Collective in kicking off a series where we discuss their CAP Awards Finalists’ programs. In this episode, Brooke Wilson, Nicole Dingley, and Brittany Pais all share how they are making lifecycle a part of their advocacy programs.

Watch the full episode below.

Here are 3 of my favorite takeaways from the call:

1. Surveys as a Data Point for Advocacy: Surveying customers during onboarding to capture insights and identify early advocates can provide valuable data for refining the customer experience.
   Speaker: Brooke Wilson, Timestamp: 32:52

2. Importance of In-Person Touchpoints: In-person or virtual events, such as town halls and conferences, are vital for nurturing customer relationships and gathering feedback.
   Speaker: Nicole Dingley, Timestamp: 41:46
   

3. Data-Driven Advocacy: Using data to identify power users or struggling users helps determine the right time to introduce advocacy asks or support interventions.
   Speaker: Brooke Wilson, Timestamp: 24:22

Coming Events

Starting an Advocacy Program Workshop - Bring Your Questions

This Friday, Oct 25th, 2PM EDT. Come and share your experience or ask questions during our regular weekly call. Mariah Lenahan, Survey Monkey, will be hosting the workshop.

Join our Open Discussion on Onboarding with Lauren Stefano

Next Wednesday at 1PM EDT - bring your expertise, share insights, get ideas, and brainstorm on how to improve your onboarding program.

CAP Awards Spotlight Series #2: Advocate Engagement

Next Friday, Nov 1 at 2PM EDT

You don’t want to miss this one. CAP Awards finalists, Kate Sugrue & Brynn Haynam will share their efforts for keeping advocates engaged in long-term programs.

And, more to come soon.

Thanks for reading and have a great week,

Mary (https://linkedin.com/in/marygreencny)

All Resources

Please remember to check out CMAweekly.com for new content and events.

Subscribe to events on lu.ma/cmaweekly 

Follow CMAweekly on LinkedIn https://linkedin.com/company/cmaweekly 

Watch past recordings on Youtube youtube.com/@cmaweekly 

And, visit our sponsors who are always doing wonderful things:

UserEvidence - Champion - Orca - Advocacy Maven

Today, we’re starting the new CAP Awards Spotlight Series with the Lifecycle Advocacy group!

We'll be chatting with Nicole Dingley, Brittany Fishman Pais, CSPO, PMP, and Brooke Wilson.

If you're looking to level up your advocacy game, join us for this extraordinary series hosted by CMAweekly & Captivate Collective and let the inspiration flow.

Join us! Register here --> https://lu.ma/j4g80vy9

Hi!! I’ve finally been able to push out some great content, please enjoy!

Next week, I’ll send the end of the month newsletter with all of the best content, discussions, events, and takeaways from September.

For now, dig in!

Announcement/News

Tech Portal Vendor Scorecard

The beta version of the Advocacy Tech Portal is ready for new visitors.

Inside, I’ve included:

• a Vendor Scorecard template

• a list of limitations to consider in your search

• a list of questions to ask customer references

• a short guide on choosing your next vendor

Updated Doc/Template/Script Resource Directory

Resource Directory

I’ve updated the Resource directory with shares from the past year, dozens of new items have been added.

CMAweekly Blog, New Recordings & Top Quotes

New on the CMAweekly Blog

I’ve started bringing more over to the CMAweekly blog.

This week, I’ve included top quotes from calls with:

Patrick Kalie (#70: Leveraging Events for Adoption & ROI) and

Katlin Hess (#82 - last Friday - Generating Reviews & Maximizing Their Usage in the Buyer’s Journey)

You can read their top quotes and watch the videos from their calls on the blog.

Fun/New Related Tech:

A New tool I’m using (paid) is Vizard.

I’ll be going through our youtube videos and making shorts. Vizard makes this easy by finding the best parts of your video to share and resizes the video with a focus on the speaker’s face.

I think you’ll like it.

Upcoming Events

We have several upcoming events, please RSVP here.

Starting next Friday we are going to host CAP Award winners with Captivate Collective. We’ll be hearing their stories and learning from their award-winning experiences.

AND OF COURSE

CustomerXcon is Coming in ONE Month!

Everyone loves the conference and has a blast. If you can make it, I hear it’s going to be the event of the season 🙂 

CMAweekly members can get 20% off with code: CMAweekly20

(unfortunately, I won’t make it this year - again).

All Resources

Please remember to check out CMAweekly.com for new content and events.

Subscribe to events on lu.ma/cmaweekly 

Follow CMAweekly on LinkedIn https://linkedin.com/company/cmaweekly 

Watch past recordings on Youtube youtube.com/@cmaweekly 

And, visit our sponsors who are always doing wonderful things:

UserEvidence - Champion - Orca - Advocacy Maven

Sponsored By: 

Poll Of the Week:

Help fellow CMA’s by sharing your experience.

Graphic of the Week from Gartner & B2B SaaS Reviews Joe Kevens

While CMA’s work in post-sales, it’s important to understand how our work affects the sales process. We play a big part when we work on references, customer stories, and reviews.

Free Resource

ReviewMining by Senja - I used this to analyze the reviews from our sponsor UserEvidence and got this summarization. You could also use this to learn about your competitors 😉 

This screenshot comes from another free resource (CleanSnap) used to clean up your screenshots.

Hello Fellow Customer & Advocacy Marketers,

As of yesterday, I decided to stay on as the owner and Head of Community here at CMAweekly.com

3 awesome companies have promised to sponsor the community and I’m hoping to get more.

Their biggest motivator as sponsors: Keep this community alive for YOUR professional development.

I’m hoping others contribute as well. In the meantime, members can support the community in 3 ways:

• Contribute on the Funding page here

• Buy my course Scaling Customer Advocacy here

• Or Subscribe for as little as $17 a month here

I’ve also created a course for those new to the community. You can check it out here.

Become a Sponsor

Finally, if you can support CMAweekly, please fill out the form on this page.

Thank you all for the support!

Welcome to CMAweekly

Please get to know our resources and opportunities for Customer & Advocacy Marketers

cmaweekly.com/course/welcome-cmaweekly

Join Us In Events

Callie Rojewski will join us tomorrow on the Friday Meetup at 2PM EST to discuss Customer Marketing Strategy & Sharing It with Leadership

RSVP here

RSVP to Mastermind Topics

Join multiple topic masterminds covering:

• Expansion (tomorrow)

• References (next week)

• Onboarding/Adoption (next week)

• Events (next week)

• Technology (August)

• Customer Stories (August)

• AI (August)

• Communities (August)

In The Feed (on LinkedIn)

A story about assessing a customer advocacy platform - by Samantha Murray

5 factors that impact growing customer revenue - by Rod Cherkas

The Budget is Always There: Disrupting and Stealing Budget - by Jason M. Lemkin

Slack Threads You Must Read

You have to click on one of these threads to see a pretty cool surprise!

Finally 🙂 Thank you all for your support.

This has been a tough year and I’m looking forward to how will we grow over the next year.

- Mary Green (https://linkedin.com/in/marygreencny)

Hello!!

This week we are delving into the Annual Customer Advocacy Software Survey to see which vendors and solutions hold up under scrutiny and which need to make strides in our space.

First, we’ll cover our normal business, then we will jump into the survey results.

For now… here’s an update from our Exclusive Sponsor!

Champion wants your opinions and feedback for building a platform you want to use. PM me (Mary Green) in Slack and I’ll give you more details on joining the group for feedback. 😄 

Welcome New Members (we have 954 total members)

10 members joined us over the last two weeks: Jenelle Stevens, Lauren Clevenger, Kitty McChesney, Jill Ross, Hans Roos, Andrea Lotti, Alaura Weaver, Larissa Shoemay, Susan Bell, and Kellie Utzinger.

Member Bulletin Board:

(Email, LinkedIn, or Slack me to post a message to all members)

Share your expertise! I have several options available for people who want to share their expertise in customer marketing, saas, advocacy, community, and the customer experience. Please reach out if you are interested. You can host a Friday, participate with other hosts, or host a monthly mastermind.

Monthly Masterminds Are Back

Every topic: Reviews, References, Customer Stories (Previously: Case Studies), Customer Communities, CMA+, CMA 101, Technology, AI, Lifecycle, Events, AI, Adoption, and Expansion.

Come share your interest in participating in our monthly masterminds here or in the Slack community.

Events

CMAweekly Friday Meetup Summer Series

Join every Friday to hear from a new guest.

This week we have Irwin Hipsman sharing his experience from Forrester Customer Marketing.

Check Irwin out on June 13th as well:

Irwin Hipsman on LinkedIn: Interested in Strategies for Improving Customer Contact Database Health…

Interested in Strategies for Improving Customer Contact Database Health and Persona Development? On June 13 from 10:30-11:30am ET, I will be joining Jess…

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7206009480377942019?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_updateV2%3A%28urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7206009480377942019%2CFEED_DETAIL%2CEMPTY%2CDEFAULT%2Cfalse%29

Great Content

Check out several Customer Marketing & Advocacy people you should be following on my Roll Call post:

Our Evan Huck on LinkedIn

I believe the inability to prove ROI is the single biggest blocker right now in getting a sale across the line.

www.linkedin.com/posts/evanhuck_i-believe-the-inability-to-prove-roi-is-the-activity-7204504991955390465-GyT6

Lila Krutel Meyer on LinkedIn

🚀 Steal My Customer Education Strategy 🚀 

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7204554600576688130

In the Community (Slack)

We have a board of members to help me make decisions for the community. Shout out to Daniel Palay, Rachel Ward, Jennifer Lyons, Kristine Kukich, Shannon Howard, Joel Primack, and Lauren Turner.

FINALLY!!

The Results You’ve Been Waiting On!

Get the full here: https://cma.learnworlds.com/customer-advocacy-survey-2024 (I’m transitioning to a new platform)

2024 Customer Advocacy Survey Results

Come download the full report

cma.learnworlds.com/customer-advocacy-survey-2024

What You’ll See Inside:

Recommendation results for all solutions

An update on Choosing an Influitive Alternative

and, a summary of the biggest obstacles to successfully using software in Customer Advocacy

Recommendation results for vendors (below)

Summary pages for each Vendor Solution

Disclaimer to Survey Results: I’m a one-person team. I’ve done my best to curate the results and present them in an unbiased way.

And feel free to shoot me a message if you have questions! - Mary Green

Hi All!

I’m planning our Summer Series and wanted to give you an update: All of June is scheduled. You can RSVP to our weekly calls with the following link:

RSVP to our weekly calls https://tally.so/r/3xjOdy

Schedule for June 2024

June 7th: Customer Marketing Best Practices with Jacqui Cooper

June 14th: Repeat Sales with an Alumni Program by Irwin Hipsman

June 21st: Save Time on Tedious Tasks in Customer Marketing with AI by Angela Ferrante

June 28th: Proving Value Isn’t Just About Revenue with Daniel Palay

Coming soon: Gianna Scorsone

Here’s the link again: https://tally.so/r/3xjOdy

Do you have insights and experience to share? Please respond to this email and let’s put you on the schedule!

Welcome to a very late issue of CMAweekly.

This is going to be a big issue. There’s been a lot of movement in our space and I want to share all of the details.

In Case You Missed It:

My Course is OnDemand & On Sale for $100 off.

No community, no software needed. Get organized and Scale your Advocacy Program without going insane.

Welcome New Members: Come Say Hello

Photo by Vladislav Klapin on Unsplash

Hrishi Kulkarni who is Head of Customer Marketing & Executive Programs at New Relic

Sheila Tobin who is looking for her next role (here is her LinkedIn)

Briana Chenkin who is building a new customer community on Gainsight

Kyle Harris who is building a brand new Customer Marketing function at CampusESP

Sam Harrison who came from Case Study Buddy and is hoping to help more people with their Customer Interviews

Member Bulletin Board: (Share Your Wanted Ads)

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

Allison Hughes is hoping to meet up with others in Houston

Leslie Barrett is hiring at her new company - YAY Leslie, you’re killing it!!

Let’s Get To the News

Some quick updates:

• CMAweekly wants You; Come Share Your Experiences with us.

• Advocacy Vendor Survey Findings: initial results are coming this week

• Update on Influitive; support is still slow and even more customers are unhappy.

Vendor Speed Dating & Several Feature Updates

The Vendor Speed Dating event by Captivate Collective was awesome. Vendors shared their latest capabilities and brought a customer to shout their praises. Here are some of the highlights:

• Champion shared a new form for the backend and several new filters for narrowing down your advocates (they help you identify, activate, and retain advocates)

• UserEvidence shared a customer from the Security industry which is usually a more difficult field in which to find stories; but they definitely did that. UE has two new features: a chatbot for sales enablement & ROI study alternative to Forrester’s reports.

• PeerSpot does actual interviews instead of just automated/form reviews. New feature PeerReport - generate industry-specific product reports and customized buyer guides containing customer experiences and reviews. Doni is offering free strategy sessions for working with PeerSpot.

• Laudable shared new features: G2 review set up; where they pull quotes from Gong and then ask customers to use it as a G2 review. SMART. And, an Ask Slack feature where you can ask what content you have and get the answer in Slack.

• TestimonialHero shared several new updates in their business to become a 1 stop shop for all kinds of customer stories.

• Orca is looking at Advocacy Everywhere and has added multiple features - it’s now in-app. Embed into any existing platform.

• Deeto has new features too: Referral hub, improved SF and HubSpot integrations, Website widget, & G2 integration.

• ReferenceEdge shared with Jeanne Talbot; They can measure value (revenue), are native to SFDC, and help you find the references you need right from an opportunity.

• SlapFive shared recorded references, customer content engine, capture, manage and share authentic stories onto your website. Campaigns to target new people to join your program (no more spreadsheets).

• Planhat joined as a vendor; there is a lot of opportunity for using a CS platform for Advocacy, the value lies between the data and marketing/email features.

• There were several other vendors for referrals and videos where I didn’t get notes.

• Check out all of Day 1 here.

• Check out all of the Day 2 presentations here.

Update on the Job Market

Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash

I’m getting a lot of people asking about our job market. Here are a few insights from my point of view:

• A lot of newer job posts for Customer Marketing & Advocacy

• Look for these job openings under different titles such as References Manager, Customer Stories, etc.

• Several more people are starting new positions and posting about it on LinkedIn

• Finally, I’m seeing a slight increase in salaries vs what I saw 6 months ago. There are companies still hoping to keep costs low but I am seeing more companies post decent salaries to start.

What are you seeing in the job market? Come share your thoughts!

Hiring managers don’t know your worth. Here’s how you communicate it

(I've taught CEOs, VPs, and directors how to communicate, so this will definitely help you)

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7189586538710626304

Great Advice for the Job Search: When I started my job search, I submitted 300+ applications.

From Austin Belcak

www.linkedin.com/posts/abelcak_when-i-started-my-job-search-i-submitted-activity-7196133654954131457-ENq-

Free Resource of the Week from Emily Amos

Emily Amos on LinkedIn

Here’s a super practical way to make it easy for your sales folks and CSMs to ask customers to participate in customer stories: Provide them with an email 📩…

www.linkedin.com/posts/emilyamos_casestudy-customermarketing-saas-activity-7186710077825802242-BwI2

Great Discussions & Content

How are you measuring success in your advocacy program?

Jumpstarting expansion efforts

Cross-selling in customer marketing

Identify potential advocates

In-app messaging for Customer Marketing

Thanks for hanging in there, I hope you found something helpful in this issue.

Please hop into the community and chat - if you aren’t there, we miss you!

Have a great week!

Mary Green https://linkedin.com/in/marygreencny 

Exciting News, Everyone 🙂 

The cohort course I started teaching in November is finally ready as a standalone Scaling Advocacy (without the headache) course.

You can check it out here!

The cohort course was a lot of fun, but the timing and cost didn’t work for everyone.

Now you can get all of the great content from the cohort course and work through it at your convenience.

The Best Part; for this launch, I’m charging $197 through the end of May.

What’s Inside the Advocacy Accelerator OnDemand Course?

• Instructions and templates for getting organized.

• Frameworks for managing hundreds of advocates.

• Strategies for cross-collaboration to help you scale.

• Step-by-step instructions for getting approval for customer programs to help you attract an ongoing stream of advocates.

• A crash course in customer and community engagement (note: no community is necessary)

This Course Will Keep You Sane as a Customer Advocacy Manager

At any given time:

• Know your best advocates in every category

• Quickly identify the right advocate for any ask

• Spot trends in your advocates’ behavior and use it to attract new customers

• Stop feeling so frazzled

More FUN news:
If you were a full-year subscriber to Club CX, you get this course free - Just send me an email to ask for an invite. (I’ll be sending a separate email in the next couple of days to everyone who did pay for a year).

Tomorrow, I’ll send your weekly newsletter; It’s going to be Ultimate, with several updates, news items, and upcoming events.

Have a great day,

Mary Green

Hi all, I hope you are having a great week. Remember the CMAweekly community is here to make sure you do not have to work alone.

Jump into Slack to check out your colleagues’ helpful insights this week, including Ashley Ward’s newest case study Gemini prompt, and product launch story approaches from multiple members.

I’m sure you have an obstacle - share it to get some help.

P.S.: I’m looking for freelance work in Customer Marketing, Advocacay & Community. Please feel free to pass my name along. - Mary Green

Do you have 90 seconds?

Please help with the new survey on Advocacy Vendors

Do You Recommend Your Customer Advocacy Vendor?

Answer in less than 90 seconds!!

tally.so/r/n9dGdQ

Events: Friday calls

This Friday 4/19 CABs & User Groups

We'll discuss managing CABs, running them live, and keeping members engaged in between meetings.

lu.ma/e0way48i

4/26 Patrick Kalie: Events, Expansion & ROI

Patrick will share: Strategies learned from running digital and in-person events for Swoogo, Maven, and Quorum. How he used webinars to drive product…

lu.ma/4qqm4mwr

Captivate Collective’s Vendor Speed Dating - Don’t Miss It

Advocacy Vendor Speed Dating

Check out all of the vendors in our space & learn even more about our Sponsor Champion!

events.thecaptivatecollective.com/speed-dating-2024?utm_campaign=cmaweekly

Last Year’s Results & Report link

Download the 2023 Vendor Report

2023 Customer Marketing & Advocacy Vendor Satisfaction Report

files-us-east-1.t-cdn.net/files/QJdTT3HnfZP7Zx9X9uo0N

Content to Check Out

4/15 Top Content of the Week

Check out the top comments and shares from the past week, in micro-learning format.

app.tipstory.io/preview/44600130-7926-4d4b-89ae-954135177456

All Access Slack (check out the archives)

I’ve tapped into the latest Slack Pro trial and you can access all of our conversations since we started in Nov 2022.

Come search for anything! (Consider looking for reviews on vendors).

CMAweekly Slack

Jump into the most active Slack for customer advocacy & marketing professionals.

join.slack.com/t/cmaweekly/shared_invite/zt-207gas8sl-2GREYkmgxFxZQRysJhUx~g

Have a great week, everyone!