Michael Beahm - How Blackbaud Activates Its Customers with Advocacy Marketing
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This document provides an overview and background of Blackbaud's transition from a reactive customer reference program to a strategic advocate marketing program called Blackbaud Champions. It discusses: - Where the customer marketing program was previously, focusing on generating references for sales needs rather than engaging customers. - The launch of the Blackbaud Champions program in 2014 to better align customer engagement with business goals through a more personalized and scalable approach. - Goals for the future, such as increasing customer referral pipeline from $13,000 to $500,000 and growing online reviews and customer generated content. - Key learnings around advocate marketing being a collaborative team effort that benefits the business when customers' voices are respectfully incorporated.
Michael Beahm - How Blackbaud Activates Its Customers with Advocacy Marketing
- 2. AGENDA • Helpful background • Where we were • Where we are now • Where we are going • What I’ve learned in year one
- 3. BACKGROUND • I live in Raleigh, North Carolina and have two boys, 2 and 4 years old. Even though we’re all often in a state of being tired or hungry, I’m their biggest advocate and they are mine. • I’ve been at Blackbaud since 2009, holding roles from Marketing Operations, to Demand Generation, and now Customer Advocate Marketing, all of which have helped shape a more holistic view of our customers and marketing organization. • Why Advocate Marketing? Although a dreaded ‘lateral move’ for me at the time, it felt like it was strategic. As we’ve been moving our flagship products to a cloud- based, subscription model, customer engagement, customer success, and customer marketing have become increasingly central to our business.
- 4. • The fine print: Blackbaud is the recognized leader in software and services for nonprofits with our flagship products including The Raiser’s Edge, The Financial Edge, Luminate Online, and TeamRaiser. • Blackbaud has over 30,000 customers internationally from nonprofits to K-12 independent schools, universities and foundations. Our clients include the ALS Foundation (remember the ice bucket challenge) to more grassroots organizations like ‘Tatum’s bags of Fun’ a nonprofit provided a backpack filled with toys to every child diagnosed with a form of pediatric cancer in the state of Indiana since 2008! • Our customers feel a huge sense of ownership and passion and their missions are often times very personal. This means we hear it when our customers love us and we hear it when we could have done better.
- 5. WHERE WE WERE Our customer marketing was immature and reactive – • We had a customer reference program: “The Blackbaud Fan Club”. As the name suggests, this program was all about us. It answered one question: How can our customers help us sell more? • Not an inherently bad strategy, but over time it had become growingly ineffective and stale. We recognized the time was ripe for change and that our customers were knocking… • Our recruiting of new references was reactionary, based on Sales needs at the time, not anticipating what they would need. • Our customers had two ways to advocate for us: 1. Take a reference call with a prospective customer 2. Participate in a customer case study. • Your reward (should you choose to accept it): Come to our conference. Get some fan club swag. • We were collectors of untapped potential… fun as a kid, not as a B2B marketer.
- 6. WHERE WE ARE NOW In May 2013, new Customer Marketing leadership (Amy Bills) began laying the foundation for Advocate Marketing by educating stakeholders, and connecting the initiative to driving business. We had to build a case. We had to take a number - $200,000 in customer referral pipeline from customers in year one. We were not ashamed to show this is what modern, successful companies were doing, and this is what we should be doing. In May 2014, we launched our Customer Advocate Marketing program, Blackbaud Champions. Our advocate marketing strategy and goals preceded a platform (which came in August 2014). In Fall 2014, our strategic program, Blackbaud Champions, started to align tactically with our advocate marketing platform through more personalized and scalable customer engagement. 2015-Current, Met 1H goals, and pacing ahead to achieve program growth and revenue goals for the year. On my desk…
- 7. WHY OUR CUSTOMERS ARE CHAMPIONS
- 8. WHY BLACKBAUD INVESTED IN ADVOCATE MARKETING
- 9. WHAT STAKEHOLDERS ACROSS OUR BUSINESS ARE SAYING “Seriously the Champions are the greatest thing ever in the Raiser’s Edge community. I am so glad we’ve been able to leverage their energy” – Holly Herbert, Community Manager, The Raiser’s Edge, Blackbaud “My campaign wouldn’t have been possible without our AWESOME Blackbaud Champions” – Emily Popson, Demand Generation Marketing Manager, Training and Interactive Solutions “Blackbaud Champions is a central place to give our customers opportunities to engage and spread our message. This is a huge step forward in making our previous “Fan Club” a true engine to drive business.” – Amy Bills, Director of Customer Marketing, Blackbaud “I was just on the phone with Jana at a Community College Foundation. She had some great things to say about our Champions program. She mentioned that is actually how she managed to land her current job. kudos for the program and what it allows our customers to accomplish.” – Mallory Gilbert, Customer Success – Customer Loyalty Manager, Blackbaud “This is the new frontier of marketing” – Mary Pat Donnellon, VP of Marketing, Blackbaud
- 10. WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS ARE SAYING “Blackbaud is more than just software solutions, it is the collective expertise and experience of all its employees and it is all in place to help advance your mission. I want to make sure that everyone takes advantage of all that Blackbaud offers.” - Ali Burke, Southlake Regional Health Centre “I believe in the power of Peer to Peer activity. There is no better way to learn about what others are doing and the innovation they are creating. If you can leverage what someone else has done, your being a smart champion for your organization. I am a Blackbaud Champion because peers matter.” - Nick Goodman, Nazareth Children’s Home “I love the Champions challenges, I love staying on top of new trends and research, and I love feeling a sense of being involved with new innovations.” - Amy Barker, The Trustees of Reservations “Being a Champion gives me great access to information & colleague experiences that point me to success habits for my organization.” - Lauren Blunier, Riverside Healthcare Foundation
- 11. WHERE WE ARE GOING Customer Referrals: In 2013, we had $13,000 pipeline from customer referrals. In 2014, we had $250,000. In 2015, we’ve set a goal of $500,000 in customer referral pipeline. Customer referrals close faster and at a higher rate. Online Reviews: 2/3 of the buying process done before anyone gets to us. Additionally, buyers trust the experiences of their peers more than they trust marketers. We’re growing our presence on strategic review sites. Customer references: and Community Engagement We’ll continue to enable our sales team to close more competitive deals by providing the right customer at the right time. Additionally, we’ll tap our advocates to accelerate engagement in our communities and within their social networks. Content Creation: Our customers are the experts. By crowdsourcing content, we’re more efficiently and effectively delighting our customers and driving our content marketing and thought leadership Employee Advocacy, and endless possibilities… We just rolled out employee advocacy (called Social Ambassadors) to 50 of our employees yesterday. Our program will continue to evolve as we collaborate and innovate.
- 12. WHAT I’VE LEARNED IN YEAR ONE Advocate Marketing is a team sport. It’s not 4-year old soccer. It’s more of a beautiful game that inspires creativity and collaboration. It forces us to break down silos internally to the benefit of our customers externally. It helps us work smarter, not harder. Every piece of our business from support to sales, customer success and Marketing benefits from the voice of our customers if we’ll only ask respectfully, and in a mutually beneficial way. And the early returns from stakeholders, customers , and B2B Marketers alike, is that it works. “Modern technology buyers crave information they can trust as they go through their buying process… As a result, a key focus of technology marketing must be getting others to talk about you. If your customers love the value that you provide them, then advocacy marketing is a key strategic effort.” - Gartner Research
- 13. Questions?