But that’s beginning to change.
Historically, what we’ve lacked is customer data–real-time, in-depth customer data, along with a platform to access, analyze, and segment it. Without it, we can’t engage customers in a meaningful way that resonates with them, or doesn’t step on the toes of our customer success colleagues. Without that data, it’s challenging to generate anything beyond case studies.
That’s no longer the case though!Customer marketers have discovered the value of customer success data and the customer success platforms (CSPs) that make it easy to manage and activate customers.
At ChurnZero, we’re using customer success data to change the game. We’ve partnered with our CS team to develop truly strategic, proactive, data-driven customer marketing campaigns. We’re now influencing everything from customer advocacy to product adoption and retention, and we have the numbers to prove it.
Our marketing team has access to the customer success software that ChurnZero builds and uses. Our own CX team is among ChurnZero’s biggest power users and champions, and as a former ChurnZero customer success manager (CSM) myself, I’ve jumped in and put this data to work.
We’re leveraging CSP data to segment our customer marketing campaigns based on customer needs, software editions, vertical market segments, and customer journey stages. We’re also using ChurnZero’s in-app tools to streamline and enhance email communications, making them more timely and relevant. As a result, engagement rates have soared, deals are closing, and our influence has grown. We’ve learned that customer success data is indeed customer marketing gold.
Want to learn more? We’ve created a new guide for customer marketing teams that explains how to use CSP data in more detail.
For now, I’ll leave you with a “how-to” sneak peak from the guide (you’ll find six of these inside) that should resonate with every advocacy-focused reader.
How-to #3: Find the right customer reference for every deal, using CSP data.
Case studies are often a pain point for every go-to-market team. Sales needs them yesterday customer success is weary of fielding repetitive requests, and marketing is often stuck in the middle, dealing with delays, workflow disruptions, and mixed results.
However, with our customer success platform or similar CSP solutions of your choosing, the process becomes as easy as one, two, three:
1. Customer marketing searches our customer accounts for the following attributes:
- The customer matches the industry, size and roles requested by sales.
- The product is fully implemented.
- The customer is using the integration.
- The customer is using a specific product edition (e.g. enterprise).
- The customer account scores as net promoters.
- The customer has left a positive review on a third-party site.
2. Our CSP provides me with a list of customers.
3. I reach out to each customer’s CSM for permission to contact them, then proceed. Unlike the old way, what we’re asking of the CSM is very specific: a yes/no decision that requires minimal research on their part.
This process is also repeatable. I can save the search and make it available for anyone to use, democratizing the data and creating the foundation of a reference library that sales and marketing can access on their own.
I hope you’ll read the guide and find it useful. Until next time, I wish you success in your customer advocacy and customer marketing efforts. You can read more from me on supercharging your customer marketing efforts here, or catch me on the Talk Advocacy to Me podcast, where I talk all about leveraging your CSP data.
