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Featured Presenters


Winning The Marketing Revolution
by Lisa Arthur, Chief Marketing Officer, Aprimo



Aligning Customer References with Corporate Strategy
by Abby Atkinson, Sr. Director, Infor Ambassador Reference Program


How Customer References + Communities Create Supercharged Advocacy
by Sydney Sloan, Sr. Director, Customer & Social Marketing, Jive Software

DAY 0: MARCH 4

DAY 1: MARCH 5

Read more about Chuck Ball

Read more about Sean Geehan

10:15 - 11:15 am
Winning The Marketing Revolution
by Lisa Arthur, Chief Marketing Officer, Aprimo
As market power shifts increasingly to customers, marketing is undergoing a profound change. In particular, customer communities will become the great disrupter, fueling much deeper customer engagement and advocacy—for companies nimble enough to adapt. Using data from a variety of studies—plus her own successful experience at Aprimo and other firms—Lisa will provide powerful tools helping you to explain this shift to your management, while helping you to position you for personal and career success. And make no mistake, customer reference and other advocacy programs will play a central role in this new world.

11:15 am – 12:30 pm
Panel: Getting Marquee-Brand Customers to Reference and Advocate For You
led by include Rhett Livengood, Director, WW Sales Development, Intel

12:30 – 1:30 pm
Networking Lunch

Breakouts (Track A)

1:30 pm Creating Apple-Like Customer References and Advocates
by Rob Meinhardt, Founder, CEO of KACE (acquired by Dell)

Read more about Rob Meinhardt

Can a firm that makes relatively mundane products, such as enterprise software, develop customer advocates as passionate as Apple's? In fact, Rob will show how companies who don't think they can compete with the excitement of an Apple are missing the point. It's not the legacy of Steve Jobs, or Apples sleek and exciting iProducts that create the excitement. "It's about making an important difference in customer's lives," says Rob. "And more companies can do that than think they can." Rob will show how his team built and manages passionate, Apple–like customer advocacy for KACE–whose customers enthusiastically perform a broad array of reference and advocacy activities for the firm.

2:30 pm
Aligning Customer References with Corporate Strategy

Read more about Abby Atkinson

by Abby Atkinson, Sr. Director, Infor Ambassador Reference Program
In high–growth industries, companies must leverage customer references—along with other advocacy efforts—to differentiate themselves from competitors. Abby will show you how her reference program met the increasing demand from executive management to provide not just qualified references, but also to build a reference portfolio that is in sync with corporate strategy along industry and products lines. Using an industry / product grid matrix, Abby will show you how to rapidly find hidden reference gaps that would have previously undermined sales or marketing efforts. Such an approach will help you determine where more customer references are needed, what specific reference assets are required, and where you run the risk of shortages ahead. "The tool has uncovered incredibly valuable information we otherwise wouldn't have known," says Abby, "such as surprising gaps in evidence material for a key industry and product. By developing this tool, attendees will be able to quickly identify their priority focus areas based on their company's strategic direction."

3:30 pm
Measuring–and Increasing–the Full Value of Customer Advocacy Programs
by Deena Zenyk, Marketing Manager, Customer Advocacy Programs, SMART Technologies
Deena will show how SMART's customer advocacy program has grown increasingly adept at harvesting value from their brand advocates—known as SMART Exemplary Educators (SEEs). She'll show how SMART has built a community of more than 900 SEEs in the education market, how they provide a range of value including references, referrals, high–powered marketing and classroom content, training and development and more. SMART has also deployed social gaming technology that dramatically increases the value SEEs bring to the organization. Plus, equally important, she'll show how the organization measures the impact of such SEE activities, with surprising results. The average SEE customer generates an astonishing $130,000 per year in value beyond the products and services they purchase.

4:30 pm
Getting Serious About Reference Program Automation
by Heather Watkins, Senior Manager of Customer Communities and Programs, Marketo

Read more about Heather Watkins

Many reference programs use only a small fraction of the technology resources they have--which might include come combination of Salesforce.com, a reference management system, a marketing automation system and the like. It's a bit like using only 10% of the total capability of your laptop or smart phone. Heather will show how to make much better use of such technology to automate mundane and time consuming tasks such as: creating alerts to contact potential references 90 days after a successful implementation, managing an employee reference nomination process, conducting reference surveys plus auto-followups to survey non-responders, managing data update campaigns filled out by customers and auto-synched to reference database, sending out gifts and thank yous to references, and more.

Breakouts (Track B)

1:30 pm
Vision and Value: Crafting Insightful B2B Video Content That Drives Results
by Sara Jane Bresee, VP, Group Account Director, McCann Worldgroup
The goal of this presentation is to show "behind the scenes" how great customer videos get created and used. Our goal is to show, with details, how:

• To pick a great customer
• Figure out how to maximize the story
• To shoot, and capture the best video for your budget
• To insure the video is used in every way possible
• Formats, tagging, placement
• To consider new uses for video that capture your customer earlier in the digital conversation.
  

Sara will illustrate with examples from: Amazon Web Services and NASA, Verizon, Intel and others.


2:30 pm
Meeting the Reference–and Advocacy–Demands of a Rapid Growth Business
by Charlotte Lilley, Head of Customer Programs, Box (formerly Box.net)
"Customer reference programs are a challenge to manage in any business–but in a rapid–growth business, they require exceptional ingenuity in making the most of limited time and resources, a superb ability to reduce the labor intensity of her job, and a good nose for the best vendor and technology resources out there. Charlotte will show how she's managed all of these imperatives while her firm, Box, has exploded from 40 employees to 600 in just three years. Essential information for reference and advocacy managers at fast growth firms."

3:30 pm
How Customer References + Communities Create Supercharged Advocacy
by Sydney Sloan, Sr. Director, Customer & Social Marketing, Jive Software

Read more about Sydney Sloan

Typically, customer support communities are separate from customer reference programs. Sydney will show how the team at Jive have developed exceptional synergies by bringing these two programs together. The community provides a platform to give references visibility and status with their peers. Top references, for example, receive badges, VIP recognition and other distinctions—the very best are called "Jive Champions." Community also allows Jive to engage references more easily in broader advocacy efforts using technologies such as gamification. On the other hand, the presence and visibility of references in the community encourages more community members to become advocates themselves. Learn how Sydney finds top references and advocates, establishes criteria for selection, integrates them into the community, and uses the community + references model to enhance social media and other marketing efforts. As she puts it, marketing to your customer base can be much more effective than just the traditional reference, advisory board and other customer engagement programs "it can become a revenue generating engine that supports referrals, renewals and license expansion."

4:30 pm
Fundamentals for New and Emerging Customer Reference Programs
By Liz Pedro, Senior Manager, Customer Programs, ShoreTel

In 2 Parts

Are you just starting a customer reference program? Or, do you need to re-orient your program to the new, mobile and social-media infused reality that customers live in today? Perhaps you're just looking for ideas to take your reference program to the next level. This year we’re providing you with a compelling one-two punch.

Liz will present Part 2 of this two-part presentation (Part 1 is a webinar delivered as part of the Master Class Series, on February 6. Please note: All attendees will have access to the audio and downloads from the Part 1 webinar, of course.

Read more...

In Part 1, Liz and David Sroka from Point of Reference showed you how to apply the Customer Reference Program Maturity Model, a tool developed and introduced by Point of Reference in the first Master Class webinar in September. You’ll learn how to grow a reference program, establish benchmarks, and ensure measurable results. We’ll also cover three key phases of building a successful reference program including securing program approval, launching your plan and ensuring user adoption.

In this session at the Summit, Liz will do a deeper dive and cover eleven best practices essential to today’s customer reference program. Part 2 will cover customer reference metrics, how to make sense of and leverage social media options, selecting and implementing reference management systems and much more. You’ll come away knowing how to establish your new or rebuilt reference program on a sound and scalable footing.

Read less...

DAY 2: MARCH 6

Read more

Workshops (Track A)

9:35 am
Reference Database Management: Applying Technology to a Relationship-Driven Program
led by Josh Horwitz, CEO, Boulder Logic and Katy Boos, Vice President, Big Sky Communications
It's a Catch 22: customer reference management succeeds based on highly personal relationships, but you need to apply technology to effectively scale your program. In this workshop, you'll learn techniques and examples of best practices to balance technology without surrendering the essential personal touch. We'll provide real–world examples, feature requirements, and sample automation processes for core areas of customer reference management: recruiting customers, managing content development, keeping data refreshed, fulfilling live requests, distributing content, and rewarding participants. As an outcome, workshop participants will better understand how to answer the question: In a business that depends on personal relationships — what is the role of technology?

11:30 am (Will include lunch)
Ten Reference & Advocacy Program Mistakes to Avoid in 2013
led by Rob Fuggetta, Founder & CEO, Zuberance and Daniel Brooks, Head of Customer Marketing, Metia
The fast–evolving marketing and IT landscape brings new challenges for the Customer Reference Manager. Often, even the most established programs can have fundamental flaws that prevent organizations maximizing the value of customer advocates in this new environment.

Find out how to optimize content and channels fast, use genuine storytelling principles, and harness technology to broaden your pool of active advocates–all areas where reference programs often fall short.

With our set of guidelines for Customer Reference Managers, you can benchmark your own plans for 2013, ensuring you don't make the mistakes that will hamper the success of your reference program.


1:45 pm (Mini Workshop)
Getting More From Sales References In an Age of Social Selling
led by Mark Organ, CEO and Founder, Influitive
Even successful sales references are wasting a precious commodity by 'locking up' their reference feedback, opinions and experiences in 1to1 telephone conversations with prospects. Meantime, those references are chomping at the bit to build their own network, establish their reputation and build social capital on hundreds of social outposts. The session will focus on best practices in building, maintaining and measuring a reference program, and then tips for moving it from reference to advocacy in an age of social buying.

Workshops (Track B)

9:35 am
Emerging and Next Generation Customer Content Creation
led by Amir Hartman, Co-founder and Partner, Mainstay Salire, and Robin Hamilton, Managing Director, InEvidence

Amir Hartman

Robin Hamilton

What emerging content assets are out there and how effective will they be with my stakeholder? In this workshop we will discuss the 3 Cs of customer evidence (content, channels, consumption).

We’ll share emerging content practices and through breakout groups create an emerging content portfolio you can take back to your organization. Outcomes will include:

• a 3Cs Heat Map
  
• A Content Stakeholder Value Proposition
  
• 90 day “commitments to action”

11:30 am (Will include lunch)
Arming Your Sales Team: Right Content, Right Time
led by David Sroka, CEO, Point of Reference, and Brad O'Neill, CEO and Cofounder, and Lauren Locke-Paddon, Vice President, TechValidate

David Sroka	Brad O'Neill	Lauren Locke-Paddon

Attendees will develop—in the workshop—a more strategic, less reactive framework for developing customer reference content. You'll learn effective, efficient ways to determine what content your program stakeholders need, how to ensure the full sales cycle is addressed in your content plan, and how to maximize and measure content value. Outcomes for attendees will include knowing how to create a content plan that impacts lead generation and sales. Deliverables will include a Content Gap Analysis Workbook, a Mapping Content to Sales Cycle Tool, and more.

To learn more about the workshop.

1:45 pm (Mini Workshop)
Lead & Reference Generation: How to Build and Maintain your 'Dream Reference Pipeline'
led by Miriam Rack, CEO and Founder, MRM Reference Consulting
No matter how big or small your company is you need to maintain an active customer reference pipeline and create strategies for filling your pipeline and keeping it going. In this workshop, participants will work in break out groups to develop new methods and ideas for lead and reference generation in a variety of challenging scenarios:

• Getting Started: Finding References for Product Launches & New Reference Programs
• Strategic Reference Qualification: Filling Reference Gaps & Spending Limited Resources more Effectively
• Overcoming Obstacles: Signing up Hard to Get References such as Federal and Big Brands
• Social Media: Leveraging Social Media to Build and Maintain a Reference Pipeline

Participants will leave with new ideas and tools to generate the reference pipeline they have always wished they had.