Episode 13: Group Reference Event

My new favorite program

Welcome to the next episode of The CMA Newsletter where 408 marketers get better at building Customer Marketing programs and strengthening relationships with their customers in less than 5 minutes.

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Warning: I’m have the stomach flu. Not sure the below has anything spelled right or correct punctuation.

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Y’all seemed to love last weeks episode so I thought I’d double down. Now last year I was on a mission to do true Advocate Marketing. I wanted to layer on another program where advocates basically sell directly to prospects at scale.

I met with so many CMA’s to just talk it out and figure out what I was trying to accomplish. I think it was Alana from Netskope that was like “I think you want to scale your Reference program to be 1:many versus 1:1. Yessss thats it! So I leaned in.

Today, I will breakdown how to execute my CMO, CRO, and our Chief Go-to-Market Officers favorite events of 2022. They are the Group Reference Events.

Overview:

A quarterly event that leverages 2 advocates to speak to prospects with the goal of accelerating Q4 deals. They share their history before using your platform, why they purchased, their experience and results.

Goals:

• 50 seats open

• 15 Accounts attended

• 10 Deals Accelerated

•  $200k Closed Won deals Influenced

• Case Study or gated content

Agenda:

• SuperSender Community Pitch (remember you community is a differentiator and people want to know they will be supported after they sign.

• Introductions 

• Advocate 1

• Questions

• Advocate 2

• Questions 

*Tip*- When I first thought about doing this, I said “NO SLIDES” just conversation. I had a manager at the time that fought me on that. Turns out she was right. You have to have slides and visuals for prospects because they don’t know what they don’t know. You have to guide the conversation and bring your platform to life.

Topics to cover

• Challenges before your platform

• Current Strategies

• Who in their Company has Access to your platform (if that’s interesting)

• Favorite Features

• Results & Lessons Learned

• Open Q&A

Topics to avoid:

• Pricing

Marketing the Event

Ok I have now done this 5 times and I think I have got it nailed down. The first event, Sales leaders were telling me “Let AEs send the invites to prospects” Ok I thought…. 4 REGISTERED. So I took over. I do give them a template in Groove to use as well but my email slays.

The subject line read: Here’s your Gift to bring to ThanksGiving Dinner

66.5% OPEN RATE! That’s amazing for prospects.

2 things: So yes we are Sendoso and they expect this from us but can you imagine the response you would get if they didn’t expect a treat. If you don’t have Sendoso then you can use GeorgeTown Cupcakes. They ship all over and they are DELICIOUS. They will ship in bulk for ya. Don’t send to Texas during summer time though.

Look at the text right above the picture. “There are only 12 seats left…” Nope there were actually plenty of seats left but I wanted to make it feel extra exclusive and that it was an intimate group.

Pre-Event Survey

This is a classy move for your advocates. Here they are doing this event for you so the least you could do is set them up for success. No surprises. I ask:

• Which of the following use cases are you interested in deploying with Sendoso?

• What are the top 3 features you are interested in learning more about?

• Do you have any specific questions for our speakers?

That last one is good if you don’t have a chatty bunch and can pull from those questions.

Day of Event

I do send a $25 lunch e-gift 10 minutes before the call. (As I mentioned before, you can spend some money on reference programs bc the ROI is VERY high.)

Again, we are Sendoso so they expect it.

Something that I suspect that gets them to show up is how it’s written on their calendar.

Now this looks as if it’s a 1:1 phone call as opposed to an event. Call me crazy but I think this works.

I’m also extra AF and doing giveaways throughout the event. I use a fun virtual wheel called that I call “Wheel of Sends”. You can create your wheel here.
Make 2 wheels - One wheel for names and the other with prizes.

Results

Here are the results from the first one back in Q4 last year:

60% Attendance rate
20 Accounts Attended
Closed Won- $204,755
Accelerated deals - 11
Created a case study from the event and gated the recording.

I run these every quarter and they are pretty great! I have been consistently hitting 50-60% attendance rate and help accelerate 10-15 deals each time. Advocates seem to love the events and are quick to say yes. I’d love to hear from you. Do you all execute these events? Leave a comment below.

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On a personal note:

We are celebrating our 7 year wedding anniversary this weekend. We got married in Sonoma so yep you guessed it… we are off to Sonoma.