In this week’s Gain Grow Retain Office Hours, Jenny Weigle from Jenny.Community joined us to share a framework for optimizing the alignment between Customer Success initiatives and pre, mid, and post customer engagement through community within the realm of events.
We know that events can help us scale information dissemination, whether we are talking Office Hours, Webinars, group Onboarding or in person events, but can we use a community platform to extend the impact beyond the event itself?
Strategic Approach:
- Emphasize the enduring significance of virtual events and their integration into the broader community strategy.
- Define event purpose clearly, including measurable success metrics and desired emotional impact on attendees.
- Advocate for a holistic approach to event planning, spanning pre-event promotion, live engagement, and post-event follow-up within the community space.
Tactical Execution:
- Pre-event: Strategize community promotion, considering different timeframes and channels such as email and social media.
- During event: Maximize community engagement with live streams, badge awards, and real-time updates. Make the community visible through branding, swag, podium announcements, and super user shout-outs.
- Post-event: Extend event impact through community-centric activities like badge awards, content sharing, and post-event surveys.
Discussion Takeaways
How can I use community to support customer events when I don’t have a lot of bandwidth?
- Utilize self-service platforms like forums or message boards to foster a sense of community among users seeking technical assistance.
- Consider the virtual nature of community platforms like Slack or message boards when resource-constrained, ensuring consistent communication during product outages through webinar series or recurring non-sales, non-marketing communications.
- Maintain community integrity by refraining from soliciting prospect intros or referrals to avoid poisoning the community atmosphere.
- Plan ahead for events, starting 2-3 months in advance, and diversify event times to accommodate different attendee schedules.
- Define the event's purpose and panelists from the community to streamline content preparation, leveraging social media cards for promotion to maximize reach.
- Establish event budgets based on desired outcomes, considering venue, food/drink, and speaker costs, with customizable success metrics such as attendee retention and new member acquisition.
- Ensure leadership support for events and incorporate post-event engagement strategies like QR codes for continued participation and additional swag incentives during registration, fostering a sense of community engagement and loyalty.
What are some ways you can extend the life of an event through content that is shared on a community?
- Utilize the physical event as a springboard for digital community engagement by creating a common reference point for attendees.
- Feature engaged customers as speakers or contributors, sharing success stories and insights from the event online to extend its reach and impact.
- Incorporate polling to gather feedback and insights from attendees, fostering ongoing engagement and dialogue within the community.
- Provide attendees with feedback, highlights, or takeaways from the event, reinforcing the value of their participation and encouraging continued interaction.
- Implement gamification elements such as badging or swag awards to incentivize participation and acknowledge attendees' involvement in the event.
- Segment attendee expectations and goals into subgroups within the community, facilitating targeted discussions and knowledge sharing.
- Share pictures and event content online to document the experience and encourage further engagement among community members.
- Highlight outcomes and benefits of implementing technologies discussed at the event, such as carbon emission savings or cost optimization, to showcase real-world applications and inspire further innovation.
- Foster value-based conversations that empower customers to build their personal brands and educate others within the community, creating a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration.
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