Mitel s 240.9 136.5 First Class ADVOCATE MARKETING Program Blueprint PRESENTED BY INFLUITIVE AND TANGO CARD
All around the world, Mitel powers over 2 billion business connections every day and unsurprisingly, they have thousands of happy customers, partners and employees - these are Mitel s advocates. In early 2014, Mitel had three objectives to face: 1 2 3 Establish the company s new brand in the marketplace Develop internal buy in to spread the Mitel message via social media Generate high-quality referral leads to fuel Mitel s growth To start, Mitel looked for a solution that was scalable to their employees. The result was, Mitel Champions, a program that was made up of nearly 2,000 highly engaged Mitel advocates encompassing employees, partners and customer advocates. CHAMPIONS
We sat down with Liz Pedro, Director of Customer Success Marketing at Mitel, to discuss her industry leading advocate marketing program. Here s what she had to say: Q: Hi Liz, thanks for taking the time to discuss your advocate marketing program with us. To start off, could you give us an overview of your advocate marketing program and why you decided to launch one? LIZ PEDRO DIRECTOR OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS MARKETING, MITEL A: Mitel has thousands of happy employees, partners and customers and it only made sense to create an experience to help foster those relationships. That s why we partnered with Influitive and Tango Card to create a compelling program to engage and recognize our employees, customers and partners. In June 2014, we created Mitel Champions, launching in only a few weeks. We started inviting our employees and the program quickly scaled to nearly 2,000 advocates - becoming the fastest growing international advocate program. We also wanted to use our international advocate program to roll out our new company brand, have our employees spread the word through their social media networks and also generate referral leads to grow our business.
Q: How do you engage, recognize and reward this army of advocates for their efforts? A: We take the time to learn about our advocates then offer them personalized activities and opportunities to help them on a professional or everyday level. We do this using Influitive s powerful advocate marketing software, AdvocateHub, with integrated rewards from Tango Card. The beauty of AdvocateHub is that I can create engaging activities for Mitel s employee advocates to participate in. The gamification in the AdvocateHub appeals to both an advocate s intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, meaning they are satisfied by helping a company they love and receiving recognition and acts of appreciation that are meaningful to them. This combination of motivation techniques has amplified and accelerated the success of the Mitel Champions program. In order to fulfill thousands of international rewards, Influitive integrated Tango Card with its advocate marketing software. The Tango Card integration with AdvocateHub has allowed me to focus on engagement while advocates choose digital gift cards that are automatically fulfilled 24x7 in the US, Canada, the UK, EU, India and 90 other countries. This saves me time and money from having to hire multiple other people to manage a recognition and rewards program.
Q: Can you share some of the results you ve experience from Mitel Champions? A: The program has far exceeded our expectations. We ve been able to engage our employees with a few clicks of a button and have complete buy-in for our new brand rolling out across the world. It s fantastic! Because of this buy-in, we ve been able to generate more than 800 referrals and our employees are taking more than 140,000 social media actions to spread our message. Meanwhile, thousands of acts of gifts of recognition have gone out automatically to recognize the Champions contributions. All this in just 6 months since launch. Besides the referrals, those happened in two months! Since June 2014, the Mitel Champions program has seen the following results: 856 REFERRALS 1719 ADVOCATES 2000+ REWARDS REDEEMED 20X MORE REWARDS GIVEN 200 000 ACTS OF ADVOCACY 140 000 SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIONS
Q: Wow. These are great results, Liz. Thank you so much for sharing them. If the readers would like to get in touch with you how would they do that? A: Probably best on Twitter - @mslizpedro or email me - liz.pedro@mitel.com A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT LIZ Liz has been doing advocate marketing for 10 years across five companies, making her part of a select group of advocate marketing experts. She is a modern marketer with a passion for strategic customer marketing that helps grow sales revenue. In addition to advocacy marketing, her passions include social selling, reference programs, and all things customers. Liz is a recognized authority in development and management of customer success and reference programs and was most recently a Marketing Technologist Finalist - (Direct Marketing News Marketing & Tech Innovation Awards), Social Innovation Finalist (Direct Marketing News Marketing & Tech Innovation Awards) and a finalist for the Supernova Award for Next Generation Customer Experience (Constellation Research). THE RECOGNITION AND REWARDS THAT ADVOCATES DESERVE Before using Influitive s AdvocateHub integrated with Tango Card, Mitel was not able to manage a formal advocate program. Without an easy incentive system like Tango Card, Mitel would have had to hire multiple people to manage it. Even then, they did not have a global rewards solution for their international advocates. The previous solution was to track advocate activity through a spreadsheet and have daily contests, which still required several hours of management per week and delivered limited results. Now Liz has her formal and international advocate and incentive program and it is hands free.
Since using AdvocateHub and Tango Card, Liz has been able to scale Mitel s advocate and incentive program 20 times over and with very little management. No matter where Mitel s employee advocates are, they enjoy advocating and being recognized at any moment in the day. says Liz. Overall, the all-digital solution that Influitive and Tango Card provide allows for a more effective program. Liz can build and nurture many more relationships at a scale that she couldn t before. This way she can keep in touch with them and return the favor whenever a Mitel Champion has advocated. Also, the change from contests to real-time digital recognition and rewards means that advocates get feedback immediately for what they have done, bringing them back again and again. Where Mitel Champion Advocates ARE Currently Located And Earning Rewards CANADA USA FRANCE UK ITALY GERMANY INDIA SPAIN +90 MORE
GENERAL BENEFITS OF THE INFLUITIVE AND TANGO CARD SOLUTION Streamline management of your advocate program Create challenges that advocates enjoy to accomplish your s and their goals Receive excellent data about what is working and where you can maximize results Enable engaging rewards that your advocates will love Offload reward program management and focus on business results
ABOUT INFLUITIVE Influitive, the advocate marketing experts, is based in Toronto with offices in Menlo Park and Boston. Today s buyers are increasingly leveraging their peers opinions and Influitive helps marketers tap into this force with its innovative AdvocateHub platform and Maven mobile app. By capturing the enthusiasm of their best customers, followers and evangelists, marketers gain direct support for their sales and marketing programs. From social media reviews and customer referrals to case studies and references, passionate advocates help support all stages of the buying cycle. Influitive s customers include hundreds of the most successful and fastest-growing business-to-business software and technology firms in the world. Learn more at www.influitive.com
ABOUT TANGO CARD Tango Card makes it easy for you to send digital gift cards as rewards and incentives to customers and employees. They make three promises to all of their partners: Great Rewards, Expert Service, and Helpful Technology. Tango Card s Gift Card API and instant reward platforms allow for easy, effective and timely rewards whether you need a deep integration or a same day campaign. Tango Card manages all the details of a rewards program so that you can focus on your business. Hundreds of companies have sent millions of rewards through Tango Card s services and over 99% become returning customers, a testament to Tango Card s partnership approach. Choose Tango Card as your rewards partner and uncover real, immediate results. Learn more at www.tangocard.com