way Daniel Dean boughey and Jensen out LLC, huh? Oh, sorry.
Let me change that.
How is everyone? Hi, Rachel, Daniel. Alison, how are you? Oh, hello. Happy Friday. Happy Friday. I am so excited. It's Friday
Oh, yeah, five weeks or five years of worth. So California saving some of that water?
Maybe not.
I think our reservoirs, majority of them in Northern California are now over 50 to 75%, full.
Nine.
It's good. The snowpack I think was like at 177% of normal. So it's possible that there'll be like, Hey, you're not in an extreme drought anymore. But the last time they did last time this happened. It took us probably 18 months to get right back in the drought. So it's interesting. Luckily, I heard today that the Salinas River isn't supposed to flood and in the way they thought it was gonna flood. And if if it did flood, the way they were fearful of it would have basically turned the Monterey Peninsula into Monterey Island. Wow. Wow.
That's a lot. Yeah, I saw that. Something said that they're no longer is a drought, but over a billion dollars in damage and 18 people died. I'm like, how did they die? What? What happened?
There were a lot of flash floods up and down the coast. And it's now I think I saw the latest number, the governor's office came out with somewhere between 31 and $34 billion worth of damage. Wow, the state because I mean, it wasn't just the rain, we basically got hit by hurricane force winds for the better part of a couple of days. There were 70 mile an hour winds up by San Francisco airport. And then it just sort of moved its way through the through the state. We have family by Eldorado Hills, which is in between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. They lost four trees in their at their place. Oh, wow. Wow.
I don't even know what else to say. Let's see. How are you guys doing in your area?
We're fine. I mean, it's wet here. But we live on a little hill. So we're kind of above general, if let's just put this way if it flooded it like up to our house. There are a lot of people that are a lot worse off than we are.
Yeah, that's how my inlaws lived. We had two floods 10 years ago, and seven years ago in my area, and the first one took out the house we had moved out of like six months before the whole house had to come down after it. But my inlaws happened to live on a hill, and it was weird, like half of their road, people completely lost their homes. And on the other half of the road. Everybody was fine, is just because of the hill that they were on. But yeah, there was a flash flood and like within minutes, it had water just everywhere. It was pretty crazy.
Yeah, it's it's a scary thing out here. But I'd much rather deal with this than then with fires. And luckily this year, this sort of a compacting thing. We didn't have a bad fire season last year. So the risk of landslides and various and mudslides isn't as high because the ground isn't as there's more things on the ground, and it's more stable. So it's one of those weird weather phenomenon, though at least we're not going through that.
I always say I'm like you know what, we have snow here, but I'd much rather have snow than what everybody else gets all over the country. No, we don't have hurricanes or tornadoes usually anything like that. So I'm okay with snow. All righty while everyone thank you for coming this week. I didn't put anything specific on the calendar, did I? In case you're following along I'm a little bit disorganized this year, I'm like, gotta get my head into the game. So this week, we had our first CMA plus advanced chat. And some of you were able to make that. And some of you did not. And I thought it was a really good call. And if I learn anything really cool from those calls, I will definitely bring it to everyone else. And, yeah, that's pretty much what I have for this week. I've noticed there more layoffs in our space, and you know, the tech space. So I'm starting to keep a list of people I know, in the customer marketing advocacy space that I can one refer to, and even put together a couple more calls on the job search. I know, Rebecca Grossman, who doesn't appear to be on the call today, maybe she's too busy. recently got a job. And I was impressed, because I'm like, some of us have been doing interviews for a while. So I'm gonna see if I can get her on a call to share some of her job searching secrets with the rest of us. Yeah, Leslie did her conference. I've missed her. She's doing that.
I feel like I got hit by a truck. Today. I probably gonna log off early. But ya know, it was it was just magical. I was so great. I can't wait for you all to get back into the conference game. And if your companies host one, it's just like a, wow, it's just a great experience. It's pretty cool. I did a I will say, if anybody is doing one of these, for first day, we did customer day. And I did a guided workshops. So what that was, is there were about eight round tables with about like, eight chairs to each table. And then each table had a different topic. And then there were easels and pens and everything at each table. And then there was also a moderator. So my moderators consisted of like, Senator, so employees, as well as kind of like my top advocates who are really, really great in those areas. And the moderator wasn't there to like, speech, anything, they're just there to encourage lively discussion about the topic. But if the conversation LOLed, then they're able to kind of chime in. And I had 15 minutes on the clock for each table, we did it for an hour and a half. And 15 minutes was just not enough. I was like, so awkward. Trying to say like, Okay, everybody get up, switch tables, like they did not want to stop talking. So maybe like 20 minutes would have been better, I don't know, they were just like, really into the topics. Um, and just the, the sight of everybody learning from each other, and the like, diligent note taking, and like the writing so fast to what others are saying. And then to hear like the rumble of like, Oh, my God, you can do that. No way. It was just like, extremely heart exploding. I mean, obviously, I have like a real passion and love for this job. So I maybe took it too far. But I just had the conference could have ended there, after an hour and a half, and I would have been thrilled. And then to be able to like take my customers out to dinner, and just face to face and cloud nine over here.
So you're an extrovert. I hear what I'm hearing. Yeah. Are you going to take like some of that content, or even collect some of that content from the customers to take back to other customers and use or I'm not going to be able to have that happen?
I don't know for sure. We we recorded everything. So kind of gotta go back to those keynote speakers to see what we can share. But yeah, the goal is to or the plan is to summarize each one and push it out to the rest of the install base and say like, here's the kind of like what you missed, because we really pulled this conference together in four weeks. So fast. I know. It's crazy. So we just got an opportunity like a bunch of work. was at the Aria. So we're just like, what should we do with this? Oh, my God. And then so I pulled our super centers and was like, hypothetically speaking, if we were to, you know, give you a room at the ARIA, would you come to this conference? And we're all expecting them to say no. And like, every single one of them was like, we're like, oh, yeah, let's go send it. And we're like, Oh, my God, I guess this is happening. So we just did it in four weeks. So a lot of people couldn't go, obviously, because it's, but we got 175 people there in four weeks. So it was good. But yes, short answer, we're going to summarize it and push it out to everyone so that they don't miss anything.
I'm just thinking holy shit. 175 people in four weeks?
Yeah, I mean, that's just the, the power of AI. And so in the space, and I mean, you know, I don't want to sound like an asshole, but like what I've created in the community and
team, Lesley, my own
horn or anything, but like, we have a really pretty tight community. And they all wanted to meet each other because they know that they just love the peer to peer and the learning from one another. And there's only so much that Sindo can do to like, push out best practices and how to scale and all that stuff. So
yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, if you share some of that stuff, information, and there's anything good to share, be on your install base, because I don't think any of my customers have sendo so quite yet, I am pushing.
But yeah, I mean, it was like customer day was more of the Sun Dosso plant best practices and all that stuff. And like customer speaking and breakout sessions, but like the keynotes and all these like amazing speakers like sang Grom and Anthony Kannada and Jake Dunlap. They were all like, you know, marketing umbrella, you know, yeah. Other stuff ABM. And, and the I will tell you guys that the topic or like the theme was like, customer retention community lead growth. I mean, it was mentioned in every single marketing leaders, the CMO panels, like I mean, we've heard this before, but honestly, I think there's something to it this year, that will be a change.
Yeah. Well, congratulations on getting that many people to go and having that and putting that together in four weeks. I think that's amazing. Congratulations.
And then one more thing as kind of like a like, on my soapbox, if you will, but just a lesson outside of CMA is that I hate that saying, do something that makes you that scares you every day. It's just like, oh, who has time for that? I don't want to do that. I like living in my comfortable box. But um, Chris and Braden our co founder and CEO, both had family emergencies and couldn't make it and they were the MCS sockets. Do it. Wow. I had to run though Leslie. And I am. I am paralyzing ly fearful of being onstage like if any of you know me, I will do a lot of virtual events. I will never be on stage ever. Never. It's just not going to happen. I don't want to win awards. Don't get me on a stage like all my armpits start sweating my hands. My It feels like I've been gut punched 13 times. And it was really mentally draining on me. But I swear to God, I got up there. And often. Like, the best empathy I've ever seen, like I would feel natural and comfortable. And it was it was bizarre. And so now I'm like, Let's do stage presence stuff now. So anyway, my my thing here is like, if you think you can't do something, and it is paralyzing ly fearful, I You just kind of do have to force yourself to do it. And maybe you'll surprise yourself and get a kick out of yourself.
Well, I get fearful every day after work when I know I have to open that door to four children. And
yeah, that's way worse.
It's fine. I love my kids. I love it. You know, look, I bring people together. It's it's a lot of fun. So my had a lot of kids.
So right before our last exam At Council in October, which is a smaller group that was kind of built on to our larger exchange event, the Sunday before, like, literally, I opened my laptop in the morning and one by one emails trickle in throughout the day, our CEO had COVID, our head of customer experience got COVID, our keynote speaker got COVID Like, oh, these people weren't coming. And they it was almost just like, okay, so we had to kind of reroute and we had the best of it. Fortunately, all those people were able to attend via virtual, but it's quite not quite the same if they had a key role. And they were doing an interactive session. So yeah, these are the times we're living in. So
they are probably not changing too much anytime soon. Hmm.
Probably not.
Okay, well, does anybody have any topics that they want to talk about or bring up today? And I see we have some new people, Dean, I'm not sure if you've joined us before? In?
Yeah, I've I haven't. Um, hi, everyone. Um, I guess main reason why it's, it's a bit late for me, across the pond here in London. So that's why I can't always join. But yeah, I've wanted to join for some time. So. Hi, everyone. Um, yeah. So yes, happy to sort of listen in. And, yeah, we've obviously like minded people in very similar roles. So yes, great. Thanks for setting this up.
Well, thank you for coming. Normally, we just come on, talk about a couple of things that are going on in the space, some of the things that we've done, or succeeded in doing in the last week or so many days. Oh, and we had a really good community call this week, if anybody decides they want to listen to it, just talking about using slack and stuff. But we also talk about different obstacles and challenges that have come up. And there's a lot of people in here that have been in the space for a long time, that just want to give back and be helpful to others. And if you have any questions, feel free to bring them in, you can put them in chat, or just voice them when you want to.
I'll do that now really appreciate it. I'll have a little thing can definitely, you know, I guess if not now, you know, going forward or when I joined the next session, you know, definitely have some sort of questions because you know, I guess no bad people on to answer it, then. Yeah. People that have faced or are facing similar challenges.
These are the better people to ask. Right, what are we talking about this week? Who's ready for Influitive? Live?
Oh, gosh, I have to do my session still with Ari? Ah, yes.
Yeah.
I am announcing I already kind of told you guys what I'm putting it out there. But putting something out there in the world, and it's going to be at Influitive live, you can download it for free. Oh, I
know what it is. Yep. I shared my link for Influitive live. So if you're not signed up, give me 200 points. So I can be everybody else by signing up through my link. Because I want to get rewards. Last year, I got a new webcam that doesn't work with my MacBook. But it was fun to get.
That's cool. Yeah, Rachel, I haven't even looked at the agenda. I don't even know if I'm on it or not. So I'll go see did they even give me anything to promote? Like a like a LinkedIn? things so I don't know where they're gonna fit me in.
I just got the email today to hold on. I have it open. Let me see if I can find a little more intensely.
I'm working on the
I mean, doesn't matter. I'll ask them what their there's like many maybe like, little buckets of sessions to like, like, Expo Center. So maybe I'm in that? I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
It looks like they're still working on it. Yeah. Cuz I, I tried to pick my session sessions and it was like, click on the picture below or go to the sessions and register now. And the click on the image below piece didn't even work. So that doesn't make sense to anybody on this call. I'm sure unless you've been in and tried, but I'm just saying maybe it's not complete ly one yet. Yeah, I
don't think it is. I've been talking to already since yesterday, and tried out the hub and that sort of thing forum. So I think they're still working on that.
Maybe this can help me like, just quickly know, like, help me with my talk track for this. So what my ebook is about is about getting all of us promotions. How Hello, and but it's a, I wrote it, like I wrote a long time ago, it took me a year to write. So. So the timing seems a little awkward, because so many people are getting laid off. So how do I speak about this? And be sensitive to that? Like, what, like, I'm pushing out exactly how to get promotions for our department or our our industry here. So I don't I don't know how to use that to say like, who this can help you get a job to know, I don't think so. I
think I think you need to also be thinking Lesley that, because we're being challenged, that this is how we we move forward from those challenges is to say we're important enough, we deserve this.
Yeah. Yeah. I was just gonna say, Lizzie, a tough spot, right, I understand the kind of awkwardness that your, your feeling. But, you know, all we can do is work with what we have. And my thinking is, if by getting promoted, or being put in a position where potentially, we have resources at our disposal, or we're able to build a team, then there's a pay it forward moment to, to bring in to hire and like, you know, it's about, okay, well, what's another way that we can help the community, this is a way that that we can do it, at least put ourselves potentially in a position where we can keep hiring, helping and expanding. So let's
get to least Trello. So Mary, just a little intro to me. So unfortunately, I fit into the role of the folks who just recently were laid off. And I don't think there's any harm in putting the book out there. Because eventually I will get a job. And I will look for resources. So I don't think that should detract from what you're trying to do just our current situation, because the world changes, as you know, in a second, so I think it would be helpful for everyone and in our space, it's so limited resources, that I think it's a great thing to put out, especially now. So I take it a different way.
Yeah, maybe, I mean, you'll probably hear this Schpeel at Influitive live, but I I know that no one knows how. Not no one, but there are very few people who know how to manage us in this role. because not a lot of people have been doing it that long. And so they need a framework as well. And so it is both for the practitioner and the you know, kind of like VP or whoever is managing us. And I don't ever want anybody to be in a position where they're not there. They're, they're going from manager to manager because of the turnover, and they don't have anything documented. And so like even if you do if you get a job next week, then this is where you start with your manager. And it's a beautiful thing to work on together at the beginning of your career at that company. So that's good to do.
And is this free that you're doing like what you're getting doing? Yeah.
Okay. All right. Okay.
Mary, I'm not sure. Like who would know I mean, think of us know, some areas we go into them wandering with a number of people getting laid off because it just seems like more and more there is to like something we can do on our future call around customer advocacy professionals who have gone into somewhat related roles around customer helping customer like customer success, more customer experience, like something like that that might be helpful that might open some eyes up to possible career routes now the navigate that like I'm not sure if like if Bill Lee or Jeff Ernst would have done any research behind that or perhaps Forrester
just think they might have might have some they've all been very genuine. Okay.
Kind of like you know, don't I mean, I obviously I interviewed for a while because I knew I wanted to stay in this space. But I also you know, I think it's good to keep the eyes and ears open for other relevant things related to customer that would easily fit like what we've done because we know that I know that this is why I say like, these roles are always customer added zero, they're always Craig, I think it's one of the few of your marketing, one of the few marketing roles you can say close to your customer. And sometimes you know more about the customer than the only account rep, especially if the account reps knew. But like, you know, would you go on the account team? Like, I knew I didn't want to go into sales. But like, there are other roles I think that you could be open to and how to get there. So I'm not sure. I mean, I know most of us have been in the customer advocacy space for a while. But it's something I've thought of too, on Tuesday, when we were on that call. I wasn't sure who had the research behind that or even, you know, identify someone in that customer advocacy space that has kind of branched off into a new, new role.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let me think about who we could talk to, or who could join a call like that you have. I mean, I could ask Billy, but communities really can't really similar. In a lot of ways, a lot of these positions, I've noticed that. It's just how we position it. And, you know, like, I've done community for a long time and did a lot of advocacy in community, around the community and around the company. But I didn't know that it was customer marketing. And Customer Success does a lot of working with customers, and probably even some referring to like upsells and things like that, but on their resume their customer success. And, you know, customer education, like community is getting a ton of content together. customer education obviously does a better job of curating it into something deliverable. But there's so much overlap. And I wonder if I can find, like a job coach, Career Coach person that worked with customer marketers before,
because like, I was even looking like some of like how to add some relations, because I've done so much work with our previous team on Gartner, Forrester, like all their evaluations, and with our product team, like we are critical with that. So it's just how I kind of tie that in, I think, promote yourself, you know, remember when you're trying to get those jobs, and a lot of it has to do and unfortunately, if you're sending in, you know, if it's not through like a network of people to get the interview, and it's through a LinkedIn application, or, you know, you on the company site, they're doing, they're filtering you out for word searches. And it's, it's, it's kind of it's crazy how it works, but they have to do it somehow. So
yeah, Jan did a thing for the CES team that talked about how to how to structure your resume. And how to to boost your Yeah.
And I have a great resume right here. If anyone needs one. I think I'm a pretty good writer. But I was like, wow, like he did things I wouldn't have thought of. I was referred to him by another person. So you know, I think that's kind of how you position yourself to.
Yeah, it is. It definitely is. When I was at Outreach, and I talked to a career coach, when I left there and went to demand base to work on the customer marketing team, I almost doubled my salary just from talking to that one career coach. And I haven't spent a lot of time investing in another career coach, which I could have done. Maybe shut off. But I've still learned a lot just from basically her telling me you don't sell yourself. Well. Why don't you sell yourself? Well?
You doubled your salary, maybe?
Yeah, well, I try. I mean, I don't know I try to help people when I can. But yes, I've been. I will look at see what I can do to come up with more resources, future calls. Pardon me is a little negative about the whole thing. As far as like finding new jobs in this not specifically in customer marketing, but just in tech, because of the poor experience of going through all of these interviews. I know Andrew Seville Allah, I'm not sure how to say his name well. But he had told me that he talked to like nine companies and went through the entire process just to get to the end. And it wasn't the ninth company that hired him full time. He got the position. I did it with like 10 companies, most of them never hired at all. And that was like going through, like, on the average eight interviews, so 45 minutes per call, that's a ton of time investment, you know, going back and forth for companies to not hire, or to weed you out because, you know, you ask the wrong questions or, you know, all of those things and then to find out that like a lot of companies do layoffs anyways, I don't think Andrews even still with vendor. And a lot of these companies like even if they've hired people are going through their second layoff in less than a year I saw somebody post, this is my third layoff in three years. Like, it's a really poopy time out there. And so where with consulting and contracting, I'm having one call one proposal. That's it, like work starts. And I think, I think contracting, like I've seen that it's picking up more, it's a little bit difficult, because you have to have your benefits in place and stuff too. But it's so much easier to just get started. And I think more companies are having. They don't, not necessarily pulling back all resources, but headcount pulling that back. And so you have some space for contracting, where you might not be able to hire someone full time. So there's that opportunity to because I looked for full time work for good three and a half months, where it was just constant, you know, interviews and filling out the applications and doing resumes and trying to network and all of that. And within two weeks of saying, Okay, I'm just gonna do contracting, I had three accounts. And not that they're all big or anything like that. But just, I finally had some income to feed those children that I have. They eat a lot. My 18 year old is like a Hoover, my husband will just be like, I bought three donuts that were this type this type in this type who ate them? And it's all him the 18 year old. Yes, boys eat a lot. A lot of food now. Well, you just have one. So
yeah, my three year old doesn't need anything. So good to know that that changes.
It does, it does. And you know what else I've noticed my fourth child just turned eight, this is totally different. They go through something boys, when they turn eight, there is like a switch that just switches in they I don't know, they start to get more emotional. And like hormones just know at eight years old to go. And every single one of my kids have done that. So you know a lot about my children. And oh, so another thing that I was just gonna say for anybody that did get laid off or is in that in between. There, I started a channel on the CMA weekly community slack for LinkedIn for some of us that want to kind of pick up on our LinkedIn game, because personal branding is the like inbound marketing 2.0. And just by really starting to focus on that a little bit more for a week, I got kicked out of LinkedIn four times. And I got several new followers and, you know, went from like, four views a week to 700 and something in the last week and a half. And like, it just made a huge difference. I had a couple of people reach out about potential work, and it's nice. I took what's called, it was like a Robin Hood school course it was free. The guy's name is Tasleem. It's free. I can share links, but anybody that wants to join that and talk more about it, I've subscribed, because that's what I do is when I decide I'm going to look at a new topic, I get everything. I download 700 Different PDFs from everyone I can find sign up for every newsletter, and then get so inundated with more stuff that I have to nitpick what I can actually try. I will share the link Yeah, it's helped. I don't know if you ever looked at my profile before but I've changed it worked a little bit on the branding law again, try To get some of that out there, so anybody who wants to join and talk more about I share a PDF in there today, that's from some copywriter that does a lot of work on LinkedIn. I had no idea that companies hire ghost writers for LinkedIn for their executives. Wow. I had no idea that that happened. So there's that too. And
wait, Mary, what? Oh, sorry, I missed How did you get kicked off LinkedIn four times.
So partially, it was because they featured my comment on one of their news articles. And people were responding to that and going to look at my profile. And because it looked like I was getting automated profile review views, or doing automated profile views, somehow, they kicked me off four times. One of those times, I was back on for 23 minutes. Before I got a new notification that I was kicked off for 48 hours.
How do you what the hell is automated profile views?
I thought bots will actually Oh, like oh, yeah, like, but yeah, they think that you're scamming the system to get views. And so they kicked her out thinking that she was they put her in LinkedIn jail.
And I was bored. All day Monday, I didn't get out until 6:45pm on Monday evening. And I'm like, What the hell am I going to do all day? I realized how much time I do go to LinkedIn and read where you really should go to LinkedIn and comment. And not just those comments where everyone says, oh, yeah, I totally agree. That's garbage. I thought that was a nice way to say hey, this is a good point. Thanks for sharing. But then I started realizing that everybody does that. And so you just fall into this pit. So if you want to stand out one follow Leslie because she stands out way more than I do. And to leave comments that matter. Or piss people off that helps to one of the people that I followed said that if you just misspell a few words, you're gonna get tons of views.
Oh my god, this game so stupid. It is.
Let's talk about customer marketing though. Who's got another topic that's on topic.
Christine, I'm bringing
you something. Let me show you something. Okay.
Can you get in to show me?
Let's see. Try now.
Oh, yeah. Okay.
Can you see it? Yeah.
What is it gonna launch our vlog next week? Oh,
with? Um, Shannon Shannon? Yeah, love it. What's the first topic about
what how these meld together? Okay.
Now, are you guys gonna be having, like different people on? And how often are you doing it?
We're going to push them out every couple of weeks. And we started with just the two of us just talking because we've been doing it for like a year. And we thought we just wanted to kind of record the conversations. So that's what we're gonna start with is some of those conversations. But yes, you're on the list.
So you guys have been doing these calls for a year.
We've been talking to each other for a year and then we just decided right at the end of last year that we were going to start putting them out there for other people.
Gotcha. Okay. I'm sharing the link here for that LinkedIn school. That's exciting. Do you guys have a site
or I will publish the site next week? We're gonna launch it. It's just a YouTube channel. So it's just gonna be a YouTube channel.
What Leslie comes in brings us things and she doesn't make us wait.
That's nice to be compared to Leslie. Thank you.
I'm sure most of you got some nominations in the top 100. Congratulations for everyone who got one.
Mary, did you get your nomination? No. Well,
I won't get one.
I nominated you twice. So
thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I, we we don't promote each other myself in that company. So I won't get one but that's okay. Because I'm excited for everybody else. Who said that? All right. I wasn't trying to say anything negative. I promise. I swear. This time. Congrats, everyone. Wow, we're quiet today, aren't we? We
got we got
the release of our customer of the month, video went out. Last week, and the it was amazingly well received. We got 80% of the community click the link.
Oh, wow. That's pretty good. I mean, it
was a ginormous number.
by Alison.
Christine, as your customer the month new.
Yeah, we launched it just for January. Oh, exciting. Yeah, we did three questions. Yep. We did three questions with them. And it was Who are you? Why TI? And what is your future look like in the next 18 to 24 months? With customer education in your space? Nice. And it's like, eight minutes long. It's perfect.
Oh, their videos?
Yeah, yeah, we push them out as videos. And we're taking the second question. And it's gonna go in social. So it will be it'll actually hit social media next week. I think.
Love that.
But it was, like I said, I was just amazed at the volume. I don't know if it'll be consistent. Right? We'll see. But it's, though. Yeah, it was, it was really, really amazing.
And I wouldn't expect it to stay. Like, I would say that you'll normally see some dip, especially when you do something new with your community, people get excited about it. And then there's a little bit of a dip, and then it'll plateau somewhere. And you know, as you continue to grow the community, it'll increase. But I'm only saying that so you're not like, oh, yeah, because next month
when I when we do the one for next month, I'll be going, oh my god, we only had 40% I just have my number, but it's not high like that. You know? Like,
anytime I started something new and I get a good number. I'm like, This is great. And then I do the next part. And it drops to like a quarter or even half. I'm just like, I'm a failure. That's it. I just fail it everything. I'm gonna go hide in my corner and fail now. I might
overrule that. That gives me like, idea.
Oh, my God, I cannot even speak today. It's just towards your so hard. Um, what I'm trying to say is customer love campaigns for February. Anybody doing those?
Yes, trying
to do.
I don't know, I've had some personal stuff come up the last few weeks, which have put me extremely behind in all of my initiatives, so. And
I like the ideas. Anyone have any thoughts about what they would do if they were doing customer loves for next month?
We're definitely going to do gifting. And we have a product update webinar on Valentine's Day. So some fun trivia base stuff around that. So neither of those ideas are super groundbreaking, but that's what I've gotten so far.
I mean, I wouldn't. I don't think I'll be doing gifting and I'm a gifting platform. So kudos to you.
What are you going to do? Me? Well, listen.
I need like a weekend to recuperate and get my wrap my head around that I have to like go an entire year of more stuff. So, like disconnected right now. But um, so what we did last year and it was like in my last newsletter. It's just like a simple social campaign where you get video asked which is the video version of type form? And you send it out to your like top advocates and just prompt them with Why do you love, send dozo or whatever. And then you get video, like really nice quality videos back and then you send them over to your content team and they loop them into a video together and they put kind of like a, you know, a front slide and a back slide with the CTA or something. And then yeah, just just kind of like putting stuff on social. So all I can think of right now and ask you
a crazy question about that. So I was doing something similar, I was at Reich What about legal and release forms and all that, because that's what really took us down to, you know, people not doing as much as they really could. Because once they saw that release form, and I've done it two different ways. One time I used to not give the release until after and other times they give the release, right, we decided to give the release in the beginning. So have you What do you normally do with with video content?
I just treat it as it's like a case study. So before we get inside of the ask, it's like, before you do this, like get legal.
Okay, that's what we've been doing. Does that hurt your campaign? Because that it depended on the day?
Only with the enterprise companies, but
okay, that's why we had to as well. But some of the SMBs also panic too. So okay, good. So I was just curious, hey, if that's open to everybody, not just Leslie, I was just curious how people have been treating the releases.
Yeah, we, since we have contract with vocal video, they allow you to upload a custom release form as part of the process. So I can't tell you how many people actually read it. But it's there. And they have to click that they did read it in order to submit the submit that the video so it covers my ass in case they can be in case they get angry, but
it's there. And the name of the company's vocal video. Yeah. Okay, good to know. Thank you.
And that one like that, that one comes, it's not just the regular SAS program is like the one above it. But the one above it is relatively inexpensive. That allows you to have that customer release. So we worked with legal to get a generic, it just talks about video, it doesn't talk about a specific video just talks about video in general. So legal gave us something we uploaded on all of the ones who do publicly.
Thank you.
No problem. And then to answer Leslie's question, we are actually flying one of our customers to Monaco to join our team out there for a we have our company all hands meeting, and we're doing this sort of customer love slash presentation on Valentine's Day. So cute. So they're going to do a session on Valentine's Day for the entire company about why they love us. And then we can say why we love them, and they get a free trip to Monaco. So you know, when when? Oh,
yeah, that's cool. I always save the customers who do not participate in case studies or video testimonials. And they're, you know, they have a lot of good stuff to say, and they're a big enterprise company, but they just can't share. Externally, I save those people for the arcaos and have them kind of like drop in front of everyone. Because I like feel like I have to get their story told somehow. And if it's an internal people like so be it.
Yeah, it's a great way of doing it. Plus, we're also in that situation where we kind of got to ask earlier this week, and it's February 14, where we have to do this. So I'm kind of going back to like, who has given a presentation before or who knows what they're doing. So I can easily just recycle that. But tell them to throw in some more information about things they wouldn't talk publicly about.
Yeah, I've also done it where I've gotten it. And then even though they signed the release, they reneged, and obviously, it's a customer, so you're not going to sit there and argue. So what we did was we took a lot of those made them blind. So I've done that too. But I was just curious how everyone handles it. And I liked the names of those companies. We didn't have the budget to do that, but it's good to know for the future. Thank you.
I saw and I wondered if anybody here has tried this were more Ramos from Forrester in one of the recent webinars she did talked about taking those clients and kind of taking their stories and putting them into like a combined case study of multiple people under like one Use case or one topic that you really want to share and like focusing on the deltas, like the improvements that they've made the changes. And I wondered if anybody had done that, because she specifically recommended it in one of the calls.
I did that at night, we used to do a compilation where we pick a topic that was applicable to a bunch of folks. And it also was less stress on them, because they were just answering like three questions instead of a full video. So we've done that. I will say the editing is overwhelming. That's one thing, but otherwise, they came off pretty, pretty good.
Yeah, I'll put mine in. In the chat right now. So we did we're noticing that like, all of our cybersecurity customers are seeing like crazy success and are willing to share their stories. So we're like, yes, let's put five of them in one story. And then Oh, my God, sales loves these. Right? Because it's just so powerful to if you're talking to a prospect who is in cybersecurity to be like, Oh, yeah.
Easy here.
Yeah, yeah. In cybersecurity and data are two of the areas. I hear finances growing a lot to right now. But I don't know how with the economy as a mess. So I haven't talked much about that. But data and cybersecurity apparently are doing really well. Right now. I don't know. Daniel urine Dado, right.
Yeah, I would say the finance side is growing, because you're seeing a lot of old stodgy companies figured out that they can't run the old stodgy ways anymore. So they have to grow and have all of these new projects that allow their big term like digital transformation, or anything along those lines. So that's why they're growing to bring in these this new talent in order to run something that that that is a modern technology stack. It's I mean, it's the same reason why southwest sucked for, you know, three weeks there is because their entire stack is run off of things that are 30 years old. And so how do you change that you have to hire people in order to change that, because that's the only way so we well, for our company, we're open source. So generally speaking, when the economy has a downturn, people like free software. So we even if we lose customers, which we don't on a regular basis, but generally the loss is to ourselves, and it's just a free version.
Yeah, your company's doing well, you're going to Monaco, I know, right?
Funny enough, like we were all trying to figure this out, but they did a lot of research. And Monaco in February is just as expensive as if we got everybody together in Madison, Wisconsin. All right. I don't know why they decided to like look at Madison, Wisconsin. In February when I would as a Californian literally die. I would be the Jamaican bobsled team from Cool Runnings where they just had to wear everything. But yeah, Monaco, at least February 10. And I'm there through the 24th. Whoa,
there's the airlines, the flights are the same.
Well, I mean, if you're thinking about a the way they viewed it, and in case anybody else does this at their company, they tried to find some place in the world where everybody in the company could get there with one stop. And if you look at where Madison is, everybody can pretty much get to Chicago on one stop. And then it's just an hour and a half bus ride. If there's no snow, but it's February, so there's probably snow either way. And so thinking about getting to Monaco, pretty much everyone can get to nice with one stop.
Where is Monaco?
Monaco is a it's in the south of France. So it's about 35 minutes south west of nice.
If I was on Jeopardy, I could have just lost really quite a lot. I don't. Yeah, sorry. One of my kids didn't know one of the boroughs of New York City and my 18 year old made fun of them. And I was just thinking Monaco was in California somewhere so Oh, Mexico.
It's okay if they forgot Staten Island as a borough. Nobody would mind.
The Statue of Liberty
I agree. Staten Island Forget it.
Brady Wow. We have a lot Have off topic today. Does anyone want to talk anymore about something else? Well, not all off topic, I guess we've talked quite a bit about some things like the customer events. So I feel somewhat accomplished.
I actually have a question. I'm working on a customer video. And I was wondering how much do most people spend for filming a customer for a testimonial. I know, years ago, we used to do it at trade shows, and the pandemic happened. And we did vocal video for a while. And now, we don't have money in our budget for this. And I'm trying to sort of get money from different departments to help fund it, I have a customer who's great. So any suggestions or comments?
Rachel says 900 to 1200. I've used TaskRabbit in the past to find somebody local that would go and do video for a local event we had so and that was like 400. But I think it depends on your area too.
Because we actually have people who could do the editing and in house, but we don't have someone who could fly down. It's in Florida. So
any thoughts anyone?
Do you always want to use the same talent? Excuse me? Do you always want to use the same talent for the videography? is, there are networks where you could find local, rather than spending money on travel, but you're not going to have that consistency? And you know, how long are the videos that you're targeting? Creating two? Are they you know, three minutes? Are you wanting something you no longer slicker with B roll and all that good stuff?
Well, as long as we're filming, we'd like to do like a half day, so we'd be able to use it for other purposes. There's the customer, the partner. And we might use it for other purposes. But the end result will be less than two minutes.
So are you Yeah, looking for these to be on site?
The customer would like it on site.
Okay, well, I haven't looked at video contracts in a while. But I really did have a great experience with testimonial hero. And when I was comparing pricing to other onsite videographers, they were very calm. I thought that they were very fairly priced. So they have videographers that are local all over the world. So it won't be the same talent each time. But they've got all of the equipment, you get all the raw footage included in the contract is I think, one or two edited videos, I think two minutes and maybe a 45 Second one. But and their pricing. It was a I think originally 800 Last I checked but or 850. But their pricing had gone up to what I think was 900. So I'll let other people speak to that. But I in my experience that's like a very as a good steal.
Good, thank you. Okay,
well, um, oh, I did want to ask if anybody is interested in having a call specifically talking about like, upcoming analyst and like all the reports that come out and things like that and preparing for that. Anyone interested in that?
What else did you say that again, marry
analysts like the analyst. Not reviews, but like the studies and reports and things like that, that come out. You know, Magic Quadrant and the Forrester waves and things like that. If anybody wanted to talk about that, and I could find someone that has more experience to come in and share. Everyone good, okay. You can let me know. I will let you all go. Thank you for jumping on a call and I'm going to get more topics scheduled to end. Thank you so much for being here and sharing Lesley and congrats on your event.
Yes. Thank you
see you all next week at Influitive live bye bye i
