Cisco Systems - Engaged Community of the Year
Company: Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA
Company Division/Group:Cisco Global Advocacy Organization
Company Description: Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in San Jose, California, in the center of Silicon Valley. Cisco delivers innovative software-defined networking, cloud, and security solutions to help transform businesses, empowering an inclusive future for all.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Specialty
Nomination Sub Category: Engaged Community of the Year
Nomination Title: Cisco's 'Gateway' to 20K Engaged Customer Advocates
Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched:
Cisco’s Global Advocacy team launched our gamified, peer-to-peer customer advocacy and networking community,The Cisco Gateway, in 2017. Four years later, we’ve grown The Gateway from that first customer advocate who was recruited at a Cisco Live conference, to what is today a vibrant community of more than 20,000 advocatesaround the world. The customer engagement campaigns discussed in this entry are from January 2020- December 2020.
Cisco’s Global Advocacy team built The Gateway community to improve and easily scale how we engage with our customers and ask for their support on reference activities that drive Cisco’s sales cycles.
In 2017, Cisco had identified roughly 100 customer reference accounts, but of those 100—as often happens with small, tactical programs—we were going back to the same handful of customers with multiple requests. As a result, our customers were feeling over-subscribed and under-appreciated.
At Cisco, we understood that “another reference program” was not the answer. We wanted a fully developed customer advocacy vision. We wanted to build an active and engaged community of passionate customer advocates, while delivering timely, meaningful references to Cisco’s sellers. We wanted to build a community that our customers could call their own, designed around their interests, driven by their expertise, and capable of helping them grow.
Four years later, our vision for this engaged community is a reality. It’s global, with nearly20,000passionate, engaged customer advocates from around the world. The Gateway generated more than$3.1 millionin advocate-influenced ROI in 2020, with calculations based on “acts of advocacy” that includepeer references, product reviews, case studies, social engagementand more. These acts of advocacy have advanced our customers’ personal and professional brand identities, while boosting the Cisco brand.
Despite the many pressures and pivots necessary with the pandemic, we took our customer obsession to new heights in 2020,surpassing our own engagement and recruitment goals for the year.
Cisco built The Gateway community because:
-92% of buyers trust recommendations from people they know.Source: Nielsen
-76% of individuals admit they’re more likely to trust content shared by “normal” people than content shared by brands.Source: Adweek
-20-50% of purchase decisions are driven by word of mouth.Source: McKinsey
In its first three years, The Gateway was a vibrant peer networking community with a strong virtual component driven by gamified challenges and experiences that brought customers together online. The Gateway’s digital footprint was complemented by in-person events that enabled our customers to meet with each other and with Cisco, face-to-face, to learn and grow.
With COVID’s arrival, we could no longer meet our customers in person. We reenergized our advocate engagement and recruitment strategy by focusing on four goals for The Gateway in 2020:
Develop innovative digital-only campaigns to engage advocates like never before: Our “Faces of The Gateway” video campaign is one example,featuring personal, powerful vignettes from top advocates that deepens connection and trust. The campaign drove new case studies and social media engagement.
Adopt a segment-led and industries-focused approach to advocacy:We partnered with organizations within Ciscoto align Gateway content around key industry, segment, and customer experience (CX) priorities. We also launched a first-of-its-kind platform that tracks customer advocacy activities and centralizes references and content.
Deliver impactful “moments that matter”:Our Gateway “Wellness” campaign and our “Rockstar” appreciation campaign put customers front and center.
Integrate customer advocacy into Cisco’s sales, marketing, and customer experience/support functions.
Despite not being able to meet with our customers for eleven of the twelve months in 2020, Cisco’s Global Advocacy team digitally recruited, engaged, and mobilized more than4,574new Gateway advocates and ended the year with more than20,000global advocates. We realized an estimated$3.1 millionin total ROI value, as calculated by the Influitive analytics dashboard.
$3,187,451 total estimated ROI value
290,349 total numberof clicks generated globally
266,937 Acts of Advocacy (AoA)
81,865 total numberof social shares
20,121 total numberof advocates globally
4,574 new advocates recruited digitally in FY20
312 total numberof product reviews captured
73 average NPS score
Faces of the Gateway campaign:
Several customers who were featured in our “Faces of The Gateway” video campaign agreed to participate in written case studies. Additionally, the campaign’s social impressions from Twitter and Instagram combined generated:
29,000+ impressions
Nearly 6,000 video views
800+ re-tweets
Moments that matter:
The Gateway “Wellness” campaign engaged our customer advocates in more meaningful ways through user-generatedcontent and “challenges” that focus on wellbeing. We also launched the “I am a Gateway Rockstar” campaign. “Rockstars” are our most active customer advocates, leading online discussions, posting product reviews, completing case studies, and mentoring new advocates who join our community. Through a “surprise and delight” initiative, we mailed letters and badges to acknowledge their status, and encouraged them to post selfies on social media to enhance awareness for The Gateway.
The Cisco Gateway landing page provides an overview of the community and features advocate-led content from 2020:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/peer-networking-communities/gateway.html
“Discover The Cisco Gateway” video features advocates engaging with The Gateway:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/peer-networking-communities/gateway.html?socialshare=lightbox_what_is_gateway
We filmed wellbeing-focused content and encouraged advocates to submit their own through our new "Wellness" campaign in The Gateway. Here's an advocate video recipefor a green smoothie:https://www.wearesalt.agency/CLIENT/CISCO/wellbeing/perfectgreensmoothie.html;
Attached to this entryis a sampling of Gateway advocatesocial media engagement resulting fromour 2020 Faces of The Gateway campaign.
“Faces of The Gateway” video compilation #1: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/859exl36w3hyyjl/AAA9wV43YUAx8NKq4QOhedZJa?dl=0&;preview=Cisco+Live+Barcellona+2020.mp4
“Faces of The Gateway” video compilation #2:
Faces of The Gateway Advocate Video:Wouter Hindriks, Missing Piece:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/859exl36w3hyyjl/AAA9wV43YUAx8NKq4QOhedZJa?dl=0&;preview=Cisco+Live+2020+-+Wouter+Hindriks.mp4
Here are a fewadvocate-led case studiesand blog links from 2020, featuring the stories of severalGateway advocates:
https://upshotstories.com/stories/transform-your-it-into-a-foundation-for-business-growth
https://upshotstories.com/stories/because-anti-virus-isn-t-enough-beat-today-s-threats-with-cisco-security-platform-s-holistic-approach
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/case-studies-customer-success-stories/national-trust.html
https://upshotstories.com/stories/how-a-decades-long-partnership-helped-transform-networking-in-swedish-universities
https://upshotstories.com/stories/why-cisco-live-will-be-the-best-professional-week-of-your-year
Here is a video tutorial of Cisco’s new Customer Advocacy and Content Tool (ACT), which is helping us globally track customer advocacy activities and other content resultingfrom customer engagement in The Gateway:
https://vimeo.com/486456182/dcb0d64f8d
Attached to this entry is a sampling of Gateway selfies that were shared across Cisco social media andWebex channels showcasing their GatewayRockstar badges, whichwere mailed to advocatesas part of the "I am a Rockstar" surprise and delight campaign.