Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Most B2B companies overlook their biggest growth opportunity: investing in the customers they already have. Yet, customer marketing leaders struggle to secure budget, prove ROI, and drive growth.
In a world obsessed with more (more leads, more deals, more revenue), how do you make customer advocacy a non-negotiable growth strategy?
This show is for marketers who want to turn customer advocacy into a strategic growth engine. Each episode features customer marketing pioneers, revenue leaders, and industry experts sharing actionable strategies to engage, retain, and expand your client base. And not just through content, but through meaningful connection.
Because customers become champions when you make them feel valued first.
JoAnne Baldwin (00:00):
I think that at the end of the day for me, if we better understood each other at our organizations, that marketing could work more closely and more effectively with sales and cs.
Jeff Reekers (00:14):
Welcome to Customer Champions, where we explore how the best marketers turn customers into their biggest growth engine. Hello everybody. Welcome back. Super excited for today's episode of Customer Champions. Today's guest has built a career helping companies turn customer experiences into a revenue and retention engine building trust. All along that process, Joanne Baldwin, who is the senior manager of customer lifecycle marketing at Bitly, and previously led award-winning programs at Jasper and PitchBook. She's built onboarding from scratch, helped teams scale with limited CS resources, and brought real business impact to the table literally by earning a seat at the revenue table. One thing that Joanne stands out and isn't just the results, it's how she gets them with empathy, data, deep collaboration and a clear respect for the people behind the metrics. So today we'll get into how she's built, cross-functional trust, create a retention programs that scale and feel human and turn customer voice into a strategic advantage. So Joanne, welcome and let's just dive right in here.
JoAnne Baldwin (01:18):
Thanks Jeff. Glad to be here.
Jeff Reekers (01:20):
So let's just kick it off with a couple of high level questions outside of work, what's something you're passionate about that just keeps you grounded or inspired to show up better? As a professional,
JoAnne Baldwin (01:31):
I am a lover of the outdoors. I love to hike. I'm a snow and water skier. I'm a cyclist and love to just be in nature and share that with others. I actually just started leading hikes with a local land conservancy here in Spokane, Washington where I live, and I get to share the places that I love with others, and that's been something that's been really fulfilling lately.
Jeff Reekers (01:58):
Amazing. I have to ask, are you more of the Alpine skier or cross country?
JoAnne Baldwin (02:04):
I can do both, but I really like going fast downhill.
Jeff Reekers (02:07):
Yeah. Okay. We're on the opposite end of that. I live in Minneapolis. I love to cross country ski. I've tried the alpine skiing, but I don't know how to stop, so I just kind of turn and roll. So it scares me away from skiing.
JoAnne Baldwin (02:21):
Yeah, it is so peaceful out cross country skiing too, and nice to just clear the, clear your head and soak up time outdoors. So yeah, we'll have to go skiing sometime.
Jeff Reekers (02:32):
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. So diving into it, you've led customer marketing in a few different organizations. What's your personal definition of the role? A lot of people can have different definitions of customer marketing. How do you define it and how have you seen it evolve across these different organizations and over the years?
JoAnne Baldwin (02:47):
I see customer marketing as an opportunity to be the voice of the customer wherever it may be. What makes customer marketing unique is that it's a relationship that you're growing over time. It's about just acquiring the customer and then flipping them over to a customer success team or something like that. Customer marketing is invested from the get-go as soon as somebody becomes a subscriber to understand what's going well, what isn't going so well, and be able to meet them to help educate to say, this is how you could use this product better, but also help me understand what you're trying to accomplish and maybe we can figure that out together. I like being able to solve problems alongside customers, but I love being able to celebrate their successes as well. And so it's crucial for me as a customer marketer to be able to listen and then say, can I take some of this back to the organization so that we can make this experience not only the products, but how you're interfacing with it much more conducive to what you're trying to accomplish. And so this ongoing conversation, there's a trust that is built and with regard to how we communicate that it really is crucial that we're consistent in that communication via email or webinars, whatever it might look like to not just be you're another number and you're just another subscriber at the core of it, long-term relationship building and really seeking to understand.
Jeff Reekers (04:23):
Fantastic. Now kind of bridging off of that in some of our preparation for today, you mentioned a story of onboarding at PitchBook, starting with no real customer communications from marketing and turning that into a real scaled and trusted program. Just kind of curious to learn what were some of the key turning points in that and how did you build out your programs with that starting point?
JoAnne Baldwin (04:44):
Yeah, so when I joined PitchBook, I came on and was tasked to figure out how we could better equip and educate as well as welcome customers into the fold. PitchBook has a fantastic customer success team and a we're putting lots and lots of blood, sweat, and tears into each one of those welcome notes. And as they were onboarding and consistency was not a strength. I began that charter to say, tell me what's going on right now, customer success, give me an idea of what you want to communicate to your customers from the get go customers, how do they receive that? Are there certain formats that work really well? What are the things that aren't working so well? And so I was able to then number one, build a relationship with the customer success team and say, I'm on your team, and then how can we make a better program that would free up time for you but also help you achieve your results a little bit more easily?
(05:48):
So some of the things that the customer success managers were telling me were things like, I can't get a kickoff call on the books. I want to get them the right introduction. It seems that they're not setting up their account in the way that we want them to turns into problems down the road, things like that. It was like, what if we put together a program that had your stamp of approval on it, but it was initiated and it was managed by the marketing team. And at first there was lots of hesitation. It was like, I don't know if I want you to talk to my customers first. And it wasn't me, it was PitchBook. And so I think that what we came to an agreement around was why don't we test it? We'll do 50% of the communications that I'll set it up so it schedules it, marketing will send some of 'em and then I'll send an alert to you to send the rest of these different emails.
(06:48):
We started out with email after about three months, came back to the team and just said, how did things go? And they looked at me and they're like, I think it's easier if marketing just does all of it. This is great to hear, but also it's a partnership that we've now both agreed to that if we can come up with a message that everyone agrees on, then we're both accomplishing things that we want to happen. So I think that in the same way that I approach, I want to have a trust with our customer base to be able to say, Hey, this is when things are working well and when they're not, I want to do this thing with my internal customers as well. And so we were able to put together a program that was, I think it ended up being six emails in the first couple of weeks that they were spending time with us in their subscription and learning about, Hey, this is where your help resources are, this is who your customer success manager is.
(07:48):
And really setting the strong foundation for them to then take that and build the relationship. As time went on, we also started enhancing what that experience was. So they signed up for a welcome kit. And so in that welcome kit, we had a signed by the CSM, so glad you're here and looking forward to getting to know you. And we had that in the course of about a year. We were able to cover all of our accounts globally with a welcome kit that just changed the experience. And what we wanted to do was really underline, Hey, you have decided to make an investment in this solution and you're not alone in this. And so I think that the takeaway for me with that particular program was that it wasn't marketing marching in and saying, this is the only way that this is going to work. It was a help me understand and then what do you think about this approach with these ways of connecting with customers? And at the end of the day, it was a resounding yes from both customers and people posting that they had got their own Yeti mug and this is so cool, and things like that. It was like, I mean, at the end of the day it's like really? Is it just swag? But it was the way that we presented and packaged it to say, you're here and we are too.
Jeff Reekers (09:12):
Yeah, I think that's so incredible. And coming at it from their vantage point first and being in their shoes, and I think it's so easy marketing or any role really, we have our OKRs or whatever we might be using, and we just go and we try to get that done and force it through. And you really started with listening and leading with a what's in it for them mindset, what's in it for you mindset. And then I also loved how you started small but created it together. Wouldn't this be better? But then also it's such an incredible way to just build trust over time with the organization or with customers and so on. Kind of bring everybody along for the ride.
JoAnne Baldwin (09:51):
Yeah, I think something that it allowed for me, because it was one of my first projects as I was starting at PitchBook, was to be able to communicate not only with my words, but also with work with that team to say, we're going to be in this together from the get go. And then they started coming to me with ideas, have you thought about this? And so it just became this really dynamic collaboration. And so I think that's something too that in my approach to solve problems with internal and external customers to say, well, what do you think if we did together, would it be better? And I do that with our Bitly customers too. And we just did a survey where we asked a handful of our customers help us understand what is working and what is not. And in that process, I penned emails and said, hi, it's me, Joanne. I promise you I'm going to read every single one of these. I will be your advocate internally here. Help me understand what's working and what's not, and let's figure these things out together. And response rate was really encouraging, but I think it just reminded me too that on the other side of these subscriptions, on the other side of the tools that we are all working for and trying to make better is another marketer, another person using the same software that I am, and we've got to appeal to the connection piece of it.
Jeff Reekers (11:29):
Fantastic. And you mentioned Bitly within there
JoAnne Baldwin (11:32):
And
Jeff Reekers (11:33):
Moving into that, the experience and where you we're at now, we also discussed a story around the hesitation around engaging certain segments of customers and building out that onboarding program, which now as I understand is pretty phenomenal, open rates, response rates. Could you take us through that story a little bit and what did it take to change that narrative engagement with your customers there?
JoAnne Baldwin (11:53):
Yeah, I think that where it began was again, trying to understand how do we get to where we are right now? And I think that initially as I was working on an onboarding program for one segment of our customers, I came to find that the way that they signed up for the subscription was a little convoluted. And so they started out in the subscription not understanding really what did I pay for? What am I getting? It was unclear. And so then it was like, okay, now where do we start in trying to have this be a beneficial relationship and not have it feel like is this whole thing just going to be confusing? And so by putting myself in the shoes of these customers who went through maybe a little bit of a rocky start to say, how do we reestablish trust here? What are the things that matter the most?
(12:42):
And so as I tried to put myself in those shoes, I did that first. And then simultaneously I also looked at some of the longstanding customers who had been renewing time after time, looked at their customer satisfaction scores, looked at comments that they left on NPS results, got into some of our support chat discussions to just really again embed and say, okay, what's the value that these customers are finding? And then be able to translate some of that to those newer customers and say, Hey, don't take it from me. This is what we've heard from our customers. And so then at the same time, not only am I trying to build credibility in the product that they've just chosen by being really clear about what's available in their subscription, what the most valuable pieces, be it analytics on QR codes, or you have this number of codes that you're able to create.
(13:45):
I also was able to say, and here is what some of these other customers say about using the tool. And so I think that overall, what I was able to take away from that was this isn't just like a one size fits all either. And to be able to start segmenting based on what plan are those customers in, yes, I'm going to have to provide different pieces of information. And to be honest, there's different value propositions for each one of those plans too. And so trying to sell the product or at least reinforce the value for what they have rather than making it seem like, and there's always more come on upgrade sort of thing. So I'd say that the two part of understanding who I'm talking to, but then spending the time understanding the state of the state and say, we have these customers who are happy, how do we infuse that energy to the ones who have yet to be convinced?
(14:46):
Perhaps that was one way that I tried to stay customer centric. And then second is that we did some testing and looked at style of the email regularity of how often we were sending it subject line testing, length of the onboarding program as a whole. And so I think that there were some things there where in my book, nothing is off limits. I've come up with a program and trying it out and things are not working. I'm totally okay with saying, you know what? We're going to need to try something totally new. That is something too around just my approach of not being rigid but remain curious and that's allowing for space of customers to change their minds too and for changes that are happening in our industry or in the technologies that are available to us. I mean right now, something that is forward in my mind and at Bitly, we're talking a lot about it too, is what do we do with writing and analysis using ai? Is that something that we are going to lean into or are we just going to reserve that for r and d purposes? And I have found that I'm changing the way that I'm working by incorporating ai. I think that that's something too that I want to be really aware of as I am interacting with customers and expecting that they might be changing some of their modes too.
Jeff Reekers (16:22):
That's amazing. I think one thing that really resonates in taking out of it is a statement you made, which is customers, they can change their mind and they should be able to change their mind. And whether that's internal or with customers or whoever we live, particularly now, if things change so fast and so much, we may want things to stay stagnant and simple, but having that flexibility both in our own life and then recognizing it with customers and that they're going through these scenarios too and being empathetic and what that can ultimately mean from understanding your customer and giving them the best experience possible.
JoAnne Baldwin (16:55):
Absolutely. And I think that just from a product development standpoint too, it is important though to say, this is what we have built, this is where we're going. And to be able to have some consistency there too. If a customer signed up for a particular product, it is our responsibility to continue to work on making that product fantastic. And as we continue the conversations and saying, what's working? How could it be better? Yes, that can evolve, but going from, Hey, here's a product and now I've got all these customers, let's try all these other things. That doesn't always land well because then trust is questioned on What are we really signed up for?
Jeff Reekers (17:39):
You do mention AI and the nature of change. Curious how you're incorporating that in the lifecycle marketing into your programs. How are you really thinking about the technology right now?
JoAnne Baldwin (17:47):
I have been using Claude pretty regularly and using it as a sidekick to the work that I'm doing. So on a pretty regular cadence. I am looking at the performance of various programs that I'm running for the last six or seven months, I've been running a monthly click report. So for those of you who are listening who aren't familiar, Bitly is a connections platform, is the way that we present ourselves predominantly link management, changing long URLs to much shorter recognizable ones, but also supporting code creation for QR codes and landing page solutions. And so I have been delivering a click report to our active link ENC coders for the last month, for the last seven months. So it's for those who are active, their links, there's something going on there and I am sending out a proactive email to say, here's what your click count was, this is how it's changed since the last month, and making it really personalized, segmented, and there's more information.
(19:00):
Go into the Bitly platform, see what other things are available in analytics. So from my perspective, I'm offering personalized information. It matters to them and there's a reason why this should be of value. This content should be of value. Part of our internal goals are also to continue to encourage people to consider other products outside of just our link offering. Some of the tests that I've done are, have you thought about expanding your reach to include a QR code or something that's maybe in the physical space versus the digital space, trying to get to think in a different manner, but then secondarily, letting them know that we have more in depth analytics, go check it out. So there's that side of it, but then trying to be able to say, we want to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing. And I think with regard to change, I want to keep providing this value, but I'm watching open rates and click through rates and most importantly, what happens in the platform following these emails and there's not a lot of activity.
(20:14):
So I could conclude that maybe the email in and of itself is sufficient. Great, got the info. I'm feeling good. So I sat down with my pen and paper Ms. Analog over here and started writing out different, well, what if I was leading them to go do something else or came up with a list of ideas and I was like, I'm going to ask Claude and see what kinds of things I'm maybe not thinking about. So I took all of the results, every piece of information that I could gather from our email service provider. And then I also grabbed the copy and format from each of these emails and it was just like, tell me what you think from a couple of different perspectives, be it an email marketing expert who knows their way around lifecycle management, and also give me a strategic analyst's view of what the state of the state is and what kinds of things we could do differently.
(21:14):
And the kinds of ideas that came up. What it did is it acted as a trampoline for me what it we did. And so just had a couple of hours that I just spent with the GPT saying, what about this? What kinds of things am I missing if I went down this route? And so I would say that for me, embracing change looks like being open to adjusting my workflow. However, I still feel strongly that I'm the expert in the room. It's hard sometimes with AI to see a very confident response and go, well, that looks good, let's just move on with it.
(21:54):
And I've been doing this work long enough that I also have a pretty strong point of view about the things that I think should work or should not. And that's why we continue to test and try those sorts of things. So I like being able to incorporate AI to help me think outside of the box. And there are times where it doesn't save me any time at all, and I go back to the original idea, but I want to remain open-minded in how I'm using these tools. So I am responsible for writing emails at Bitly in the role that I sit in. And I would say I'm a fairly strong writer, but I love being able to have, I take a look at this and I'm read for if it's concise, if there are opportunities for me to reconsider a call to action and what might not be worth including in this. And so it just allows me to be a more critical editor.
Jeff Reekers (22:53):
Yeah, I love that. I also love how you comment on acting as a trampoline essentially and some of the open-ended questions on different perspectives and these sorts of things on the prompts that you're providing versus sometimes I'll get in the habit of, oh, I've got a lot of decisions to make and then I'll just ask it, what should I do here?
JoAnne Baldwin (23:12):
And
Jeff Reekers (23:12):
Then it just feeds back whatever it thinks I would like to hear. And for as many times I change my mind, it'll change its mind along with me. So less like, Hey, I need help making a decision. But to your point, you are the expert and you're the decision maker and more of what am I missing from this? How would somebody else view this? And kind of keeping these open-ended different perspectives
JoAnne Baldwin (23:31):
Essentially. Absolutely.
Jeff Reekers (23:33):
And it's cool because how you're thinking, I'm just making a connection between how you communicate with humans and AI and it's kind of very similar in nature.
JoAnne Baldwin (23:40):
It's very similar. I wish that, and I'm sure that I could build it in somehow, but do wish that my sidekick would also include jokes from movies that I enjoy and things like that. But I'm still working at the end of the day, so I need to stay focused on
Jeff Reekers (23:56):
Transitioning into topics around alignment. You've said that trust is earned by speaking the language of the team that you're working with. And we were just chatting about this here. What's your holistic approach to that? Especially when you're introducing something brand new and you gave those examples at Bitly and PitchBook as well. What's your broader approach and you have sort of a framework that others could think about or follow and if they needed to start earning trust internally with their teams?
JoAnne Baldwin (24:26):
Yeah, great question. I am a sponge, so my philosophy, remote work or not, if there are opportunities to be in the midst of the people who are you were trying to build relationships with, then it is imperative that you are in those spaces as well. So for example, lunch and learns are being hosted by the sales team or the customer success team. I'm there, I'm asking questions. I understand how the business works, and while that technically isn't my job, it's absolutely my prerogative to do that. I think that it's something that, and while that's not necessarily a playbook, but remaining curious and trying to figure out what works, how is that working? I'll give you an example. Bitly right now and always has been as I've been here, is a remote company. My colleagues are spread across the globe, and I found a piece of collateral that we had floating around at the organization and sent it to one of my colleagues who's based also in Minnesota and said, I would love your take on this.
(25:44):
She's a salesperson. She has had plenty of different experiences at various organizations. And I said, I have some opinions on how I think that this piece of collateral could be better. However, before I open my mouth, I want to hear what you have to say about this. And this was just an out of the blue kind of thing, but we have developed a relationship and she was like, oh, this and this. I've had really a big problem trying to sell against this. I need X, Y, Z. And not only did I get the answer to my question, but I got a whole glimpse of the kinds of things that run through her head on a day to day basis. So that was one thing. The reason why I was looking at that piece of collateral in the first place was because I make it a point to set aside an hour a week to listen to recorded go calls.
(26:36):
Again, not my job, but I'm immersing myself in the life of the sales and customer success teams. So I understand what are the ways that they are describing our product, what are some of the questions that customers and prospects have about our tool, about our service? And I'm just a fly on the wall and there was a discussion about some piece of collateral or a flyer or something like that, and I was like, I don't know what they're talking about exactly. And so I went around and did some searching and then asked following that. But I would say that my gong calls when I was at Jasper, actually one of our leaders was telling us about something that he did when he was a kid playing football. And he and his dad watched tape together to understand the game a little bit better to reflect on the work that they had done in that last game.
(27:30):
But then they also watched tape from other teams and he said, here I equate watching tape to listening to calls. And so I've taken that now at Bitly to say, yeah, I have a trunk on my calendar. It says watching tape. And those are invaluable for me because I also have then the opportunity to engage with the product team and say, Hey, I was listening to this call. These are the kinds of things that came up. Just curious, where's your head at on this aspect of our product? And so that also builds some credibility and shared language too with a product person who sometimes might not have as much access to a customer. For me, it's being a connective thread and as far as a playbook goes in how to speak the language, it helps to try on learning a new language too, to be like, should I use this term?
(28:26):
Is that correct? Am I interpreting this properly? And being able to take the, I'm just learning when I'm learning a new language, it's like, did I pronounce that properly? And being confident enough in myself to be like, you can correct me, it's fine. And that has led to a lot of great ways to sit down with various members of the team and just be like, I'm here trying to understand what you're doing. And hopefully by modeling that, there's some reciprocal curiosity too. The other day I was just trying to think of what could we do differently for our products roadmap? And because I had just completed this big survey, we had over 600 responses from our self-serve customer base, and so I had really a pretty good sense of what our customers were feeling. I also plugged the raw data into Claude and said, what are some of the resounding themes?
(29:26):
Where are the gaps in the product? What are some of the things that people absolutely love about Bitly? And I packaged it up and started then riffing off of some of the opportunity areas and the strength areas, and then reached out to a couple of my colleagues on the product team and said, I'm just brainstorming over here. What do you think about sent a document and I get a slack message back going, so do you want to meet about this now? And I was like, I'm glad you're excited. But that has turned into now and every other week I sit down with some of these product managers and we're talking about ideas of how to develop the product and what customers are saying and different things like that. But this is a team effort. Hopefully some of those examples will spur some ideas of how to just not be afraid of jumping in and seeing what you learn from
Jeff Reekers (30:24):
That. Yeah, totally. That trust that gets developed through this as well is just so incredible. And the embedding yourself within the knowledge base of your other teams, your counterparts just resonates so much. It triggered my mind when you started telling that story was ages ago I was overseeing, or I joined a company, started leading demand gen marketing. And similarly, I was very really curious on all things on the sales front. So I talked to the sales leader. First step was I was going to join every pipeline meeting and I really get to know the deals, the customers, the flow of everything. Fast forward two years later, every single week for two years I was on those meetings. Suddenly we needed a manager for a new segment on the sales side and somebody to run the pipeline meetings. And it was like everyone else was busy selling. So it's like, Jeff, you know how to do the pipeline meetings. Yeah, it was my first time ever seeing overseeing a sales team, but just embedding yourself
JoAnne Baldwin (31:22):
In
Jeff Reekers (31:23):
Another team, you start to build that trust and trust across the board and people really recognize and see what you're doing and the effort that you're putting in as well.
JoAnne Baldwin (31:31):
Yeah, just a couple of days ago, as I was trying to figure out how to refine this monthly click email, I was like, maybe I don't even have a product next step. Maybe it's asking for feedback for those who care about analytics. I had overheard that a product manager was working on some survey and things, and I reached out to her and I said, would you be open to me reaching out to customers to ask a specific question around the work that you're doing and discovery for this new feature? And she was like, are you kidding me? And I was like, no, no, no, actually yes. And she was like, what do you think about this survey? One of these questions that we've already been trying to get feedback for? And I was like, oh, I know about that survey. Somebody else has been talking to you about it.
(32:19):
It's not new information, it's just figuring out how to channel the energy in the right places. And so I think too sometimes and on the surface feels haphazard of listening to random calls and whatever, and it's like at the end of the day, I have a much better idea of what the context is and can then hop in and say a couple of things I've observed, see what your expert opinion of this is, and then I go back to the things that I'm doing. And so I think that that helps too because especially when you work remotely, I need more interaction. And so this brings a lot of life to me while also supporting every single one of my colleagues' goals too.
Jeff Reekers (33:05):
When it comes to building, whether it's lifecycle programs, customer marketing programs, onboarding, how do you sort of connect this all back to revenue retention and how do you think about the impact part of things, and kind of a segue off that conversation is how do you then use that to sort of align whether it's with the CRO, the CMO and bring that sort of revenue mindset back to the table?
JoAnne Baldwin (33:29):
Yeah, I think that what it comes down to is figuring out what the altitude of those metrics are. So business level retention numbers, be it logo amount per year, we're talking like churn rate, things like that are for the most part for most of our plans is on an annual basis super lagging metric. And so while it is important for me to keep a pulse on that, I can't report against here are these programs, and this resulted in an account renewing. However, from a self-serve standpoint. So I focus a little bit more heavily on this self-serve group of our customers at Bitly. They are signing up for a plan on their own accord and they renew and whatever else, credit card recurring kinds of things. So there is not a customer success manager relationship as a part of that, which means it's that much more of my responsibility to make sure that there is value being achieved or a realized product being understood and there's confidence in the product itself.
(34:35):
So then back away from the retention numbers and look at what are my leading indicators around product usage, how big is my marketable database? Keeping an eye on how healthy those engaged customers are is super important to me too. There were a couple of, I guess it must've been about a year ago, I looked at our internet service provider and said, Hey, there's a mismatch. I have fewer customers that I can market to than I thought that I did. And seeing that we just had logic that was set up improperly, and so I had paying customers that were going straight into a do not market list. And so it just took a little bit of time to dig out why I couldn't talk to some of those customers. Now I have them back. So I think that from a leading indicator standpoint, it's some vanity metrics around how those programs are being received.
(35:31):
I am also looking at product behavior trends, how often people are logging in when actions that we've deemed to be retention, driving behaviors are being done. I think that there's a difference between just people logging in and looking around versus doing particular things that we have seen based on product analysis result in a higher propensity to renew. Those are the things that I'm focused on and the programs that I'm building are to support those things, not just fluff and other things that just exist anyway. So I think that making the connection between what is something that we can measure and what really does make a difference with retention is a very important thread. I think that was something early in my career that I didn't see the value of as clearly as I do now, where yes, collecting customer feedback is important, tracking NPS is important.
(36:36):
However, if that's where it ends, then it is not relevant and it's not something you can make decisions on. And so as I've grown now, I'm in a mindset of, okay, voice of customer is crucial, but it's from particular customers who we have deemed are going to be maybe our ICP really, and they represent how we should be building product. Here's the percentage of people who are satisfied with these different aspects. Therefore, here are the recommendations on what we do on the product side, on the customer success side, and let's start tracking against those sorts of initiatives. So it is acting as the, here's the data, here's the opportunity, what do we do next? And allowing that to be the cycle. If I'm not paying attention to those high level numbers, for example, churn, if we see that there is an uptick over the course of time in a particular segment where churn is starting to become something we should be paying attention to, my question then becomes, where am I prioritizing a prevention of that particular churn in the programs that I'm building?
(37:47):
So while we may not have a high level marketing goal or product or business goal around reduced churn, at the end of the day, if I'm thinking about lifecycle initiatives, I got to think ahead before the thing we don't want to happen. And so that's what I have begun thinking about and then acting on from a strategic standpoint to say, I understand these numbers exist and where we want to go with that. Now, how does it translate into what we're going to do with our customer base to that onboarding just has to happen, for example. But if we as a company are starting to really spend more time focusing on a particular product, then perhaps if somebody signs up on that new product first, maybe their onboarding journey looks different. And so me being able to be flexible and to grow other things, other programs that are more segmented makes it an even more relevant and more valuable product for those people coming in within their context.
Jeff Reekers (38:58):
Yeah, that's fantastic. I've noticed a consistent theme through our discussion today, which is really zooming out and thinking of things from a more broad perspective and then tying your work back into that. What I heard there is you're really looking at business as an owner and what are the metrics and challenges that are going to drive the business forward, and what are the challenges facing a company today? And then how am I going to impact that? Understanding it from various stakeholders internally, and then really creating a plan around what's most important to the business versus being locked in on one metric that is just, maybe it's relevant today, maybe it's not. And rather than being locked in, really being open and flexible around what's most important to the business coming up and tying your programs back into it.
JoAnne Baldwin (39:41):
My responsibilities and the programs that I've been overseeing, even in the time that I've been at Bitly, we're coming up on two years here, that mix has changed because the needs of the business have changed or the goals of the business have changed. And that doesn't mean that I quit cold Turkey on some things. It does mean that if those things are deprioritized, then it's like, okay, well is there any kind of low key improvements that I could be making or do I just let it sit for a little while and see what happens with that? So back to our how do you continue to change and adjust? There were programs that I had built at the beginning of my time at Bitly or my time at PitchBook, and then our tech stack changed, or our customer mix changed or whatever. And so I then needed to go back to that program and say, this was built for a different era.
(40:39):
How do I update it? How do I completely dismantle it? Whatever it might be. And so I think that the monotonous of notion of let's keep optimizing is so much more than that because customer's needs change, our technology staff changes, our understanding of customers enhance hopefully, and our product improves. So what do you do with that on any given day? So I think that's something that just keeps me energized and allows me to say, okay, well what kinds of things are we going to tackle today and how are we going to go about doing that?
Jeff Reekers (41:16):
Yeah, amazing. Alright, Jen, well we'll wrap up with a couple last wrap up questions here. A little more high level. Is there anything that you're seeing happening across customer marketing, lifecycle marketing that maybe it's a hot take if you will, but any practices that are trending or hot that you just completely disagree with or any hot takes on customer marketing holistically?
JoAnne Baldwin (41:39):
I know that where I am coming up against a lot of challenges is being generic and not having the data to be able to say something that's like worth saying to customers. And so my hot take is that our data is not clean, but that's not really that hot because it's like everyone's like, yeah, can we make that happen six years ago, kind of thing. I think that at the end of the day for me, if we better understood each other at our organizations, that marketing could work more closely and more effectively with sales and cs.
Jeff Reekers (42:15):
Yeah. Love that. If you only have one sticky note and it was on your computer every day when you started work, what would that one sticky note say? What reminder would you have on there?
JoAnne Baldwin (42:26):
Ask one more question.
Jeff Reekers (42:28):
Oh, I love that. Ask one more question. I feel like I have to ask one more question now. That's a tricky one. That was my last question. I feel like I have to ask one more. Well, fantastic. Well, Joanne, this was incredible. Thank you for the conversation here today, the honesty, the frameworks, and just really diving into how you think. I think of so many customer markers, just professionals as a whole really approach things the way that you do from that listening first empathetic mindset and also that flexibility, our organizations would be far, far better. So thank you for sharing this with us, and thank you for spending the time with us here today. Thank you all for tuning into this one. Thank you Joanne, again for joining us.
JoAnne Baldwin (43:10):
Awesome. I really enjoyed the opportunity and thanks for reaching out. Jeff.
Jeff Reekers (43:16):
If you're ready to turn customer advocacy into your biggest growth engine, make sure to subscribe to customer champions wherever you listen to podcasts. And for even more insights, go to champion hq.com because the best way to grow isn't just by winning customers, it's by championing them.