Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to The Outpost, where customer marketers trade what works.
This is where your peers are sharing their best customer marketing and advocacy plays –– the ones that get their CEO's attention.
Join us every other week for new episodes. And to join one of our sessions live and unlock the content that will define your next best play, mosey on over to userevidence.com/outpost
[00:00:08] Jillian Hoefer: Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Outpost. My name is Jillian Hoefer. I run content here at User Evidence. We have got, as always, a great presentation this morning. And once again, not at the beginning of my slides. Why do I do that every single time? Um, I'm so excited for today. We, just to kind of set the scene here, we recently put out a customer marketing and advocacy, um, career and, uh, career, sorry, career and, uh, salary benchmark report.
[00:00:36] Jillian Hoefer: And in that research, there was kind of a theme that came out. So we had 60% of CMA professionals tell us that cross-functional collaboration was the most critical skill in their career Throughout the conversations that we've had with CMA people in the past, cross-functional is that, like, kind of key term that keeps coming up.
[00:00:55] Jillian Hoefer: And we kind of are going like, y- yes, clearly we understand as a collective community that this is important, but it's also kind of one of those fluffy things. Like, what, what does it mean? Like, what does cross-functional actually look like? Does it mean more meetings? Does it mean you're poking and prodding your teammates more?
[00:01:11] Jillian Hoefer: Like, what does cross-functional actually mean, especially when it comes to CMA? Clearly we see it as important. The other stat that came out of this research that we did that kind of made us go, "Okay, I think this is worth digging into," is 48% of customer marketers who said that they were seeking a promotion in the next one to two years said that the role that they were hoping to be promoted to doesn't exist at their company, and they actually have no clear path to it at their current company.
[00:01:36] Jillian Hoefer: So there's this clear gap, there's this disconnect in like, okay, CMA folks, you are all obviously very, uh, driven, and you are, you know, you want to be promoted into this next thing, but sometimes that isn't always there, so we kind of have to forge our own path. So this cross-functional collaboration was kind of setting off a little flag in our mind of like, this could be a key to kind of going, how, how do we get this promotion?
[00:01:58] Jillian Hoefer: So through a conversation that I had with Nicole Saunders, who is our guest today, our guest presenter on The Outpost, she actually said something that like, again, set that little flag off in my head. And we were discussing... I knew I wanted her on The Outpost. She's a brilliant customer marketer. She is the senior director of customer, uh, customer experience strategy over at Higher Logic.
[00:02:15] Jillian Hoefer: She was at Zendesk s- for seven years earlier in her career. Something that she was telling me about when we were kind of discussing what she would want to talk about on The Outpost among her peers was she said like, "Well, you know, kind of the big linchpin of my career was that one, at one point my manager did tell me I needed to be more cross-functional.
[00:02:32] Jillian Hoefer: And I said, 'Okay, I'm going to figure out how to do that.' And that's kind of how I've gotten every promotion that I've gotten from here on out, and that's how I run, you know, community, and customer marketing, and all these different functions kind of under one umbrella now here at Higher Logic." And I was like, "That is something we absolutely should be discussing."
[00:02:47] Jillian Hoefer: So that is what Nicole's going to be discussing She's going to be taking all of her experience of what does it actually look like to be cross-functional. She's sharing a really cool framework that she kind of put together based on her experience, and then sharing a lot of stories and anecdotes of how this cross-functional work and the framework that she's put together have actually helped her advance and helped her and her peers come and, you know, have some great goals, uh, for the higher winnings of the company that they've put together, um, as a team.
[00:03:14] Jillian Hoefer: So without further ado, I'm so excited to bring Nicole to the stage today. Hi, Nicole. How are you?
[00:03:19] Nicole Saunders: Hi, everyone, and thank you so much, Jillian. That was such a kind introduction.
[00:03:23] Jillian Hoefer: Oh my gosh, we're so thrilled to have you, Nicole, and obviously in the conversations that you and I have had... Sorry, we're going to switch over to your slides here.
[00:03:29] Jillian Hoefer: Conversations you and I have had, uh, like I kind of tee you up, cross-functional does seem like something that's so higher level. Can you maybe just start by telling, like, in your experience, you know, you were told, like, "You need to be more cross-functional." Where- how did that come about for you, and what has that turned into meaning for you?
[00:03:45] Nicole Saunders: Yeah. Well, I mean, that, that actually just dives right into my first slide, so I'm just going to-
[00:03:49] Jillian Hoefer: Exactly. Let's go ... move on.
[00:03:51] Nicole Saunders: We don't need the title slides. Um, but yeah, I... So this was probably 10, 15 years ago. It was during the time that I was at Zendesk, and I was pretty early in my career, um, you know, as a, as a, uh, just a manager at the time, starting to build my programs, and I was talking to my boss about my career aspirations as part of a performance cycle.
[00:04:12] Nicole Saunders: And I was like, "Well, you know, I, I wanna move up. I'm an ambitious person. I like leadership. What do I need to do to be promoted?" And you know, I was doing good work, I was delivering on my KPIs, all that kind of thing, and she was like, "Well, I just really think you need to be more cross-functional." And I'll tell you what, I was crushed because I was like, "What do you mean I need to be more cross-functional?
[00:04:36] Nicole Saunders: Like, I'm a community manager. I work with other people in the business all the time. I know all of the ways that my work and that things from the community at least should be going into other parts of the business." Like, what could that possibly mean? And that sort of sent me on this, uh, little bit of a soul-searching and journey and reading a lot of Harvard Business Review articles on leadership.
[00:05:01] Nicole Saunders: Um, but really trying to figure out like, okay, when a manager says you need to be more cross-functional, like, what does that mean? What does that look like? And how do I do it? Because looking back, I will admit one of the challenges I was having at the time was, like I said, I was running the community, and so I saw these things.
[00:05:19] Nicole Saunders: I was like, "Oh, I've got feedback for the product managers, and I've got support escalations for the support team, and I've got things that customer success and customer marketing could be doing." But I was having a lot of trouble getting any of those people to listen or actually do it. And I was having trouble getting investment in my programs, and I was really frustrated because I was like, "This makes so much sense.
[00:05:36] Nicole Saunders: Why don't people wanna work with me?" And that was really, I think, what she was talking about, and that's what led to all of the things that I'm going to share today. Now, I wanna put the caveat out there that, like, this is my take on what that meant and how it rolled out in my career. Um, there are probably other definitions of cross-functionality and cross-functional collaboration, but I just thought I would share because it's one of those things where when I look back at my career, I see the through line, and I see in hindsight how that comment that really kind of, like, hurt my feelings and made me a little bit mad also put a fire under me to figure this out.
[00:06:11] Nicole Saunders: And I think the best way to learn something is to figure it out. So hopefully I can help share for everybody here, and then you guys don't have to go through quite as much of the pain of figuring it out.
[00:06:23] Nicole Saunders: All right. Um, so as I was saying, like, that comment from my manager kind of hurt my feelings because I, I thought of myself as super collaborative and all of these things. And collaboration and partnership are both parts of being cross-functional, right? You have to be working with others. You have to share your knowledge.
[00:06:44] Nicole Saunders: You have to have plans and things like that. But true cross-functionality is a little bit different. Now, before we unpack that, Jillian kicked off with some of the why in terms of talking about the survey and that recognition. Like, we all know this is a thing we need to be doing, but why, right? Well, you know, obviously there's the AI of it all, which is that AI is going to increasingly handle execution, and it's going to drive a lot of efficiencies in terms of automation.
[00:07:13] Nicole Saunders: But one of those key things that AI can't do that is going to create job security for all of the people here is that organizations are still going to need those people who can connect ideas, who can connect thoughts, who can figure out how to orchestrate across teams and bring those projects together, and that is cross-functional collaboration.
[00:07:32] Nicole Saunders: Um, I love the little blue box down here. where I said it's-- it really is, like, the most human skill you can build and that you can use. Um, the other things that I have found that it really shaped for me, one, when you are working deeply with people across your organization, it gives you and your program more visibility.
[00:07:49] Nicole Saunders: So when I think about, like, how much struggle I was having getting investment is because a lot of people, like, didn't know what we did. They didn't know why it was important. I'd explain it, and they'd go like, "Oh yeah, that makes sense." But they weren't seeing it day to day. It wasn't tangible for them.
[00:08:04] Nicole Saunders: Once I started getting into true cross-functional projects, people started actually feeling those impacts and seeing them, and it started coming up on a day-to-day basis. Another key thing that it does is it gives you exposure to other teams and programs and departments and roles across your organization.
[00:08:21] Nicole Saunders: And that is really important for career development in terms of typically- When you are looking to get promoted, one of the things that they're always looking for is how are you expanding your scope, the scope of your role, right? It's not just getting more senior and like doing more of the same. It's what are you adding to your plate?
[00:08:41] Nicole Saunders: And a lot of the time that means trying to bring in other functions. Now, you won't know what those are or how to do that if you haven't had good exposure to them. And where this was really critical in my career, um, one of the examples I'm going to give you a little bit later that I think you'll all resonate with, was how I brought community and customer advocacy and customer marketing all together.
[00:09:00] Nicole Saunders: And that was the thing that allowed me to move out of just being on a community track and into being able to do some customer marketing things. And then in my next role, when I went over to Coupa Software, I got to manage the community team and the customer marketing team and the customer webinars teams.
[00:09:19] Nicole Saunders: And so if I hadn't done those cross-functional projects, I wouldn't have had the exposure to those other functions and how they operate and what they do to even be able to do it. Um, and then related to that, working cross-functionally will just give you a better understanding of your business at large, and really kind of gives you that perspective of where do I fit into this, where does my team fit into this, what's going on across the organization, and how I can connect those dots.
[00:09:45] Nicole Saunders: So, you know, this is why we all get told these things. Clearly, we all know it's important, but it's really because, like, at the end of the day, cross-functional collaboration is how you build your career. It is how you gain those skills and those relationships and the awarenesses that you need to move up on the leadership ladder Okay.
[00:10:04] Nicole Saunders: So coming back to that definition for a minute. Um, when I initially set this up, I was like, "Here's what collaboration is, and here's what partnership is, and here's what cross-functionality is," and they were, like, mutually exclusive. And I realized, like, that's not really true, because collaboration and partnership are parts of cross-functionality.
[00:10:21] Nicole Saunders: The key definition that's really important is collaboration is like, I run a forum and I get lots of product feedback, and I regularly hand that feedback off to the product managers, right? That's one form where, like, I'm passing them information. It's like passing the baton in a relay race. Um, maybe I occasionally have a brainstorm where I'm like, "You know, we could use some other ideas.
[00:10:45] Nicole Saunders: Let's bring in so-and-so from the marketing team to come talk with us and brainstorm this for a minute," right? Maybe it's point in time, maybe it's working together a little bit. Or a partnership might be like, "Oh yeah, we're going to work together on this project." Cross-functionality is really about drawing diverse skill sets from across the business and then building a structure around it.
[00:11:05] Nicole Saunders: So I think the best way that I think about it is it's not just identifying those partners and those collaborators, but it's actually saying, "Okay, how do we build some infrastructure around what we're doing? How do we have an ongoing thing?" Um, so one way to look at it might be are you doing things point in time versus ongoing?
[00:11:23] Nicole Saunders: How big is the project? How many different people from different teams are you pulling together? Like, the biggest cross-functional project I ever worked on was when we decided to upgrade the whole community and knowledge base experience. And we had people from marketing. You know, we had content people, we had design people, we had the engineering people, we had the security folks.
[00:11:42] Nicole Saunders: We had to bring the product team. Like, just about every department in the company was part of this project. It was a big thing that we all worked on for about a year. That was a truly cross-functional project. Um, but before you can really get into cross-functionality You have to start with building relationships.
[00:12:00] Nicole Saunders: And I'm going to bet that that's a skill set that everybody has a ton of expertise around. So I'm not going to talk too much about that. But one of the key things that I've done in my career that I encourage everyone I ever mentor or everyone I talk to to do is set aside 30 minutes a week, just one half hour, go into your company directory, find someone you've never met or some, like, random title you've never heard of and you have no idea what it is, and ask them if you can have coffee.
[00:12:27] Nicole Saunders: And just meet with them. Just have an introduction, find out what they do, talk to them about what you do, build those relationships. Even just a little bit of familiarity goes a long way when you have to start putting more cross-functional projects together. Um, I did this one time where I found this person that was, like, interesting, like, data science related title, and I was like, "What is this?"
[00:12:48] Nicole Saunders: Like, "I've never heard of this." And we started talking, and it turned out that she had been tasked with gathering up a bunch of customer insights. And I was like, "Well, I have access to a lot of customers. Maybe there's a there there." And the end results, like, from just this one coffee was I got this dashboard that I had been trying to figure out how to build for years, and she got all this data that she was supposed to be reporting on.
[00:13:14] Nicole Saunders: And neither of us had known the other one existed prior to that random coffee. So, like, these things are invaluable. I can't emphasize it enough. And do it outside of your company, too. You know, it's, it's important for cross-functionality, but doing that across your industry or other things. It- things are really about who you know.
[00:13:30] Nicole Saunders: It really is true, and it's an important skill set. Um, another key is always being curious. Just pay attention. What are other teams working on? What challenge is they having? And this can be hard sometimes because, like, we all have a lot going on. I don't know about you guys, my brain feels full at the end of the day.
[00:13:47] Nicole Saunders: But I try really hard when I'm in meetings or all-hands or things to listen to what other people are doing, even if it- I don't- can't figure out right away, like, how it relates to me. It's important to have an understanding of it so that you can start to identify those opportunities of like, "Oh, hey, I can think of a way that we could solve for that.
[00:14:03] Nicole Saunders: I- I've got something that we can add to this." And so that's why I have at that bottom there, just always be curious. And I know it takes a little bit of energy, and I know it takes a little bit of vulnerability, and I know that those things are hard when we're busy and stressed out. But the more that you can stay curious, the more that you can stay interested, the more you'll find these opportunities to collaborate.
[00:14:21] Nicole Saunders: And the really key thing here is you're not going to be able to do cross-functional work or build those, uh, projects and things if you don't have those relationships. People at least need to have a hint of who you are. Now, the deeper you can build that trust, the better off, but just start working with that.
[00:14:38] Nicole Saunders: It is really an invaluable-
[00:14:42] Jillian Hoefer: I, I have a quick question, Nicole. I know that at larger- like you've worked at some larger organizations as well, so sometimes like pulling up an org chart- Yeah ... and just looking and being like, "I don't know, you know, uh, at least three-fourths of these people." Yeah. So you're kind of trying to figure out who you're going to meet with.
[00:14:56] Jillian Hoefer: For those who you are kind of reaching out to cold, that you don't have too much of a like personal connection with already- is there a way that you tee up that coffee to them so that they're not... 'Cause sometimes people's radars go off of like, "What do they need from me? Like, what do, what does this person want?"
[00:15:08] Jillian Hoefer: Like, is there a way that you've typically teed up those conversations, or have you found that they're just like very receptive to just a quick coffee meet?
[00:15:14] Nicole Saunders: So, um, I think the great secret of life is usually if you ask people to do something, they're, they want to say yes. Right? And so most of the time just saying, "Hey, I was poking around the company directory and I saw your name and your title, and I realized we've never met.
[00:15:31] Nicole Saunders: I have no idea what a data experience leader does," to make up a completely fake title. Um, "Could we have a quick coffee chat, even just 15 minutes? I'd just love to learn a little bit about what you do." Right? I think the key here, and this is a theme that you're going to hear me talk about throughout the rest of the presentation, is lead with, "I wanna know what you're up to.
[00:15:54] Nicole Saunders: I'm interested in what you're all about." Keep it casual, keep it friendly. Because yeah, you're right, Jillian, that like people will often be like, "Ugh, what do you need? I might not have time for this conversation." And that's why like I'll start even like, "Hey, just 15 minutes. Just a quick coffee chat. I'm just trying to get to know everybody across the business."
[00:16:09] Nicole Saunders: Right? And then go in and just be curious and ask them questions. They're going to assume that you're going to show up with an ask for them, and they're going to be so delightfully surprised when you're like, "No, I was just really curious about you." Like, how would you feel if somebody came to you and asked that?
[00:16:24] Nicole Saunders: You'd be like, "Oh, well, let me tell you about me." Right? You'd be so excited. And so I think that that's easy. Now, some organizations, like the one that I currently work for, actually facilitates this. They've got a Slack bot that automatically introduces people, and so everybody here is like very used to this sort of like open coffee chat, get together, talk about other things.
[00:16:44] Nicole Saunders: Um, but you know, whatever that looks like at your organization. And yeah, you will occasionally get somebody who's like, "I'm j- I'm sorry, I'm just way too busy." And then you go, "Okay," but that for me is actually a signal of like, "Ooh, now I'm really curious about what they're working on. If they are so busy they don't even have time for a coffee chat, I wanna know what they're into.
[00:17:01] Nicole Saunders: I might be able to help support that." So.
[00:17:05] Jillian Hoefer: I love it. And it's like that leading, there's a lot of humility that comes with that curiosity too. So, and then sometimes that feels uncomfortable. But it's like I love that you, you show like in that first ask, you're showing the humility of like, "You have this role.
[00:17:17] Jillian Hoefer: I have no idea what that means. Can you educate me?" Like, putting them in the seat of you're the expert and I'd love to learn from you. It's just, it's a great little boost for them as well. So all, all of this is just like there's so much good just humility and curiosity e- embedded in the whole thing.
[00:17:32] Nicole Saunders: And I think you really hit the nail on the head there, and I, you know, some of this is my personality, some of it's my approach to work.
[00:17:38] Nicole Saunders: Other people may need to tweak this for what suits their personality and their approach the best. But I do always try to come from a place of, um, servant leadership, of being friendly with people, with being humble. And I'm going to touch on this on another slide, but I think the most important thing, like the best thing I ever did is roll up to conversation, say, "Okay, I wanna talk about this challenge that we're both facing.
[00:18:03] Nicole Saunders: Now, the first thing I want you to know about me is I am not precious about my work. I am not territorial. I wanna do what's best for the customers and best for the business. And so ideally, that's a collaborative effort for us. But if something else makes sense, like I'm open to whatever the right solution is."
[00:18:18] Nicole Saunders: And you would be amazed at how that lets people's guard down. Because especially over the last, what is it, like six or seven years now that the world has been crazy, um, you know, all of the PE firms and layoffs and things that are going on, people are very territorial and very defensive. And so anything that you can do to put them at ease and say, "Hey, I just wanna help you," is really going to help facilitate that conversation and kind of grease the skids.
[00:18:43] Nicole Saunders: And is it hard to do that sometimes? Absolutely. Like, I have to like take a deep breath and be like, "Okay, I'm really not going to be territorial. I really am going to try to put myself out there and help. Let's go." Um, but it is important. So let's dig into the framework so we can kind of get into the meat of what we're talking about here.
[00:19:00] Nicole Saunders: So, um, I came up with this, this cross 'cause it's easy to remember when we're talking about cross-functional. Um, this is a little, um, oversimplified, but I think it's helpful to have these steps. So when I am going into something where I'm like, I, I think based on what I have observed and what I have learned through being curious and having coffee with a bunch of people, is that, um, I think there's an opportunity here.
[00:19:27] Nicole Saunders: And so I'm going to go in and have this initial meeting with somebody to kind of pitch them on a cross-functional project. So the first thing that I need to be really clear on is what am I doing? What do I need? What am I hoping for out of this whole situation? Now, you don't lead with that in the conversation, but you need to be really clear on it in your mind so that when it does come up, you can articulate yourself well.
[00:19:47] Nicole Saunders: Um, then there's the researching adjacent teams. So I've gotten a, an inkling of like, oh, there might be a there there. I'm going to really poke around and like, those are some specific people I may have a little bit more specific coffee with, if you will, um, and go in and find out what exactly they're working on.
[00:20:03] Nicole Saunders: I'm going to get curious. I'm going to ask them, "What are your objectives? What's your boss pushing you to do? What's the hardest part about that for you right now? What are your blockers? What are your challenges? You know, what does success look like for you?" Some of those interviewee questions so that I really deeply understand it.
[00:20:20] Nicole Saunders: And then what that enables for me to do is go back and solve for them first. Say, "Okay, so if I'm hearing you right, I'm understanding that you're trying to do this project and these are your challenges. Let me tell you a little bit what I'm working on. I'm trying to do this thing and these are my challenges, and I'm seeing an intersection here.
[00:20:41] Nicole Saunders: We both have this shared objective, or we both need this same, um, resource. So let's figure out how we can work together on that and build that together." So you can see where as you go in to pitch that project, like you have to have a baseline level of trust with this person already. They have to have their guard down too, to be open to it.
[00:20:59] Nicole Saunders: And it may take you a couple conversations. And then the ultimate key in the structure of your cross-functional project is that you have shared ownership. Everybody needs to feel that they've got at least relatively equal parts in it, as it makes sense. Um, one of the keys is making sure that you have aligned KPIs.
[00:21:17] Nicole Saunders: I think the best is always when there's one number that everybody can report under their leadership that suits whatever goal those people have. But at a minimum, you have to make sure that your goals are not at cross-purposes, right? If I have a number that I'm trying to hit that's all about getting people to my webinar, and the person I'm working with is trying all about trying to get people to their webinar, our numbers are inherently going to cannibalize each other.
[00:21:40] Nicole Saunders: And so you have to figure out ways that you have shared goals and objectives, that you're not working at cross-purposes. That often can be the most difficult part, especially because, again, when people are being territorial, everybody wants to own their program outright and have these clean numbers and prove that they were the ones that influenced this thing.
[00:21:58] Nicole Saunders: And so you really have to kind of massage that conversation and be like, "But wouldn't it be better for the business and the customers if we all do this together, even if it's not as clear what the ownership is?" Like, at the end of the day, if we're driving more revenue, if we're driving more retention, if people are happier and we all get what we want, isn't that what matters?
[00:22:17] Nicole Saunders: And so that's the biggest conversation, and that's where I s- always start with that how can I help piece. Because if you think about a business, like every team is like an island, right? And most of the time we're sitting on our island with our goals and our KPIs and our little team culture, and we're like shouting across the water like, "Hey, guys, I need some content.
[00:22:37] Nicole Saunders: Does anybody have information on this new release?" Right? And like somebody's like taking a paper airplane and like flying it over to you. That's, that's what most partnership and collaboration in the modern workplace is. Cross-functional leaders are the ones that get together and say, "I think we need to build a bridge between our islands that we can both use to go back and forth."
[00:22:57] Nicole Saunders: And that is the best metaphor that I can sort of think of for how you reframe things from, you know, sending a message, sending a delegate, to actually saying, "Hey, we're all really going to work together on this piece." Um, and in my career, there were a couple of times that this actually led to my team moving, right?
[00:23:19] Nicole Saunders: We were originally in support. We eventually moved over to the marketing team because we were doing these cross-functional projects where it just became clear that that was what made sense. So we, like, packed up and hiked across that bridge and went and hung out on the marketing island for a while. Um, okay, so let's get into some examples and, specific ways to ease those apprehensions.
[00:23:37] Nicole Saunders: And so, um, I think I've given a few examples of it, but I'll tell- sort of highlight those in this story too, because I think it is the biggest challenge of the whole thing, right? Um, so the first real experience I had with this was several years ago, and we had started running some, what we were calling community events, which was basically, like, super under-produced webinars in the community.
[00:24:00] Nicole Saunders: And we just sort of, like, looked at what people were talking about in the community and be like, "Man, they seem, like, really interested in this new authentication piece. Let's get one of the authentication engineers to come chat with them about it," right? And we would just do these webinars, and what we found was that we had a really high rate of attendance.
[00:24:17] Nicole Saunders: So we all know you have a webinar, you invite a bajillion people, and 100 sign up, and of those 100, maybe 20 or 30 show up. Well, we were getting, like, 50% to 60% attendance rates, which was, like, way better than what most of the other webinars were doing. And so I really thought about that and I was like, "Man, I think it's because it's not marketing.
[00:24:38] Nicole Saunders: It's not super produced. You know, these are customers, existing customers. They don't need us to sell them. They just wanna, like, know how to do the thing." And so that was, like, a really key thing for us. Um, but it was kind of starting to be a struggle to keep these events going 'cause we were like, "Okay, we've covered, like, most of the topics they're talking about.
[00:24:54] Nicole Saunders: Like, what else do we need to do?" Like, I need, I need more content here to keep these customers engaged. And the events were really important to our strategy because it was the thing that kept consistently drawing people in, right? It was a call to action, it was time boxed. It was a really key part of it.
[00:25:07] Nicole Saunders: So I was like, "Okay, I gotta go start knocking on doors and figuring out, like, who can help us with this content. I've got one guy here and he has exhausted his creative brain after 18 months. We need more ideas and more information." And so around the same time, the product marketing team was saying like, "Man, you know, we do these webinars every couple months for our release cycles, and attendance has been going down, especially from our current customer base.
[00:25:32] Nicole Saunders: We're seeing prospects are holding steady, but customers are not attending these and we, we don't really know why. But, like, we need to get releases in front of customers." And then I was talking to some of my friends on the customer success team, and they were saying like, "Gosh, we're really challenged that we can't seem to figure out how to get customers to adopt new features.
[00:25:50] Nicole Saunders: They, like, don't know that they're coming out. They don't know how to use it. They don't know why. What do we do?" Well, what was happening here is all three of our teams were running webinars, and we were sending emails, right? And so customers are getting like four emails a week from different teams inviting them to different webinars, and sometimes on like similar topics, and they weren't sure if it was the same webinar.
[00:26:11] Nicole Saunders: Sometimes it was on very different topics, and they didn't know how they connected. And so I was like ... And like we also had, yeah, the email fatigue, right? We also had the regulations in place where like the email team was really good at managing like how, who could receive how many emails a week. And so you would have trouble actually getting an email out to customers because they'd be like, "Oh, three emails already went out to that person this week.
[00:26:30] Nicole Saunders: They can't get any more emails, so you can't invite them to your webinar." It was really frustrating. And so I was like, "Okay." I need content and these other two teams need customers. I feel like there's a, an opportunity to work together here. And so I brought in a couple people from product marketing and I brought in a couple people from customer success.
[00:26:53] Nicole Saunders: So I've got my little diverse cross-functional team and said, "I think that there's a common solution here. We're running awesome webinars that have great attendance rates, but we're running out of stuff to talk about. You guys have great stuff to talk about, but you can't figure out how to make it interesting to customers and get them there.
[00:27:09] Nicole Saunders: So let my team take our expertise on what resonates with current customers and how to run these webinars," which again, in our case was underproduced grassroots, let's get people on the phone and nerd out with them about why this thing is so cool, not talk at the high level about the capabilities it enables, but actually be like, "Okay, so you guys, if you connect this with your
[00:27:28] Nicole Saunders: API and
[00:27:29] Nicole Saunders: then you do this thing, you can make this happen," right?
[00:27:32] Nicole Saunders: Um, and they were hesitant, right? Especially product marketing. They're like, "No, no, no, we don't do underproduced. We do polished, prerecorded animations." And we were like, "Nope, everything we do is live. You can have slides, but like we're not doing motion graphics." People need to feel like this is very real.
[00:27:52] Nicole Saunders: And so eventually through a lot of conversation, I got everybody on board and I said, "Okay, my KPI is how many people attend the webinars and how many people engage with conversations about that content in the community afterward." Product marketing's KPI was
[00:28:06] Nicole Saunders: how many people attended the webinars and really got into that, uh, release material.
[00:28:11] Nicole Saunders: And customer success' was, "All right. We need to see if we can get people into these webinars and then in the follow-ups actually increase our adoption numbers." So we all had slightly different variations on what success looked like, but none of it cannibalized each other, and we all had a common thing.
[00:28:24] Nicole Saunders: And so we set a consistent cadence where every month we were putting together a webinar on one new feature and bringing in the right experts and having the right conversations. And I think it was tough for them to lean into our way of marketing and producing these events because it was so different, but it worked and the proof was in the numbers.
[00:28:41] Nicole Saunders: And so the key there was to really understand what were the challenges and needs, find those KPIs. Now we had one webinar strategy. We weren't all fighting for emails and in fact, because we could combine efforts, we had a much bigger list of customers that we could email and contact and get this all into.
[00:28:57] Nicole Saunders: So that was my first foray into this where I was like, "Oh, this is powerful. We have something here." And I will tell you guys what, those webinars still run. I left that company three years ago, and they're still doing that program. It was that successful. So before I share my second story, let's take a step back here just talk about like finding those, um, right opportunities.
[00:29:18] Nicole Saunders: And at each webinar we'd say, "Here's what next month is going to be about. We'll send you a reminder email in two weeks, and then we'll send you a second reminder email two days before."
[00:29:26] Nicole Saunders: That was the right cadence for us. You're going to have to experiment with what's right for your customer base. It's also going to depend on like, are there other teams sending them emails? How many? What's going on with all of that? But we sort of played around with it and A/B tested, and we found that
[00:29:43] Nicole Saunders: like
[00:29:44] Nicole Saunders: more than three emails was way too many about a single event.
[00:29:48] Nicole Saunders: Um, you had to send the one far enough in advance that people got it on their calendar, one close enough that they remember. And then we would actually often send an email like 10 minutes before. Like, "Hey, go log on right now." And like I saw, Jillian, you did that today and it was perfect, right? Um, so you'll have to experiment a little bit with your group, but that was, that was what we found.
[00:30:09] Nicole Saunders: Um So you also are going to need to evaluate the right opportunities because obviously, like you can't work with everybody on
[00:30:15] Nicole Saunders: everything.
[00:30:17] Nicole Saunders: And I know that one of the hardest things that I have said so far today is coming back to this slide, how can I help? That is a really tough thing to lead with when you're busy and you're overwhelmed, right?
[00:30:29] Nicole Saunders: Like, I, I wouldn't be surprised if some of you are sitting here being like, "Okay, Nicole, so I'm super busy and under-resourced, and you want me to go find work to do for other people? Great. That sounds really helpful. Thank you." Um, but yes, I do. And the reason is, comes back to these right opportunities. If it is a situation where you offering help is just you doing work for them and you don't really get anything out of it, there's nothing in it for you, even in the long run, it's not a right cross-functional project.
[00:31:00] Nicole Saunders: It's one to say, "Wow, I really wish I could help. You know what? I would love to contribute my expertise if you want to consult me a little bit. This isn't a project I can engage in." Whereas if there's an opportunity there where you can get more resources because you're sharing, right? Like think about my webinar example.
[00:31:15] Nicole Saunders: We got to share the email list, and so we got out of each other's way and we all had better impact. That was worth it on everybody's part, right? We could all meet our objectives better by doing it together. Um, if you get into the situation where like, again, things are cannibalizing each other, or you may run into leaders now and then that are just like, "No, I want my team to own this.
[00:31:35] Nicole Saunders: I want this to be clean. I don't want anybody else's fingerprints on it."
[00:31:38] Nicole Saunders: You
[00:31:38] Nicole Saunders: can try to work with them, but if they're just really not up for it, that's a project to walk away from and say, "Okay, I got to figure out a different partner to work on that project with." Um, so it really is, you know, if you can, you can sort of see in that pursue column, like same audience, different goals, same problem, different expertise, same customers with different outcomes.
[00:31:57] Nicole Saunders: Those are the kinds of things where I would look at it and say, "Oh, I can see where we can both work on this. We both get what we need, but what we need are maybe slightly different things."
[00:32:05] Jillian Hoefer: is this one of those things where a manual lift, like for example- Mm-hmm
[00:32:08] Jillian Hoefer: cold outreach to your teammates and getting those coffees is better than maybe doing AI research to identify teams or folks to approach?
[00:32:14] Nicole Saunders: It's probably a mix of both. Um, but I do find that, you know, we're talking about relationship building and building trust, and so maybe you're using that AI to help you figure out who might be the right people to talk to, but then you need to do the outreach and you need to spend the time building that relationship and looking that person in the eye and saying, "Hey, I wanna work with you.
[00:32:32] Nicole Saunders: I'm really interested in this," that kind of thing. Um, and there are AI tools that can be super helpful with expediting some of these pieces, you know? Um- I find where it's been really helpful for me is like when I have an idea but it's like kind of half-baked and I can like brain dump my idea and then be like, "Okay, AI, tell me what's good about this and what, where it doesn't work," right?
[00:32:52] Nicole Saunders: And maybe your idea is, okay, I wanna work with this team on doing these things, and here's what I know about it. What are the pitfalls I need to look out for? And so you can use the AI to sort of help you prepare and have a little bit longer-term vision more quickly than having to stumble through some of those roadblocks on your own.
[00:33:05] Nicole Saunders: So I think that's where it can be really helpful. Okay. I wanna dive into my next example 'cause it's the most relevant to this group. So I wanna talk about how I brought together community and advocacy, um, at Zendesk, and then this really shaped, set the model for how I've been doing it at every organization I've been with since.
[00:33:22] Nicole Saunders: So we had a new customer marketing manager join, we had two customer marketing managers at, like, what was, like, a pretty big company and customer base, and Zendesk is all about relationships. And so they were really interested in telling customer stories. But to that end, the customer marketers had been tasked with, like, they were story producers.
[00:33:42] Nicole Saunders: Their job was to find great stories and get them written and get them published. And so she came to me and she said ... She saw a potential synergy here, right? And said, um, "Can we, can you help me find users in the community that might have good stories that we can source?" And I was like, "You know, I think that's a great idea.
[00:34:02] Nicole Saunders: I'm sure we have customers in there that would love that." And I have a bunch of awesome users who are really engaged in the community, and we had our little champions program. They had their badges, they got their swag and things, but they were starting to tell us, like, "Hey, how do we get featured in stories?"
[00:34:18] Nicole Saunders: Or, "How do we get to be on stage at the big conference?" Or, "How do we get to be in social media? Like, the badges and stuff in the community is awesome. I love my hoodie, but I kind of want a little bit more recognition for all the, the time and effort I'm putting in here, and these are things I'm really interested in."
[00:34:32] Nicole Saunders: And so I was like, aha, they need customers to be in stories. I have customers that want to be in stories. Now, we could just leave it there, right? I could just find some of those customers and hand them off to the customer marketers, and they produce stories, and that's the end of it. But I was like, I see a cross-functional project abrew in here, right?
[00:34:50] Nicole Saunders: Where I was like, I bet that we could put a structure around this and make this an ongoing thing that we could operationalize. And I was like, "What if we put together a customer advocacy program?" And she said, "Well, that's great, but I'm not going to get any more head count. I don't have money for any kind of advocacy software.
[00:35:05] Nicole Saunders: I can't do it." And I was like, "Well- I have a head count because I was going to be hiring for somebody to help run these customer engagement programs. And I had a little bit of budget and I was like, "Let's see if you can get some budget and I'll tell you what, we can split the cost of a customer advocacy software.
[00:35:23] Nicole Saunders: So we each take, you know, 50% out of our budget line item," um, which this like blew people's minds, right? It was like so crazy, but it totally worked. It worked great because now we each only had to find like $15,000 instead of 30 or 40 for a program. Um, and I was like, "I'm going to ... I'll tell you what, I'm going to make my head count 50% customer advocacy.
[00:35:47] Nicole Saunders: So we will run the advocacy program from the community team. If you can give me 50% of one of your people's time to support him in that effort or her," and then it ended up being a guy, that's why I said him. Um, and then work with them to sort of do that handoff. And then the other thing that I saw here and where it became truly cross-functional is I was like, now I can make advocacy not just about marketing, not just about stories and testimonials and like, it will do all of that.
[00:36:13] Nicole Saunders: We'll bl- bring in those challenges from them. But also when success needs people for their office hours or a webinar, they can come to me and I can present that challenge. And when product wants people for feedback, I can bring that in. And so I started seeing this great project where I could get stakeholders from each of these teams to come be part of advocacy with the leadership of that program sitting on my team as like sort of the hub for all of it.
[00:36:39] Nicole Saunders: And I'll tell you guys, it works like gangbusters. So we did, we had the customer advocacy manager on the community team. We launched the advocacy program. The other thing this allowed me to do was make sure I didn't end up in the situation where we have one community for everybody and then a separate community for all of the people that were advocates and the same conversations happening in both spaces and product managers and support, like not wanting to be in two different places.
[00:37:01] Nicole Saunders: I was able to put it all together in the community
[00:37:04] Nicole Saunders: and
[00:37:04] Nicole Saunders: run it through the community team and facilitate these needs for all these different people. And was it an ongoing effort to keep everybody aligned? Absolutely. Every time there's a change in management, we had to explain to them like, "Okay, so we're all like partnered up and we have this project and no, we don't sit in your org."
[00:37:23] Nicole Saunders: Um, and ultimately it was what led us to moving over to the marketing side of the house. And then eventually the customer marketing and community teams got put on the same team under the same VP and that was even better. So you can see how there's ripple effects here. Um, but it was great because it really empowered us to do that and it also gave everybody on my team exposure to customer marketing capabilities.
[00:37:44] Nicole Saunders: It gave the customer marketing team exposure to what community does and looks like, and it came all together. So it was like, it was really wonderful. It was a really great way to do it and I highly encourage, I mean, I've been ringing this bell for a couple years, but I highly encourage everybody to work together with your community team because there's so many intersections between community and customer marketing.
[00:38:05] Nicole Saunders: All right, just a couple quick things here. Um, common mistakes. We've pretty much covered all of these in the what to do, but to remind you what not to do, don't start with your needs. Don't go in hot just asking for stuff. Start with that curiosity. Start with trying to figure out how you can help. Then bring what works for you and makes it relevant for your team into it.
[00:38:26] Nicole Saunders: Don't skip that relationship-building piece. Honestly, even if you never get to a cross-functional project, those relationships will come in handy for you in the future. Um, I love this line, "Work moves at the speed of trust." I, I grabbed that from somewhere while I was doing my research for this, and I just love that line.
[00:38:42] Nicole Saunders: Um, don't launch before you have alignment. So there's that old adage that's like, "To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together." Does working cross-functionally slow things down?
[00:38:55] Nicole Saunders: Yes.
[00:38:56] Nicole Saunders: You have to have a lot of meetings, and you have to build some decks. You're going to have to do buy-in and all of that stuff. But also, this was the thing that gave me the skillset to be able to say in job interviews like, "Do you know how to get executive buy-in?"
[00:39:08] Nicole Saunders: Like, "Yeah, 'cause I've had to do it quite a few times." Going in and making the pitch and demonstrating why this is going to work and things like that. Um, so get that buy-in, get those leaders, um, make sure that you've got those shared KPIs or at least parallel KPIs that don't a- act against each other. Um, weak communication.
[00:39:27] Nicole Saunders: Now, this is probably like a
[00:39:30] Nicole Saunders: understated
[00:39:30] Nicole Saunders: way to put this, but you need to have official project kickoffs. You need to treat these things as like managed projects. You need to have regular touch bases. There's going to be slippage over time. Someone's going to not quite hold up their end of the bargain.
[00:39:44] Nicole Saunders: Somebody's boss is going to deprioritize your joint project. Somebody's going to just decide to go do something else. You need to constantly be kind of like managing that and keeping people on the same page. You also got to really be good about communicating the positive impacts of those up to leadership so that they understand, "Oh, this is a good idea."
[00:40:05] Nicole Saunders: If it's a good leader who really deeply understands cross-functional collaboration, they should be supportive of it. But a lot of people, like I said,
[00:40:13] Nicole Saunders: feel
[00:40:13] Nicole Saunders: like, "No, this should be my team. We should own this," blah, blah, blah. Like, you just run into those politics at work, and that's where it's important to say like, "Yeah, I mean, but look at these things that we're doing together."
[00:40:24] Nicole Saunders: And that was where, for me, like actually having that shared budget line item just forced us all to stay together. You know, and every renewal cycle that came up, we had to renegotiate it and make sure we're all getting what we need and everything like that. Um, the other pushback that you sometimes get, and again, this is like some of that territorialism, and somebody's like, "I just want you to stay focused on your core role," or, "I just think that my team should own this."
[00:40:46] Nicole Saunders: So that's where it really comes from how you position it. We could probably do a whole nother webinar on positioning things. But you know, it's, it's not about you wanting to do more. It's not about you wanting to take work from somebody else. It's about taking your existing work and making it bigger or making it more efficient.
[00:41:01] Nicole Saunders: Um, everybody's talking about AI to share efficiencies, and AI is great at automating things. But what it can't do is reduce redundancies,
[00:41:10] Nicole Saunders: um- identify places where like, "Hey, actually if we buy this one tool and we all share it, we can all get what we need out of it instead of each team buying its own platform to do the same thing," right?
[00:41:21] Nicole Saunders: So that's where you really need to frame it, and those are things that procurement boards and, you know, project leadership and things like that tend to go for. The other key thing is run it as an experiment. Propose a pilot. If you really are just struggling to get people to go for it, say, "Hey, let's do this for three months," or, "Let's do this for one year.
[00:41:38] Nicole Saunders: Let's prove it out." 'Cause once you have those wins, usually like once you've done something good, people don't want it to go away. And that's sometimes a much easier way to get people bought in than just telling them what you think is going to happen or what you're hoping for, but here's what, uh, we're actually going to do.
[00:41:55] Nicole Saunders: So
[00:41:56] Nicole Saunders: just a reminder, here's that framework again. So make sure that you're talking to people, being curious, building those relationships, understanding shared objectives and needs and challenges and that you're solving for them. And I will leave you just with that last thought of the biggest things are build bridges and start with service.
[00:42:16] Nicole Saunders: Start with how you can help others build those relationships and, um, figure out how you can share the workload. 'Cause at the end of the day, that's really what it is.
[00:42:24] Jillian Hoefer: It's so good, Nicole. I wanna dig in a little bit more, if you would let me, into that, like- at- Yeah ... community kind of cross-functional.
[00:42:31] Jillian Hoefer: I guess it was community- Yep ... and customer marketing cross-functional project.
[00:42:34] Nicole Saunders: Yep.
[00:42:35] Jillian Hoefer: But when you were starting that out, before you, before all the moves happened and you were under the same VP, which probably made the collaboration a little bit easier, can you maybe share a little bit more of the nitty-gritty of like what was the cadence of meeting with your customer marketing partner, uh, or counterpart in that or, like, communicating with them- Yeah
[00:42:50] Jillian Hoefer: to ensure the project stayed kind of on the rails, and things were going well, and you were achieving your key KPIs together?
[00:42:56] Nicole Saunders: Yeah. So the two team members, the person from my team and the person from their team that were being, like, co-runners of the program, met weekly, right? And part of that is because they had to do a lot of, like, the day-to-day work, right, of, okay, let's figure out what our, uh, object- or what our challenges for people are.
[00:43:15] Nicole Saunders: Let's get them in the system. Let's round up all that information, that kind of thing. Um, and they did a little bit of divide and conquer too, where they sort of figured out, like, which tasks they each enjoyed doing or wanted to do and split that up. So that was a weekly thing. Um, I touched week with, touched base with the two of them bi-weekly just to make sure that things were going well with them, um, and met with the other person's manager.
[00:43:36] Nicole Saunders: So it's sort of like they met- the managers met, uh, a little bit less frequently. And then once a month, we would all get together just to talk about how it was going, make sure we're on the same page, fill each other in on what our own leadership was saying or thinking about the whole thing. And then we had a quarterly readout to our leaders where we would get their senior leader, you know, the director or whatever they rolled up to, and the VP that we rolled up to in the same room and say, "Okay, so we want to update you on this cross-functional project.
[00:44:02] Nicole Saunders: Here's how we're working together. Here's what we've been accomplishing, and here are the results that we're starting to see. Customer marketing is achieving these objectives. We're achieving these objectives. Customer success is, uh, you know, been able to get this many people involved with their things.
[00:44:16] Nicole Saunders: Um, so it's working really well for everybody." And so I just had, like, a regular deck that I would just update for each of those quarterly updates- and show the growth over time as well. And that's, uh, a key thing is, like, I think a lot of people are great at being like "We did 300 this month." And it's like, cool, is 300 good or bad?
[00:44:35] Nicole Saunders: And is it better or worse than last month? I don't know. Yes. I'm a leader. What do you guys do? I don't pay attention to this day-to-day, right? Um, and so it's important to make sure that you're always giving that context as well. But those regular cadences were really important. And sometimes people would be like, "Hey, can we postpone?
[00:44:49] Nicole Saunders: Hey, can we cancel this week?" And I'd be like, "Um, we can reschedule, but I, I feel like it's really important to have this touch base." Because on the occasions that something did come up and we kind of lost touch, you would see things start to drift almost immediately. So it is one of these things where it's like you got to keep bringing everybody together and making sure the, the whole project's holding, uh, holding together.
[00:45:09] Nicole Saunders: Um, it also gives you that opportunity to adjust where you do need to or predict things. Like, if you see a big change coming down the road, you might have to adjust how things are being run or what you're going to do to make up for somebody that's leaving or something like that.
[00:45:21] Jillian Hoefer: community and advocacy, it's kind of something that you've tried to, like, combine and move in every organization that you've been a part of since you did this- Mm-hmm
[00:45:29] Jillian Hoefer: successfully the first time around. Talk to me a little bit about what that looks like as you're getting that stood up. When you come into an organization, I assume you don't have a, a 50/50 hire or that cross-functional buy-in already kind of- Yeah ... at your fingertips. So, like, what does that look like bringing this combined program in as you're starting somewhere net new?
[00:45:47] Nicole Saunders: Yeah. Um, I think the first thing is just calling out, like, that most obvious synergy of, like, our advocates are in the community, at least a significant number of them are, right? Um, and one of the things that, as a side note, worked really well about running the advocacy program through the community is it also meant some of the advocates that hadn't used the community previously, that maybe came in through a CSM or something, were now going to the community.
[00:46:12] Nicole Saunders: So we were also helping grow community engagement because they're getting exposure to everything else that was in that space as they were going in to do the advocacy pieces. Um, but so that's that first piece, is just to recognize that. Also, oftentimes calling out, like, oh, I have a community in Influitive and a community in my forums, and it's some of the same users, and it's all of the same conversations.
[00:46:33] Nicole Saunders: Because the biggest misnomer for me, um, every advocacy program is like, "Oh, we want a special place where our advocates can connect to each other." But the only thing that makes the advocates different from, like, the general population of your customers is that they're in this program. Most of the time they don't actually have substantially different needs or substantially different questions.
[00:46:53] Nicole Saunders: And I was like, "So why are we ... Community is all about critical mass. Let's get the critical mass in the same place." And so those are some of the arguments that I would sort of use is, like, look, we need all of these people in one place. Yes, we can do special things for the advocates. We can create a special little room for them.
[00:47:08] Nicole Saunders: I almost guarantee you there's nothing they're going to talk about in there that's not in the general community already. Um, but if they want to have a hang, we can give them a hang. Um, and so I start there. Now, one other thing I want to recognize, community and advocacy works really well for the kinds of advocacy that's like, "Go repost this social post on LinkedIn for five points," or, "Write us a quick review," or, "Give us a quote."
[00:47:35] Nicole Saunders: When we were writing case studies, when we were looking for speakers, we're often looking for VPs and C-level titles, which are not the people that hang out in forums. So I'm also not going to pretend that your entire customer marketing program can run through the community, but it's great for those high-volume, low-effort acts of advocacy that you want to get people doing, and those are often the ones that let the executives see.
[00:47:58] Nicole Saunders: Like, at Buddy Rails, like my executives, like one company, I had this one executive who was just everyday he was on Reddit, and he was like talking about what people were doing in Reddit. And so it was like really important to me to have advocates that I'd be like, "Go talk on Reddit. Go post some stuff there.
[00:48:12] Nicole Saunders: Make my executives feel better about like, 'Oh, I can see the impact of your engagement. I'm seeing our customers acting over there.'" Or I had another one that was super into LinkedIn and so it was like he loved it when he saw, you know, 20 customers posting our post about a new product release, and that was all through the advocacy program.
[00:48:27] Nicole Saunders: It was a really light lift. Engaging with those advocates gives you the in, right? It'll help you identify the companies that have interesting use cases, the companies that have interesting stories, and it gives you that connection with somebody where then you can say, "Hey, do you think your boss might wanna come speak at our event?
[00:48:44] Nicole Saunders: Could you help us connect with a VP at your company and then we can do a story?" That kind of thing. So it gives you the in. You do have to run a separate track that's probably outside of the community that is that executive level engagement, right? You've got your customer advisory boards, you've got your executive level customer marketing and engagement there.
[00:49:01] Nicole Saunders: So those are a little bit different. Um, so it was a very long-winded way, Jillian, to answer your question, but it's basically like go in, identify the places where like I realize we all think that it's important to have these two things that are different, but they're actually very much the same. And if we combine efforts, it's less time, it's less effort, and it's better 'cause it gets more people in the same place, and that's part of the point.
[00:49:23] Nicole Saunders: Um, so I start with debunking those things, looking for any budgetary efficiencies. "Hey, we've got these two platforms. If we bring these programs together, we can just use one." Um, also looking for those places where it's like, "Oh, we have a community manager for customer advocacy and a community manager for community.
[00:49:42] Nicole Saunders: Like, I don't think anyone should get fired, but I think that we could combine these programs and this other need I have could get picked up by this person." Um, when you can identify those kinds of efficiencies, people are very open to those conversations.
[00:49:55] Jillian Hoefer: Amazing.
[00:49:56] Jillian Hoefer: Nicole, first of all, where can people find you? And is there anything you'd like to share that people can kind of continue to engage with you in Higher Logic in the future?
[00:50:02] Nicole Saunders: Yeah, of course. Um, I am super active on LinkedIn. Come find me. There are lots of Nicole Saunderses. I'm Nicole D. Saunders. If you look at the little LinkedIn thing, uh, you can probably find me if you just search too. Um, so if you wanna ping me, please feel free to do that.
[00:50:19] Nicole Saunders: I host a biweekly meetup for customer marketing managers.
[00:50:21] Nicole Saunders: Super low-key, super low production. It's just like hop on this Zoom call and let's talk about stuff. I occasionally invite a guest speaker. It's focused on AI, so I call it the AI Study Group for Customer Marketers.
[00:50:32] Nicole Saunders: I also have one for community managers that focuses more on, like, community-specific things, so if you've got a community manager in your life that might be interested.
[00:50:39] Nicole Saunders: And again, shoot me a DM or shoot me an email to sign up for that. Um, we also have a space on Vanilla's community where we can get together and talk about those things. Um, so I'd love to have you all and, and share our knowledge and help each other grow with all of this amazing new technology that's coming into our worlds.
[00:50:57] Jillian Hoefer: Uh, well, Nicole, I have the perfect, uh, material for your study group next week. We, on Tuesday, are going to be releasing a, our latest report that we are partnering with Scott Brinker on called Vibecode
[00:51:07] Jillian Hoefer: Check.
[00:51:08] Nicole Saunders: Awesome.
[00:51:09] Jillian Hoefer: We worked with, um, we surveyed over 300 marketing leaders on how vibe coding is essentially changing the way they work and empowering their teams.
[00:51:16] Jillian Hoefer: It's going to be great, and we're also doing a webinar at this same time next week, next Tuesday, with Scott and then two other leaders in the pr- product marketing, customer marketing space, Emily Pick and Ashley Ward,
[00:51:27] Jillian Hoefer: Nicole, thank you so much. Thank you all for coming today. Hope you all have a great rest of your week. And by the end of this week, we will send a very thorough recap of this and all the resources that we talked about and shared today in that email follow-up to you as well.
[00:51:39] Jillian Hoefer: Um, so happy trails. Have a wonderful week, everyone, and thank you again, Nicole.
[00:51:43] Nicole Saunders: Thanks for having me. See
[00:51:44] Nicole Saunders: you,
[00:51:44] Nicole Saunders: everybody.