10 min read
If you’ve ever needed a customer quote, case study, or reference fast, you know the feeling: Slack/Teams pings flying in from every direction, sales clambering, marketing are muddled, and you’re trying not to burn out the same two "go-to" customers yet again. And if that wasn’t enough to give you a mild eye twitch, there’s also no single place to track who’s actually willing to help, what they’re open to, or when they were last asked.
That’s exactly the problem we were trying to solve when I helped build a customer champion program at my previous company, LaunchDarkly. What follows are the lessons we learned – what worked, what didn’t, and what it really took to scale customer advocacy without turning it into chaos.
The problem we were trying to solve
At the time, our marketing team didn’t really have a lever to pull or a centralized place to archive and manage customer relationships. Yes, we could go to our customer success team, but we also had product marketing managers (PMMs) and many other teams creating content and making asks. There was no single source of truth – no central "rotary" we could use to leverage those relationships effectively.
Another major challenge was how reactive everything had become. We were putting a lot of fatigue not only on our customers, but also on our internal teams.
Sales teams would scramble if we suddenly needed a case study in a given quarter, or if we had to get a customer involved in an award or press opportunity. That kind of scramble isn’t ideal. Sales teams are focused on closing deals. The last thing they want is a last-minute request to track down a customer favor.
We also didn’t have a real way to exchange value when we had an "ask." We often knew a customer would love to speak at something like AWS’ re:Invent conference, but there wasn’t a clear answer to the question every customer is really asking: What’s in it for me? Sometimes it felt like the answer was a gift basket or gift cards at the end, rather than upfront value.
On top of that, we needed more proof points across more channels. We were expanding into new markets and use cases and wanted to tell stories that reflected different buyer personas. Capturing and organizing all of that across so many teams just wasn’t scalable.
Customer Marketing Alliance
Why we landed on a champion program
As we explored solutions, we kept coming back to the same question: CAB vs. community vs. champion program.
We looked at Slack communities, portals, customer advisory boards – all of it. What we realized was that a champion program felt like the right middle ground.
Communities, can be incredibly valuable, but they’re often large and require significant bandwidth to manage well. CABs, on the other hand, are usually smaller and more formal, and at the time we weren’t quite ready for that level of structure.
The champion program sat right in between. It allowed us to focus on enterprise customers and power users – the people most likely to advocate, speak, and partner with us – without the overhead of running a massive community or a formal CAB.
What we created: Our “Stars” program
The result was the LaunchDarkly Stars program – an opt-in customer champion program.
The program lived behind a URL you couldn’t easily find by browsing the website. Customers were invited directly by account teams, which helped keep the program curated and intentional.
Behind the scenes, the program relied on several platforms and integrations that we stitched together with the help of an incredible marketing ops team. Staying closely aligned with marketing ops was critical from day one.
From a customer perspective, the experience was simple. The landing page included a clear "Become a Star" call to action. From there, customers filled out a form where they could indicate what they were interested in:
- Speaking opportunities
- Case studies
- Networking with peers
They could also categorize their role and use case – platform engineer, developer, product manager, and more. That information was then mapped to different solutions and programs across the organization, especially for PMMs.
Kevin Lau
How the champion program worked
Here’s how the program worked in practice.
Account teams drove nominations
The foundation of the program was strong alignment with account teams. We worked closely with customer success managers (CSMs) and account executives to nominate customers based on clear criteria. These teams were enabled and trained on what made a good fit.
Not every customer was right for the program, and that was intentional. We looked for customers who were happy, healthy, willing to advocate, and already engaged. We also paid attention to how they preferred to communicate – Slack, email, or otherwise.
Account teams owned nominations and were also accountable for bringing new members into the program on a quarterly basis.
Sign-up, Salesforce hygiene and onboarding
The sign-up process itself was straightforward. It was powered by Marketo and flowed directly into Salesforce, matching each submission to the correct customer account. That alone improved Salesforce hygiene significantly.
When someone joined, I’d receive a Slack notification letting me know who had signed up and from which company.
From there, we segmented customers. If someone was enterprise or strategic, we scheduled a focused onboarding call – usually 15 to 30 minutes. During that call, we talked through approvals, contract considerations (like case study clauses), and what the customer was comfortable saying publicly.
All of that information was stored in custom Salesforce fields and ultimately piped into Looker, giving other teams visibility into the program.
Self-serve visibility without chaos
That visibility made a huge difference.
For example, if the analyst relations team needed someone for a reference call, they could quickly see who was open to participating, what tools they used, what their use case was, and what type of company they represented. This reduced Slack noise and prevented constant one-off requests.
Automating the SMB flow
Not every customer received the same level of hands-on onboarding. For SMB customers, the process was automated end-to-end. They still joined the program, but without live onboarding calls.
This allowed the team to focus more time and energy on enterprise customers, where deeper relationships and higher-impact advocacy mattered most.
Requests, guardrails and reporting
We’d all experienced the "We need a customer" Slack message. To fix that, we introduced guardrails.
We set clear SLAs around customer requests so teams knew what to expect and how long it would take. Requests were routed through a simple Asana form, which helped us prioritize and determine whether a new customer was truly needed or if existing content could be repurposed.
Reporting was another critical component. A Looker dashboard gave stakeholders a shared view of the program – who the champions were, how they were being referenced, and even technical details like architecture. For a developer-focused audience, those details mattered.
A Looker dashboard for transparency
Reporting is another big piece. We powered a Looker dashboard so everyone has a window into our champion program: who the champions are, how they’re referenced, and even what architecture they’re on. Our main buyers are developers and product managers, so those details matter.
Lessons we learned along the way
1. Partner deeply with customer success and sales leadership
The program wouldn’t have worked without customer success and sales. We stayed closely aligned with sales leadership and held teams accountable for identifying and supporting champions throughout the customer journey.
Champions shouldn’t appear out of nowhere. They should be included intentionally and at the right moments.
2. Avoid the scramble and respect the customer
Scrambling creates bad experiences – for customers and internal teams alike.
Even when goals and OKRs are pressing, repeatedly asking customers on short notice doesn’t build trust. Planning ahead and repurposing content when possible made a meaningful difference.
3. Focus on enterprise and automate the rest
SMB customers had great stories, and automation helped us capture them at scale. But enterprise customers required more care and relationship-building. The champion program became the primary channel for that work.
4. Benefits come first
Customers need to see value before the ask.
We started small with benefits and grew them over time, gaining stakeholder buy-in gradually. As a small team, that approach helped us stay sustainable.
5. Marketing ops is your best friend
Marketing ops (MarOps) enabled nearly everything that made the program work. They built all these different integrations, making it super easy in my day-to-day. They created guardrails – from not having the URL posted on the main website (so random leads don’t go through), to Slack notifications that make it easy for me and my team to see who’s in the program.
6. Don’t forget the welcome flow
And automation extended to onboarding, too. When we accepted a customer into our program through Salesforce – just by flipping a field – they received an email to join the program. It’s a "ta-da, welcome" email, and they can click a link (a "magic link" in Postal).
They receive their welcome kit, their swag kit, and a letter signed by our CEO. It’s another example of automation that goes a long way.
7. Hold off on opening the floodgates
Another big one I learned from somebody I met through the community: hold off on opening the floodgates.
They told me it’s okay to not open the floodgates. For us, we wanted to take it very slow. We wanted to make sure sales understood who they’re inviting, one by one.
Because if you open the floodgates, the next thing you know, you have a champion program with 200 people. They need to stay active and engaged, and you need to keep building value back for them. That can be tough for a mighty team of two.
Crystal Anderson
The results of our champion program
Right away, we saw an increase in how many reference requests we could take.
Before the champion program – and before we started setting up guardrails – we could only really take about 15 customer reference requests per quarter. That includes case studies, quotes, “Can you get this customer to show up at AWS re:Invent,” or some other conference.
Now we’re able to double that. We take 30 to 35 customer reference requests every quarter, and during peak time we’ll do 40 to 50.
Stronger enterprise participation
We also increased the number of enterprise customers willing to partner.
We noticed a gap in some of our metrics. We were mainly working with SMB-type customers, but we wanted to work with enterprise brands and logos. We really wanted to leverage them in case studies and materials, and we saw a difference in the number of enterprise customers we were working with.
We also saw an increase in sales reference calls. We’re able to support sales better because we have more insight into our champions and can match them better when we get a request.
Future goals
Some future goals include tying customer success metrics to the champion program and the Looker dashboard. We’ll have a Slack community, and we’ll also do things like private channels for VIP members only.
Champion program FAQs
How do you motivate sales and account teams to participate?
One thing that was really successful to avoid anyone thinking it was taking extra work, was that we took it slow and started with certain account executives (AEs) who were proactive and always helped us out. You know the AEs and CSMs who are always looking out for you. We worked with them first and did a kind of beta with sales reference calls. We captured those success stories.
Then, when we enabled teams on what the program is and why it’s important, the "why" was clear: we were able to help close deals. We worked with top-performing reps, and that helped other reps get more competitive and want to partner more with us.
We also put on roadshows with sales leaders. We told them about the program, then we told them again, and then we told them again.
And we held them accountable for an actual number: how many nominations they can give us in a given quarter.
What perks do you offer champions?
The biggest thing is that anytime a customer works with us and we want to say thank you, we still use Postal and magic links, but on a one-off basis. We have a collection of gifts we can send quickly – gift cards, or whatever they’re interested in, especially if I really know them.
Other benefits include networking with peers. We do a semiannual product roadmap session. Champions love to speak with product. They always want to hang out with product and other champions.
As a member, they get intimate virtual roadmap sessions every six months. That seems to be the biggest thing for our champions. The gifts are great too, but they love the roadmap sessions. It’s guaranteed, and it’s only them and other VIP members. We might have Zoom calls with about 20 to 25 people, plus breakout rooms so they can talk with others in the program.
In a reference self-serve model, how do you avoid advocate burnout?
In a reference self-serve model, how do we manage SLAs and avoid advocate burnout?
It’s hard. We don’t always want to keep asking the same customers over and over again. Lately, it’s been about knowing who can do what and strategically asking – getting them ready ahead of time.
We look at how they’ve been referenced last. That information is archived in Salesforce and Looker, and we try to avoid asking them again. We monitor it.
If we really have to ask a customer again, we try to avoid it, but it depends on the request. It’s case by case.
Someone also asked if there’s a certain timeframe where we’d put a customer “on ice.” We really don’t have a strict rule, but we probably want to work with a customer every six months, maybe. It depends on the customer and what we asked them to do.
If it was something big – like filming a testimonial – maybe not so much. If it was speaking at an event where we’re flying them out and doing all that, then we’ll leave them alone for a good couple of quarters.
This article is based on Vernon’s talk at Customer Marketing Summit New York 2022.
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