Who stands at the pinnacle of customer marketing excellence? 🤔

The moment you've been waiting for has arrived. 🏆

After evaluating all the nominations in the respective categories, we’re thrilled to unveil the 2025 Customer Marketing Award Champions.

Thank you to everyone who participated in these awards. Customer marketing is one of the driving forces behind ensured retention and sustainable growth, and it's high time we celebrate the remarkable individuals and teams leading the charge.🚀

Customer Marketer of the Year

Daniel Palay, Director of Customer Advocacy at Grafana Labs is Customer Marketer of the Year.

Simply running a customer advocacy program isn’t something Daniel Palay is interested in. Daniel’s fundamentally rethinking what success looks like. As Director of Customer Advocacy at Grafana Labs, he's built a team that operates without quotas yet consistently overdelivers: seven times more advocacy content, $45M+ in influenced revenue, and over 200 Gartner Peer Insights reviews this year. 

Bet you’re dying to know his secret, aren’t you? Okay, here it is: Daniel’s #1 focus is accelerating customer outcomes instead of chasing vanity metrics. His work has shifted industry standards, amplified customer voices on a global scale, and proven that when you empower your team to do exceptional work, the results speak for themselves.



Customer Marketing Team of the Year

Gigamon is Customer Marketing Team of the Year.

Three people. 30,000+ community members. Four brand assets every quarter. Gigamon's Customer Marketing Team proves that the right blend of talent and collaboration beats sheer size every time. 

This tight-knit trio plays to each other's strengths – coordinating reference programs, running frequent customer board meetings, and turning advocacy into a cross-functional engine for growth. They've built something rare: a customer community that's not just large, but genuinely engaged. Their ability to amplify customer voices while driving measurable business impact shows what's possible when a team is aligned, supported, and laser-focused on customer-led growth.

Thank you to our nominators

A heartfelt shoutout to our nominators. Your votes in this year's Customer Marketing Awards have been invaluable. 

Celebrating the incredible talent within our industry is vital, and we're ecstatic to spotlight the cream of the crop in Customer Marketing. Thank you for helping us illuminate their achievements!

Want to stay up to date with our winners, and more?

First thing’s first, be sure to connect with all our winners and shortlisted candidates on LinkedIn to congratulate them on their awesome work. 

And if you want to stay up-to-date on all the latest in the Customer Marketing space, network with these fantastic finalists, and meet even more of your peers, then the Customer Marketing Alliance Slack community is for you!

Join and start connecting with 10,000+ Customer Marketing pros from across the world, today!