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tl;dr: A conversation with Melinda Prescher, Insightly's Senior Marketing Director about how she build a customer happiness flywheel - not just promoting advocacy, but incorporating customer feedback throughout all product and go to market teams at Insightly.
Melinda covers:
Angela, Laudable: Tell me about your approach to customer advocacy and marketing at Insightly.
Melinda, Insightly: From the start, our leadership prioritized listening to customers, which has been essential. This engagement has helped our teams better understand who we're serving and shown prospects how Insightly can solve their problems. We've made significant pricing and packaging changes based on what we've learned. We initiated a customer advisory board and started a voice of the customer survey. We've optimized our review site rankings and invested in high-quality social proof assets. Our customer advocacy work even led us to add new products and partner programs.
Angela, Laudable: How do customer marketing and advocacy feed product marketing at Insightly?
Melinda, Insightly: I started at Insightly four years ago to run product marketing. Being on a small, nimble team allows for a lot of influence and fluidity between product, customer marketing, advocacy, and even content marketing. This crossover helps our team support each other and build everyone’s skillset. What matters most is having people with the right attitude and skills to make an impact. We've focused our investments on areas that enhance the customer experience with Insightly.
Angela, Laudable: How do you get a good baseline for the voice of customer?
Melinda, Insightly: We start with a voice of the customer survey conducted a quarter before renewals, sharing the results across the organization. Our CS team addresses at-risk customers immediately, while we invite all feedback providers for 15-minute calls to discuss their experiences. This feedback influences our product roadmap, and customers with great stories join live events, webinars, and podcasts. We've also started a virtual customer advisory board to guide our roadmap decisions and engage with heavy product adopters. Additionally, we added more information to our website, introduced a discounted all-in-one SKU, and revamped our customer success offerings for clarity.
These efforts have improved our marketing and messaging quality, enhancing our product pages to explain the value and functionality of features. Our goal is to help everyone at Insightly support our customers through testimonials, content development, and marketing campaigns that aid our sales team. Voice of the customer initiatives support our CS team and inform product and engineering improvements. These updates provide more options to deliver customer value, creating a feedback loop that drives pipeline, bookings, and has doubled our ACV.
Angela, Laudable: How do customer marketing and advocacy drive growth in B2B SaaS?
Melinda, Insightly: What’s been really great about Insightly is the incredible collaboration between marketing and sales. Together, we're responsible for growing both our existing business and our new customer base. We handle the MQL and pipeline numbers for new business and share ownership of pipeline and bookings numbers with sales for our existing clients. A huge part of our marketing strategy’s success is the inclusion of social proof, which really drives our team’s efforts.
Angela, Laudable: How do you motivate customers to become advocates?
Melinda, Insightly: A couple of things. Giving people a platform to be heard as experts in their field is crucial, and our team is very intentional about ensuring diverse representation in our assets and social channels. We're proud of this work because it highlights the depth of professional expertise out there, and I encourage all marketers to be thoughtful about this in their advocacy efforts. Additionally, people love seeing their product feedback incorporated into the roadmap; it makes them eager to collaborate and improve things.
Angela, Laudable: How do you use Insightly for customer marketing?
Melinda, Insightly: We launched Insightly Marketing in 2019, which makes it easy to create and send emails, build landing pages, forms, and create relevant journeys for customers and prospects. Email is still a powerful tool for marketing teams, and Insightly Marketing helps us target our audiences effectively. Additionally, we funnel voice of the customer survey data directly into our CRM, allowing all teams to see and use this information, improving their conversations with customers.
Angela, Laudable: How do you ensure your team uses customer feedback effectively?
Melinda, Insightly: We run a weekly customer marketing meeting with sales, CS, and professional services leaders. We review all the data together, giving leaders a chance to understand what's happening and then share that information with their teams. This tight collaboration ensures everyone is informed and aligned.
Angela, Laudable: Case studies, testimonial videos, long-form content - what should go away forever?
Melinda, Insightly: I see a lot of talk about white papers on LinkedIn, especially those focused on product features and functionality. I'm really not a fan; it feels old school and rarely delivers high-quality, compelling content. The review cycle for long-form content can be a headache, with too many voices trying to weigh in, which slows down the process and hurts credibility. I believe in keeping things brief and brilliant.
Angela, Laudable: Have you tried anything that didn't work?
Melinda, Insightly: I can't say I've got something that really didn't work per se, but one thing I constantly think about is the need for patience in marketing. As marketers, we're eager to dive in, create new quarterly plans, and get things done. But it's crucial to give our support staff—like sales, CS, and support teams—time to understand and act on these campaigns. We need to allow these initiatives to develop and sometimes pivot based on what we learn. Rushing to launch multiple new campaigns every quarter can exhaust our teams and hurt our credibility. Focus on doing things right and give your teams more time to adapt and succeed.
Angela, Laudable: What advice do you have for teams starting with customer marketing?
Melinda, Insightly: The key to making an impact early on is to demonstrate progress quickly and involve other teams to show your reliability. Another important aspect is maximizing the value of your efforts—like converting webinars into various assets such as social media cuts, sales materials, and web content. This approach ensures you get the most out of your content and initiatives, making every effort count.
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