How Cisco Used Personalized Video to Recruit Over 700 Impassioned Brand Advocates

It’s not an uncommon problem for B2B companies to face: a lack of customers who can be called upon for references, speaking opportunities, case studies and other important marketing resources. For Christina Melluzzi, Head of Customer Advocacy EMEAR at Cisco, this frustration was manifested in a limited pool of only 100 brand advocates that sales and marketing personnel could go to for help.

“Since our customer pool was so small, we constantly asked the same people to help,” says Melluzzi. “The few advocates that we had felt over-used and under-appreciated.”

What’s more, Cisco employees were unclear on how to nominate new references, so the original list of 100 contacts quickly became outdated. Melluzzi sought to create a better process for her team, evolving Cisco’s reference-only program into a customer advocacy program.

In order to find the hundreds of potential brand advocates she knew existed, Melluzzi needed a strategy that was at once scalable and engaging so that the entire Cisco customer base could be reached and captivated by her efforts.

To that end, The Cisco Gateway advocacy community was created, and Idomoo’s Personalized Video as a Service (PVaaS^TM) Express platform became an invaluable engagement tool as Cisco aimed to find and delight hidden brand advocates.

The brand’s biggest fans – customers who were already vocal in their recommendations and 5-star reviews — were contacted with a Personalized Video email invitation video featuring Richard Ayoade, star of the British sitcom, IT Crowd. Click the image below to watch the video.

The Personalized Video campaign was a huge success. It took only two months from kickoff to launch, proving that Idomoo’s PVaaS^TM Express solution makes it truly headache-free for enterprise businesses to leverage customer data in a meaningful, visually driven way. Just as importantly, the campaign was a massive hit with recipients:

“I absolutely loved the personalized email. I’m a huge Richard Ayoade fan, and it was so nice to get this kind of email from Cisco. It made me feel special.”

“This is the first time I’ve received an invite like this, and it was surprising to receive it from Cisco! Very cool!”

The video campaign had a 16% overall conversion rate, and a 60% rate for those who viewed the video — rates that Cisco reported were previously unheard of.

It also helped attract 733 new brand advocates who have provided (to date):

823 social shares, which generated 10,237 clicks on Cisco content
284 testimonials generated
152 potential new case studies identified
105 advocates who raised their hands to write blogs for Cisco
6.3% conversion rate on one advocate blog (created using Influitive’s Upshot solution)
114 reviews on sites such as G2 Crowd and TrustRadius (an 18% growth in online reviews in just two weeks)
84 referrals
105 event sign ups and three speakers sourced for Cisco Live 2018, Barcelona
73 NPS among advocates (Cisco’s general customer base’s NPS is 38)

If you’d like to learn more about launching an engaging, results-driven Personalized Video campaign of your own, reach out to an Idomoo click below.

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Alexandra Gehringer

Alex is a creative marketing writer. Through compelling marketing initiatives built around Idomoo's Personalized Video technology, she believes every brand can create a 1:1 connection with their customers.

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