9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.

City Winery
80 Beverly St, Boston

Optional Pre-Conference Education/Certification Day with Captivate Collective

Customer Advocacy In Practice Workshop and Certification Module 1
The Customer Advocacy In Practice Workshop and Certification series by Captivate Collective, sponsored by PeerSpot, provides practitioners of all experience levels with actionable ideas, real-world examples and expert insights to take your program or portfolio to the next level. The CAP Cert Module 1: Business Impact focuses on best practices to up-level your approach in three key areas of advocacy maturity: Advocacy Outcomes, Advocate Program and Portfolio Brand, and Internal Alignment.

As you’ve come to expect from the Captivate team, this day of learning will be anything but ordinary. Hosted in a stunning event space surrounded by oak wine barrels at City Winery in Boston, this intimate educational experience will be wine themed and feature suggested “learning pairings” for building your CustomerX Con conference agenda. And, to make the day just that little bit extra, you’re invited to stay a while longer, unwind with some new friends, and take part in a sommelier-led wine tasting.

8:00 a.m. - 8:55 a.m.

Breakfast & Registration

9:00 a.m. - 9:20 a.m.

Opening Session and Networking Game: What's YOUR Superpower?

9:20 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

WTF is Customer-Led Growth? And how will it make you a Superhero?

Do you want to become a Customer-Led Growth (CLG) Superhero? Then you’ve come to the right conference. Kaily will share surprising insights from The State of The Customer Marketing & Advocacy Profession 2022 research study, and what those findings mean for you and your career. Jeff will share our definition of CLG, bring it to life with lots of examples of how Customer Marketing pros just like you are driving CLG initiatives across their organizations, and describe how you already possess the Superpowers you need to become a Customer-Led Growth Superhero.

10:05 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.

Reimagine Your Company's Customer Program by Harnessing the Power of Customer Voice

“Having a voice at the table” is one of the key drivers of customer success—customers are more likely to deepen their relationship with your corporate brand (and all the goodies that go with it, like renewals, up-sell and cross-sell opportunities) when they feel heard, appreciated, and involved in the strategic direction of your product.  Spend some time with our panel, where you’ll learn:

• How leading companies incorporate customer feedback into every part of the relationship
• Why cross-functional collaboration is critical to closing the feedback loop
• How to identify and leverage champions in your customer program
• How curated customer stories earn executive buy-in and help to expand accounts

11:00 a.m. - noon

CMA Vendor & Agency Speed Dating Game

Looking for your customer marketing & advocacy strategy soulmate? Join us for the Vendor & Agency Speed Dating Game, hosted by Captivate Collective! This fast-paced event gets you the quick-and-dirty on a variety of customer engagement contenders so you can decide who you’d like to go out with on a second date. Learn how each can add some sizzle to your customer-led growth strategy and turn up the heat on your customer relationships, no commitment required. Are you ready to get some chemistry going?

1:00 p.m. - 1:55 p.m.

Group Therapy Breakouts

Open discussion small group breakouts of 10 on specific topics. There will be a session facilitator leading the conversation and capturing key takeaways to be shared with the collective group of attendees at the end. Pre-registration is required and space is limited per breakout.

Topics include:

• Keeping Both Sides of the Customer Voice Fence Happy (Customer, Product Marketing, Executives, PR, etc.
• Customer References: Creating a Multi-Dimensional Program
• The Challenges and Opportunities of a Successful Peer Review Program
• Supporting Cross-sells and Expansion Campaigns
• New Kid on the Block: Survival tips and strategies for your first year in a new role
  or department

2:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

When Life Gives you Lemons

Bouncing around from department to department?  Growing your Customer Marketing or Experience team?

You are not alone. Come listen and learn from the team at Bandwidth and how they made the most of their move from marketing to customer experience back to marketing. In this session Kaycee and Laney will talk through the steps that the team took to be successful as the CX team and how you can apply the lessons that they learned to your teams (regardless of department).

2:35 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.

Interactive Workshops

A structured set of facilitated session topics attendees sign up and pre-register to attend. The presenter and attendees will work together to explore a problem, ideas and its solutions.

Topics include:

• From ABA to ABM: How do you nurture relationships to make the right ask at the right time to maximize impact?
• Building a Customer Awards Program that Drives Business Impact
• How to increase peer reviews by 3000+% while maintaining best-in-class badges
• How to run a multilingual voice of the customer program
• Virtual Session: Customer Advocacy Success Plans: A proactive advocate engagement model
  Framework

3:35 p.m. - 4:05 p.m.

True Confessions of Customer Marketers

“I have something to tell you…I didn’t plan on doing this right now, but it’s urgent. I’ve been keeping this secret for far too long.”

That’s right, it’s time to confess, Customer Marketers!

Join us as our panelists share their greatest successes–and failures–in Customer Marketing. Nothing is off limits for this discussion! Representing different industries, experiences, and organizations, this panel of seasoned CustomerX pros will share, take questions, and hopefully teach, inspire, or at least let you learn from our stumbles and triumphs. We must confess, it’s going to be a great session!

4:10 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Interactive Workshops

A structured set of facilitated session topics attendees sign up and pre-register to attend. The presenter and attendees will work together to explore a problem, ideas and its solutions.

Topics include:

• Running with the big dogs: how to attract, retain and engage your highest profile customers in your programs
• Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About – join to learn how to maximize your advocacy strategy while creating a white glove experience for your advocates and attendees at in-person events 
• Hey, Baby! What’s Your Archetype?
• Virtual Session: Nurturing references into Superfans

5:00 p.m. - 5:45 p.m.

CustomerX Impact Awards Ceremony

The CustomerX Impact Awards recognize customer programs, and their leaders, that mobilize customers to drive your company’s most strategic growth initiatives. By shining light on the highest impact programs, this will inspire all of us to focus on impact and helps us get more of The 3 R’s of Customer Marketing: Respect, Recognition and Resources. Winners and runners up will be announced live on stage.

Click here to learn more about the awards and to nominate your program.

5:45 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Superpower Party featuring The Amazing Hero Art Show

 Join us for food, drink, Superhero cocktails, fun and networking.

Our featured entertainer is a world renowned speed-painter!! He is a humanitarian first, and an artist second. He has been working to make this world better through his artistry since 1994. He has appeared on the Today show, Good Morning America, The Tonight Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show!! His show will leave you in awe, amazement, and joy.

8:00 a.m. - 8:55 a.m.

Breakfast & Networking

8:15 a.m. - 8:55 a.m.

Breakfast Roundtable on Customer-Led Growth

On Day 1, you heard lots of talk about Customer-Led Growth: what it is,  examples of CLG initiatives, how you can drive it. This session is for those of you who want to get up early to talk about the reality of CLG within your organizations. Attendees will talk about:

• What is your attitude towards CLG? Do you think that it is critical to your company’s success? Why or why not?
• Are you currently executing CLG initiatives in your company? If so, what are they? If not, why not?
• What gets in the way of pursuing CLG? How have you gotten through those obstacles?

9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Peer-to-Peer Speed Networking

In this Peer-to-Peer Speed Networking event, you will be matched in the Whova event app with 6 people who you will meet. We will have table numbers set up for you to find each match for a 10 minute conversation. After 10 minutes the bell rings and you move to meet match #2 at your designated table.

Virtual attendees will be matched with other virtual peers.

10:00 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.

It’s All About the Customer Experience: Lessons learned from one CMO’s 20+ years building successful reference programs

A former sales executive, field marketer and now CMO of a multi-billion-dollar AI company, Brenda Hodge is a pioneer of customer advocacy, starting one of the first programs of its kind more than two decades ago. In this session, Brenda will explore how to flip the script in customer marketing by asking what you can do for your customer. She’ll provide insight into her journey from early customer advocacy programs to her current role as CMO of Nuance Communications, which Microsoft recently bought in one of their largest-ever acquisitions.

This session will provide attendees:

• Insight into lessons learned through Brenda’s successful career in customer marketing
• A deeper look at how to creatively solve the biggest challenges in customer advocacy
• Practical advice on how to gain executive buy-in and support for your customer advocacy program

11:00 a.m. - noon

Interactive Workshops

A structured set of facilitated session topics attendees sign up and pre-register to attend. The presenter and attendees will work together to explore a problem, ideas and its solutions.

Topics include:

• How to interview your customers to facilitate cross-functional collaboration and
  elevate your career
• Customer Marketing quick wins – how to kickstart your first 90 days in a new role
• How to Prove the Value of your Customer Advocacy Program as a Team of One
• What your CMO should know – 5 Recession Proof Marketing (RPM) Strategies to
  secure your job
• Virtual session: Customer Advisory Boards – How to Get Started
• Virtual session: How to Build an End-to-End Customer Advocacy Model

1:00 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.

Become an Advocacy Master Chef: Secret Ingredients for Success

All good cooks start with recipes; after all, a recipe is the blueprint for ensuring your efforts in the kitchen are successful. But then, there are chefs that create masterpieces–meals featured in Bon Appetit–food that requires reservations because it’s just that good. So what sets them apart? Secret ingredients and techniques, of course! The masters of their craft have tricks up their sleeve that bring their efforts to another level–and just as chefs do with food, you can with customer advocacy! Join this panel of “master chefs” and hear about what they deem their secret ingredients to success.

1:45 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.

Get Traction with Customer Success through your Customer Program

Customer Experience and Marketing teams can have a significant impact in partnership with a Customer Success team. However, the “playbook” for aligning on strategy, getting started and measuring impact can be executed in many different ways & is rarely straightforward.

This session will share best practices in how customer experience and customer marketing can add value to your customer success teams. 

Topics include:

• Defining opportunities for impact with customer success business models
• Programs to get started for quick wins
• Identifying & measuring metrics that matter

2:30 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.

Group Therapy Breakouts

Open discussion small group breakouts of 10 on specific topics. There will be a session facilitator leading the conversation and capturing key takeaways to be shared with the collective group of attendees at the end. Pre-registration is required and space is limited per breakout.

Topics include:

• The Icing on the Cake: How can you sweeten your customer relationships? Add more sprinkles!
• How to Build Cross-Functional Alignment with Customer Marketing and Customer Success
• Balancing C-level and Marquee Advocate Recruiting with Volume Recruiting to Support Your Program’s Diverse Needs
• Gaining and Retaining Meaningful Executive Support
• Storytelling vs. Stakeholders: balancing customer authenticity, brand, and product marketing needs
• How to Scale Executive Programs Tied to Revenue Attribution
• Customer signals to identify potential advocates
• Virtual topic: Supporting Cross-sell and Upsells in a Customer Marketing World

3:15 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Align your Customer Marketing Programs to Business Outcomes

Too often customer marketing is an afterthought, or not integrated into the larger marketing strategy. However, successful companies activate their customers’ voice to accelerate growth and increase customer lifetime value. Learn from experts that integrated customer marketing throughout the customer’s journey and drove business outcomes.

4:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

CUSTOMER CONFESSIONS: Stories of awesome and annoying from real customer advocates

As customer marketers, our relationships are everything. Creating mutual value with our customers (or not) can make or break our programs, strengthen or damage relationships, and build or weaken our own professional credibility. In this panel, we’ll hear from several IT leaders who engage in thought leadership opportunities on behalf of their companies. They will share their “why” and examples of the ways customer marketers can hit the bullseye or, conversely, miss the mark.

4:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

Closing Remarks