Company: Anaplan
Company background: At Anaplan, our mission is to make all planning for all people a reality. We believe our world is better when we connect communities of people with data to enhance decision-making in dynamic environments. It’s the Connected Planning way.
Contact: Stan Gromer
Title: Technology Manager, Community
Related URLs:
https://usergroups.anaplan.com/
https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Anaplan-Live/ct-p/AL
Kudos Category: Top Line Growth All Star
1. What were your goals for your digital engagement platform implementation?
We launched our User Groups Live (Now known as "Anaplan Live!") as a way to take our user groups virtual. The original intent of this was simply to look at different ways to connect. We already had been running 30+ user groups throughout the globe, but decided we were crazy and wanted to torture ourselves by holding 4+ separate live events throughout the year!! We hold a yearly convention/conference as many companies do, and we already had 30+ user groups running, so we were looking to fill the void between those two - Thus 'User Groups Live' was born.
2. What were your focus areas and tactics to meet those goals?
Generally over the course of two-days, 3 hours each, we started holding a live event through our Community. These would contain a mix of content, from our product and training teams, our Master Anaplanner program, Ask Me Anythings with executives, we try to do it all.
The goal of course is to further educate our users, to show them the best practices, to hear about what is coming next with Anaplan. It's really a way to connect more closely. We do a variety of content, which then lives long-term in Community to continue to provide value to future users.
We have a live chat going throughout the session, allowing users to interact directly. Post-event, the sessions are broken up and posted as forum topics, allowing users to keep asking questions anytime.
3. Tell us about the results. Please list the top-line sales revenue/ROI metrics achieved due to your digital technology. Highlight the impact to your executive leadership team and other quantifiable business results.
In 2019, we were able to influence over $2.2 million in expansions/new business from these live events. We try to look at customers and/or prospects, where their business went after, look at their community history, talking with them, etc. We're ultimately taking all the data points we have available and doing our best to come up with a reasonable number.
Additionally, our Anaplan Helps site, while specifically created with no intentions of helping drive revenue, has done exactly that. From being something that our potential customers have seen as a differentiation, to literally providing the foundation for new customers to come onboard and get started immediately, we have been able to again see how the influence of Community has been able to directly impact the business.