As a result of their marketing campaigns, they added 6,187 new members against a goal of 4,600 and finished 135% to goal.
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Company: Cambium Networks
Entry submitted by: Ray Savich (Community Manager)
Community: Cambium Networks
Lithy category: Social Marketing Champion
Cambium Networks is a leading global provider of trusted wireless solutions that connect the unconnected – People, Places and Things. Through its extensive portfolio of reliable, scalable and secure wireless narrowband and broadband platforms, Cambium Networks makes it possible for all service providers and industrial, enterprise and government network operators to build affordable, reliable, high-performance connectivity. The company currently has over six million radios deployed in thousands of demanding networks in more than 150 countries.
Our unique marketing campaign
After launching the Community in late 2014, and having one full year under our belt, our goal in 2016 was to double the membership of the Community from 4,600 members to 9,200 members. Knowing that there was no silver bullet to build membership, we integrated the Community into all customer-facing parts of the business. We also wanted to keep a high level of relevant content quality and integrity on the community, as a member survey indicated that this was the most popular attribute of our Community.
The campaign engaged activity from across the entire organization, including:
“In 2016 we were launching significant new products, and we wanted to have immediate communication with our customers so they could understand the new technology, but also have a personal relationship with the company. The Community is the best way to do this.” – Scott Imhoff, Senior Vice President, Product Management.
“To encourage employees to develop new technical content for the Knowledge Base, we launched a program to recognize Excellent Content. Employees who posted new and relevant technical content to the Community are recognized for their contribution. Field technicians, support team members, development team members, and designers posted valuable content that helped our end customers. For some, this was their first time posting to any community, and the feedback was very positive.” – Atul Bhatnagar, President and CEO, Cambium Networks.
We researched the Lithium Community for best practices, and were able to refine our ideas. Because not all tactics succeed, we chose to launch a number of programs to build membership. Up front, we knew some would be immediately positive, some would require adjustment, and some would not meet the needs of our members.
Employees mentioned the Community at each webinar, trade show, event, blog post, and were encouraged to add an invitation to the Community in their email signature.
Our strategy
We decided to integrate the following programs to enhance the content available on the Community:
Badges – We implemented badges to encourage participation for new members. The system was geared to provide badge rewards in the first 45 days to develop habits. Employees were encouraged to be generous with responses, kudos, and accepted solutions.
“Ask the Experts” – we created monthly Community events where a team of our development engineers and product manager from one product were available to respond to posts live on the Community. These helped build experience on posting and interacting for customers and employees.
Our results
As a result of the above mentioned marketing campaigns, we added 6,187 new members against a goal of 4,600 and finished 135% to goal.
Weekly tracking of activity gave us detailed insights:
This data showed us what topics were most interesting to our members and would convert community visitors to Community members by inspiring them to post and participate.
This guided us to increase social media on a hot topic to focus visitors to start in that conversation and take some time to browse the rest of the Community.
“In 2016, we saw our business and customer base increase significantly, and the Community is a key component in increasing our visibility and demonstrating our technical expertise and professional character.” – Scott Imhoff, Senior Vice President of Product Management.
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