Customer marketing often doesn’t get the attention – or the budget – that it deserves. Most marketing teams focus on bringing in new business, but in a SaaS company, the real financial impact comes from keeping customers engaged and renewing their contracts year after year. 

That’s where customer marketing comes in. It’s not just about keeping customers happy; it’s about ensuring they get the value they were promised, which in turn, protects and grows future revenue.

I always joke with my colleagues in lead generation that they're in the revenue acquisition business, while I’m in the revenue protection business. And yet, despite so much of our revenue being repeat business, the amount spent on customer marketing is usually a fraction of what’s spent on acquisition.

That’s the challenge. So, what do we do about it? How do we prove that customer marketing is indispensable? The key is to focus on three things:

  • Scale and efficiency
  • Customer self-sufficiency
  • Measurement

Scaling customer engagement while maintaining a personal touch

One of the biggest challenges in customer marketing is balancing high-touch and digital interactions. We all want to create personalized experiences for our customers, but we’re also being asked to scale and drive efficiency. And as the number of customers grows, that gets harder.

So, the secret sauce? Understand when to go digital and when a high-touch interaction is actually necessary.

Not every customer engagement needs to be a one-on-one conversation. Sometimes, digital touchpoints can be just as effective – if not more so. But digital doesn’t just mean email. Think blogs, in-product messaging, customer communities, social media, and curated resources.

For example, when a new customer signs on, there’s often a delay before their implementation team is ready to get started. We don’t want them sitting in limbo, so we created a digital welcome program.

Over several weeks, we send them curated resources – helping them collect the right data, get familiar with our training materials, and join our customer community. Then, when their project team is ready, they’ve already done a lot of the prep work, making the onboarding process faster and smoother.

For customer events, we use a mix of digital and high-touch engagement. We send digital invitations and track who registers. Then, we make sure our relationship managers only follow up with the customers who haven’t signed up – no need to call those who already have.

Even our customer advocacy program, which has 1,500+ engaged advocates, is built for scale. Instead of relying on one-on-one outreach, we manage a private community group for advocates. It’s a space where they can connect, share knowledge, and even request upvotes on product ideas.

We also allow advocates to track their own contributions – so they don’t have to rely on us to confirm their activity. This self-sustaining model allows a small six-person team to manage a large, engaged advocate base.

Helping customers help themselves

One of the biggest ways customer marketing can make an impact is by enabling customer self-sufficiency. Customers should be able to succeed without always needing a direct touchpoint. This benefits both them and us – because reducing support calls saves the business money while improving customer experience.

A great way to do this is by meeting customers where they are – inside our product.

We built an in-product messaging panel that provides helpful tips, training links, and community discussions related to whatever page the customer is on. If our support team sees a trend in customer struggles, we push relevant content directly into the product. That way, customers get help before they even think about submitting a ticket.

We also rely heavily on our customer community. If one customer asks a question, others can see the answer—so we’re solving the same problem for many customers at once. We even have a program that recognizes our most active community contributors, encouraging more engagement.

Another example is our new system administrator boot camp. When a company hires a new admin to manage our software, they often feel overwhelmed. So, we created a seven-week digital program that walks them through everything they need to know – one step at a time.

The program is structured, consistent, and clearly tracks progress, helping new admins feel more confident while reducing the number of support calls they need to make.

Creating special customer moments (at scale)

Even though scale and efficiency are important, we can’t lose sight of the human element. Customers should feel like we’re thinking about their success all the time – not just when we’re trying to sell or renew them.

One way we do this is through small but meaningful customer moments. For example:

  • On National System Administrator Day, we send a fun message acknowledging their hard work – complete with a redeemable gift.
  • For HR professionals, we send year-end appreciation messages showing how many hours of PTO their company has approved, reinforcing their role in employee well-being.
  • For customers using our time and attendance solution, we highlight how many shifts and punches they’ve processed – helping them see the scale of their impact.

Beyond these moments, we also create larger-scale engagement opportunities. Before our biggest customer event, we built an exclusive online community group, where attendees could connect ahead of time. This helped first-time attendees make connections before they even arrived.

We also acted on customer feedback to improve their event experience. Attendees in Las Vegas complained about too much walking between sessions and hotel rooms. We couldn’t provide shuttles or golf carts, so instead, we installed lockers at the event venue where attendees could store their belongings. This small change, sponsored by a partner, made a big difference in customer convenience.

Proving impact: Why measurement matters

None of this works without measurement. It’s not as straightforward as tracking lead generation, but we’ve found ways to connect customer marketing efforts to business impact.

We go beyond tracking open rates and registrations – we connect engagement with key customer actions. For example:

  • Did customers who opened an email complete training?
  • Did advocacy program participants write peer reviews?
  • Did customers who attended an event become more engaged in the community?

Right now, we’re working on developing a customer engagement index that tracks various touchpoints – email interactions, training, advocacy, and community participation – and assigns a weighted score. The goal? Over time, this will help us correlate engagement with retention and revenue growth.

For our customer advocacy program, we also publish a transparent report card that shows the revenue influenced by our program. It’s integrated with Salesforce, so sales teams can request references directly from our advocacy system, and we can track the impact in real time.

Final thoughts

If there’s one takeaway from all of this, it’s that customer marketing is essential to business success. When we focus on scale, self-sufficiency, and measurement, we can make a compelling case for further investment.

We have the opportunity to shape the customer experience, ensure long-term retention, and ultimately, protect revenue. And with the right approach, we can do all of this while making customers feel valued, supported, and engaged.

Because at the end of the day, happy customers don’t just renew – they become advocates. And that’s what makes customer marketing truly indispensable.

This article is based on a keynote presentation by Lisa at our virtual Customer Marketing Summit in February 2024.

If you'd like to watch Lisa’s talk – along with other sessions from the Summit – you can access the OnDemand version with a CMA membership.