Past Lithys (old format)
Check out Lithy entries from previous years.
Company: Webroot Contact: Nic Tolstoshev (Community Manager) Community: Webroot Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Webroot delivers next-generation endpoint security and threat intelligence services to protect businesses... See more...
Company: Webroot Contact: Nic Tolstoshev (Community Manager) Community: Webroot Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Webroot delivers next-generation endpoint security and threat intelligence services to protect businesses and individuals around the globe. Our smarter approach harnesses the power of cloud-based collective threat intelligence derived from millions of real-world devices to stop threats in real time and help secure the connected world. Trusted and integrated by market-leading companies, including Cisco, F5 Networks, Aruba, Palo Alto Networks, A10 Networks, and more, Webroot protects tens of millions of devices across businesses, home users, and the Internet of Things. Discover Smarter Cybersecurity™ solutions at www.webroot.com   Webroot Business Dispatch Since December 2012, we’ve been sending out a monthly newsletter featuring the best community content determined by community metrics and an editorial team.      Every month we see a big spike in visits to the community.     We wanted to match the success of the Community Dispatch on the business section of the community.   Our strategy and tactics   We added a business oriented Community Dispatch sent only to SMB customers, starting in June 2015.  Our goal was to grow the business community as it wasn’t as active as the consumer side of the community.       Our results   We matched the 30% open rate of the consumer newsletter.     We’re seeing more questions and more answers coming from power users on the business and channel partner sections of the community:     More than doubled the business post views.     We started the business dispatch at the end of June 2015 and have doubled the business post views since that month.    
Company: GoDaddy Contact: Rachel Makool (Sr. Product Manager, Community) Community: GoDaddy Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     Our unique promotion    One of GoDaddy’s top “rocks” = goals is to “Extend and Enh... See more...
Company: GoDaddy Contact: Rachel Makool (Sr. Product Manager, Community) Community: GoDaddy Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     Our unique promotion    One of GoDaddy’s top “rocks” = goals is to “Extend and Enhance our Customer Relationships” and as part of this, we launched our Community.   Our goals are to: Provide quick and immediate answers to customer questions to save them time while in the flow of their work. Encourage engagement of our customers to aid in learning of GoDaddy products and services to enhance usage. Enhance learning and engagement for our employees to increase understanding of customer's needs and expectations of GoDaddy   In order to kick off our new Community, we wanted to seed a lot of content. We decided to recruit customers that we named “Community Founders” to help us seed the content before going live.   Our strategy and tactics    The strategy was to get a group of customers to help us seed content before going live. The tactics were to recruit customers through multiple methods like emails, phone calls and article in our Help content. We set a lofty goal of 200 customers. Asked them to sign up so we could reach out to them with more detail.   We recruited a group of customers through email campaigns and by reaching out to individuals to be “Community Founders”. We had 300 express interest and 50% of them (150 customers) registered and signed into the Community to help us seed content before the site went live on March 31st. These 150 customers were comprised of professionals (people who create websites, etc for other customers) and other small business owners. We spent 5 weeks working closely with them to create compelling content to launch the site with. They all earned a “Community Founder” badge and rank as a thank you and also to give them recognition in the Community as leaders.   Founder badge and rank icon:     The customers we recruited as Founders were GoDaddy customers for at least 1 year, active and own more than 3 of our products.   One of our Founders (username LoDoWeb) stated, "The community thus far is a great place to meet people. So far I enjoy it.”   In addition to the Founders badges, we created an “Early Bird” badge for any customer who registers within the first month of the launch in April.     We also created a “GoDaddy Pro” badge to recognize all “Pros” who are part of our GoDaddy Pro program. We will also have a rank icon for them shortly. This is a way for them to highlight their business expertise and potentially get business from someone who needs help building a website.     Our results   We exceeded our goals and got 300 customers to sign up. As of today, March 23 rd , we have 80 customers registered and posting. We plan on launching within the next two weeks and hope to have more customers registered and posting before going live. Their posts have been very engaging! We created a “Founder” Badge to give them recognition for being early birds in our Community and will also create a “Founder” rank in order to attach a badge to their user name.   In the first month, we’ll have received 50,000-70,000 page views through email promotion, Twitter promotion (see below screenshot), exposure in Help (see below screenshot) and SEO.          In addition, we have achieved over 2,000 completed registrations in the first month of our community launch.
Company: FOX SPORTS Australia Contact: Shae Marlow (Manager, Customer Experience & Community) Community:  The Crowd Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   FOX SPORTS is Australia’s leading producer of sports television coverage and is hom... See more...
Company: FOX SPORTS Australia Contact: Shae Marlow (Manager, Customer Experience & Community) Community:  The Crowd Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   FOX SPORTS is Australia’s leading producer of sports television coverage and is home to Australia's favourite subscription television sports channels as well as Australia's number one general sports website. FOX SPORTS operates the website www.foxsports.com.au which contains a wide range of video content and articles, including a citizen journalism community called, The Crowd. FOX SPORTS broadcasts over 10,000 hours of LIVE sports programming per year into 2.5 million homes around Australia.     Our unique promotion and the goal   In 2014, FOX SPORTS Australia launched The Crowd – a community forum created to be the home of sports conversations. Two years in, The Crowd has provided us with a strong foundation to expand our Community Strategy and launch a unique marketing content strategy, Citizen Journalism. In short, Citizen Journalism is the ultimate community engagement opportunity whereby community members submit articles to FOX SPORTS to be published on The Crowd. It has been marketed as ‘the training ground for aspiring journalists’. The initiative has allowed us to grow our community and promote our members, particularly superusers.   The goal has been to innovate the current marketing strategy for the community whilst supporting FOX SPORTS digital strategy, including: to increase digital viewership and audience lift the emotional connection to fans reach more Australians and a younger audience     Our strategy and tactics for  community   We identified the lack of opportunities for aspiring sports journalists and so developed our Citizen Journalism initiative, a place for journalists to sharpen their skills while gaining real life experience.   We introduced an integrated content marketing approach in three key phases.   PHASE ONE: TEST   The first phase was to test the initiative in a controlled environment, engaging just two universities and inviting their journalism students to participate as ‘Crowd Correspondents’.   Students utilised The Crowd forum, where articles were submitted for approval and moderation then published to a public board. The FOX SPORTS Editorial team would then review each article and select the best for publication on foxsports.com.au. Published Crowd Correspondent articles featured all the hallmarks of a professional journalist’s piece – including their very own byline plus a link back to their Crowd profile. Lastly, two of the contributing students were selected and offered a two week paid internship with the FOX SPORTS editorial team.     PHASE TWO: LEVERAGE & INTEGRATE   Our second phase involved formalising a program that built the credentials and profiles of our Crowd Correspondents. We updated their Profile Pages, creating a portfolio of each student’s contributions to FOX SPORTS. We then discovered they were adding their Crowd profile credentials to their LinkedIn pages and CVs. This established their profiles as writers within the community and also established their Crowd experience as a worthy qualification externally.     PHASE THREE: SCALE   The final stage was to scale and extend the program to 20+ universities across Australia. In order to market to these students, we interviewed our original Crowd Correspondent intern and created a promotional video, where we highlighted the benefits to other aspiring journalism students in becoming Crowd Correspondents themselves.   As the program matured, we ramped up promotion by integrating Crowd Correspondent articles into the FOX Sports App and established The Crowd’s Twitter account.   Our results   Within four months, phase one of The Crowd Correspondent marketing initiative nearly tripled its trial KPIs, with 14 Crowd Correspondents signing up (KPI was 5).   Now, in just over 7 months, the initiative has continued to exceed expectations, both from a business and community point of view, including: 14 active universities More than 80 Crowd Correspondents Articles/Content submitted to the community has doubled, with a total of 300 articles submitted to the community and 200 published onto foxsports.com.au Two internships successfully placed, with both interns now officially working for FOX SPORTS Australia Dramatic increase from 2.3 page views per unique visitor to 4.6 page views New community registrations have more than doubled from 120 to 300 per month In our most recent promotional phase, we’ve had the highest page views since launching in 2014.   The Crowd began as a small idea with big aspirations and it has since grown into a viable content engine. It’s surpassed all KPIs set yet most importantly, it has given university students a chance to experience the thrill of sports journalism and in doing so, give fans a unique perspective of sport through the lens of a younger pundit.        
Company: Telefonica Movistar  Entry submitted by: Emilio Rodriguez Menendez ( Community Manager) Community: Comunidad Movistar   Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Telefónica is one of the world leading integrated operators in the tel... See more...
Company: Telefonica Movistar  Entry submitted by: Emilio Rodriguez Menendez ( Community Manager) Community: Comunidad Movistar   Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Telefónica is one of the world leading integrated operators in the telecommunications sector, providing communication, information and entertainment solutions, with presence in Europe and Latin America. It operates in 21 countries. As of December 2015, Telefónica’s total number of customers amounted to 322 million.   Our community objective   Our community amounts to 1.6 million visitors on average every month, and our blog itself ( Movisfera ) gets near 200k visits every month. We launched the blog 2 years ago with the goal to create a destination for our users, a place where they could write their own thoughts and content, and a forum with an abundance of help content useful for a Movistar customer, a technology fan, or a regular user. By mid 2015, we became aware that the blog wasn´t fulfilling our goals. 90% of the content was Movistar staff generated and full of commercial articles, so it was  time to turn around the situation and get back to our objective of creating a true community.   Launching our collaborators program   We decided to give our users more leadership/relevance, so we launched our collaborator program publicly. We asked our users to join the blog staff and help others with their content published in the blog.   We also decided to add new, regular content to the blog in the form of help-oriented content called "Tip/trick of the week" and "Our recommendation of the week" which have become quite popular between our visitors and readers.   We were able to get 10 regular collaborators (those who have written at least one article per month ) to contribute. Additionally we created a new section in the blog called "User corner" and identified each and every single users article/post with a label that showed the post was non Movistar generated.        By the end of 2015, we celebrated our annual event with users and super users. We awarded the blog collaborator of the year (the person who had created the most content and achieved the most visits) with a trophy and a special gift.      Continued  success with the collaborators program   By March 2016, the regular blog collaborators grew significantly. They have published more than 80 articles which have received (on an average of more than 3,000 visits per post) nearly 400,000 visits in less than one year. Especially popular have been the user j3gallo posts about cinema with thousands of visits and social shares.   https://comunidad.movistar.es/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/45   https://comunidad.movistar.es/t5/Movisfera/El-mejor-cine-de-este-oto%C3%B1o-estrenos-de-octubre-pr%C3%B3ximamente-en/ba-p/2650953   The reach of their content has also been spread through our social networks’ official pages (Facebook and Twitter) in which we have shared their content with huge success within our followers (as shown in the following examples):       Results of the collaborators program   To summarize, the goals we have achieved with this project: Blog visits and views have increased by 150% since May 2015 We’ve garnered more than 10 regular collaborators The blog perception has drastically changed for the better-- from commercial content to user-generated content      
Company: Fido (Rogers Communications) Contact: Caroline Lalonde (Social Media Support and Community Manager) Community: Fido Community Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Fido connects Canadians to the things they love through its ul... See more...
Company: Fido (Rogers Communications) Contact: Caroline Lalonde (Social Media Support and Community Manager) Community: Fido Community Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Fido connects Canadians to the things they love through its ultrafast LTE network, as well as services such as Fido Pulse Plans and Fido Home Internet (Fido Home Internet currently only available in parts of Ontario).   Fido was originally launched by Microcell Solutions Inc. in 1996 and went on to revolutionize the wireless industry in Canada with a unique approach to pricing, a money-back satisfaction guarantee and more. Today, we continue to move ahead with new voice and data technologies as well as the latest in wireless Internet services to keep you connected to what matters most in your life.   The Fido network consists of three network technologies GSM, 4G HSPA+ and now LTE – the new global gold standard of wireless technology. Fido wireless compatible devices fall back onto each network, assuring you have a network to fall back onto. Fido also offers its customers access to the Fido TM  wireless network coast-to-coast and with over 300 roaming partners in over 200 countries your device will be compatible wherever you travel.   The Fido Community turns 5   To celebrate the Fido Community’s 5 th year anniversary, we held a month-long contest throughout September 2015. In order to enter the draw for a chance to win one of 10 prizes (total of $4000 in prizes), participants were invited to post their best cellular tip and/or trick into the Tips & Tricks board. This new board was created for the contest.   The goals were to: Increase Community registrations; Increase overall Community traffic and liveliness (posts, likes, page views, unique visitors); Raise Community awareness, both externally and internally; Increase useful content in the Community; And, of course, to celebrate the Community’s 5 th   We received a total of 371 entries, and some of the best Tips & Tricks were shared on our Social Media properties to promote the Community and give our Community members some exposure and recognition.   Our promotional tactic consisted of a Community blog post to announce and describe the contest, along with the rules & regulations. We then promoted this blog post using the following methods: Our social media properties (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram post)Banner on the homepage of our website Special blurb in emails to customers Text message (to targeted customers)   Facebook Post     On Twitter     Banner on Fido.ca     On September 15 th , the actual anniversary date of the Community, we wrote a second Community blog post to remind everyone of the contest and to keep the hype going. We took this opportunity to thank our Community members who have been with us since the start. This blog post was also shared on our Social Media properties, but this time with curiosity sparking infographics to recap the 5 years:     Community Tip Shared on Social Media     Our Results   The results were outstanding! We met each and every one of our goals. The contest increased the Community liveliness, traffic, and overall interaction to a level we hadn’t seen before. Multiple records were broken during the month of September 2015 (percentages are in comparison to the previous month):     The contest was also very well received by the Community, who took joy in sharing their feedback. Our first blog post generated many comments, which mostly consisted of happy birthday wishes and expressions of excitement towards the prizes. Many members voiced their happiness, including top contributors:     The birthday contest not only served as a means to break traffic and registration records, but also as a means of promotion. Even after the contest ended, our traffic continued to increase, justifying our promotional efforts.            
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Company: Barclaycard US Contact: Kati Driscoll (Community Manager) Community: Barclaycard Travel Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   BarclaycardUS is the 9th largest credit card issuer in the US. We believe that building comm... See more...
Company: Barclaycard US Contact: Kati Driscoll (Community Manager) Community: Barclaycard Travel Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   BarclaycardUS is the 9th largest credit card issuer in the US. We believe that building community environments supports our credit card products and creates a differentiated customer experience through enhanced support and engagement.   Lithium’s community platform is the driving force behind the Barclaycard Travel Community. BarclaycardTravel.com is a unique travel community experience where Barclaycard cardmembers and non-cardmembers can share travel stories, look to other members for travel inspiration, and earn miles, which can be redeemed for rewards, for engaging in community activities.   Our unique promotion and objective   On July 2, 2015, changes to the Rewards Program Rules for the Barclaycard Arrival™ and Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ MasterCard® were announced. Community was part of a cross functional team initially formed to support customer care and manage complaint volumes, which were estimated to be higher than average, during the transition.   Rather than focusing on the minimal product changes being made, Social Media and Community teams suggested a different approach. Why not highlight the qualities of our award-winning travel card which remained unchanged?   We started with the question, "What is it about the experience of travel that drives our cardmembers' passion?" We discussed the emotions that travel evokes, especially the feeling when one arrives somewhere new. From there, we explored what it means to "arrive" as a symbol of status, connecting the existing social sentiment (#IHAVEARRIVED) to the way the Arrival card and its features enable and empower our cardmembers to have these same moments.   Our primary objective of the campaign was to promote and encourage positive product sentiment through proactive messaging of core featured benefits. This would be measured by a reduction in complaint volumes and an increase in positive social sentiment surrounding the brand.   Our secondary objective was to build loyalty and advocacy through an engagement campaign with our cardmembers and community members. This would be measured by content consumption & engagement on social media and within the community, content amplification, and cardmember behavior analysis.   Our strategy and tactics for our community   CONTENT STRATEGY Strategy for #IHaveArrived content focused on two types of content: #IHAVEARRIVED "moments" and Arrival product benefits     MOMENTS: Using Facebook audience insights based on our Arrival cardmember and community population, we created content which reflected lifestyle buckets Established Elite – represents America’s elite couples and singles. With no school-age children at home and the second highest income in the country, these households have enormous disposable incomes and pursue correlating luxuries and activities Summit Estates – families are enjoying the good life – luxury travel, entertainment and consumption of every kind are within easy reach Skyboxes and Suburbans – the best educated of all the clusters. These families shop at upscale stores, spend time feathering their nests and adhere to regular fitness programs. Corporate Clout – well educated and well compensated singles and couples in their 40s and 50s. These corporate executives and professionals are serious travelers, whether for work or pleasure and intelligent investors.     BENEFITS: We used community search and traffic trends, we developed content which helped users to better understand some of the most popular Arrival benefits while highlighting more obscure card features No foreign transaction fees No miles expiration Chip card technology Travel protections Rewards Access to Travel Community Access to Rewards Fan Zone Access to RewardsBoost MasterCard World Elite benefits Automatic World Elite status World Elite Concierge World Elite Luxury Travel benefits MasterCard Travel Services   DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY Content was posted across the following channels: Social Media Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Community Home page 5 separate user experiences PR Email Community Newsletter Arrival cardmember email Website Web tile Featured campaign content on the servicing site Integration with Arrival rewards – users could earn additional miles for registering for the community, sharing stories or using the #IHAVEARRIVED tag   PR 119M Media Impressions 225 outlets   SOCIAL 2M Social Media Impressions 961K Social Reach 125K Engagements 103K Video Views 91% decline in negative sentiment regarding the changes, our primary objective!   COMMUNITY 91K Page Views during Sweepstakes #IHAVEARRIVED generated 11% of 2015 community registrations 735 Travel Stories submitted   EMAIL 316K unique opens 20K unique CTR   CARDMEMBER 12% increase of arrival cardmembers registering in community Drove 5% increase of Arrival cardmembers linking accounts in the community   Key Learnings   SOCIAL Most engaged & cost effective age group for the contest: 18-34 (+20%) Most engaged & cost-effective age group for the benefits messaging was 25 – 34 (35%) Instagram ads proved to be cost effective but lacked the reach related to our Cardmember/Community audiences and fans Cardmembers who were Community Members, but were not linked were more inclined to enter the promotion via social Mobile is everything - 70% of the campaign reach was on a mobile device   COMMUNITY Best performing content spoke to our audience about benefits which provide a service for free or increase miles earns as opposed to benefits which save them money or offer convenience “If content is king, distribution is queen” - multichannel distribution is essential for content engagement success Content from promotion  
Company: Barclaycard US Contact: Jen Hitchens (Community Manager) Community: Barclaycard Ring Community  Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   BarclaycardUS is the 9th largest credit card issuer in the US. We believe that building commun... See more...
Company: Barclaycard US Contact: Jen Hitchens (Community Manager) Community: Barclaycard Ring Community  Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   BarclaycardUS is the 9th largest credit card issuer in the US. We believe that building community environments supports our credit card products and creates a differentiated customer experience through enhanced support and engagement.   Lithium’s community platform is the driving force behind the Barclaycard Ring Community. Barclaycard Ring MasterCard© is a very simple credit card product with a low interest rate, simple terms and no annual or balance transfer fees. But what sets Barclaycard Ring apart is its use of online communities in an innovative way to talk with card members about the product and how it should evolve. The Barclaycard Ring team also developed the industry’s first profit sharing program with card members, called Giveback™. This aligns the interests of both bank and card member like never before and opens the door for both to advance the cause of charities. And to help crystalize the trust, the team posts the financial statistics for the program on the website and discuss the results each month.   Barclaycard Ring Community “Ask FICO” Online Event   According to CEB TowersGroup, a financial services industry analyst group, 90 percent of credit scores purchased by lenders are FICO® Scores. While BarclaycardUS has been a pioneer in FICO® Score access for its cardmembers, many consumers still harbor a flawed - and costly - understanding of their credit scores.   Knowing that access to one's credit score is a small part of the path to better credit, Barclaycard Ring embarked on a mission to provide cardmembers with a clearer path to credit health. Partnering with the team at FICO®, Barclaycard was able to connect cardmembers to expert answers while providing a platform to share their own credit success stories – at no additional cost to the business.   Our primary objective of the campaign was to promote and encourage a greater understanding of credit scores and the FICO® Score we share with our cardmembers.   Our secondary objective was to increase the number of registered users in the Ring Community, increase engagement as well as create evergreen content that could provide answers to questions other community members might have about FICO Scores.   Our strategy and tactics   CONTENT STRATEGY The content strategy for the “Ask FICO” event focused on communicating to our existing Ring cardmembers about the upcoming event, its exclusivity, as well as its benefit as a cardmember who is interested in their credit health and eager to learn more about financial literacy topics.     Communication Materials:   Working with FICO®, we developed a branded icon for the event (shown above) Developed an “Ask FICO” Blog Post focusing on the program and it’s focus (as well as the ‘rules’) The “Ask FICO” Blog Post was also featured in the Account Servicing part of the BarclaycardUS.com home page Initial email focused that it was an exclusive online event Last chance email focused on deadline   Initial email   Last chance email   Blog post     Our Results   COMMUNITY Cardmembers posted 130 questions in 12 days; each question was answered individually by FICO 19,000 page views (25% increase) 4,700 unique visits (20% increase) Ask FICO Q&A board had 459 posts and 222 kudos Ask FICO Q&A board received 51% of the overall traffic during the event Ask FICO blog post received 48% of all blog traffic during the event Over 400 new cardmembers converted to community members for the event; 6% of new registrants for the year Evergreen Content – post event, the “Ask FICO” Q&A board remains the #1 visited section of the Ring Community (surpassing the public blog page views in Q4)   EMAIL 35% Open Rate 11% CTR   CARDMEMBER Online event helped to increase cardmember registrations to 20% of portfolio Online event also helpe to re-engage some cardmembers who had not logged into the community in a while.   Key Learnings   COMMUNITY Q&A Board format worked very well for this online event; questions that members had were answered by other community members; however the FICO Representative answer could be selected as the accepted solution so viewers know the correct response/information. Created an easy to access “Ask FICO” board in the global navigation Don’t always need a big budget to have a large impact (budget for this event was zero!)  
Company: Magento Commerce Entry submitted by: Sherrie Rohde (Community Manager) Community: Magento Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Trusted by more than 250,000 businesses worldwide, Magento Commerce is the leading prov... See more...
Company: Magento Commerce Entry submitted by: Sherrie Rohde (Community Manager) Community: Magento Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Trusted by more than 250,000 businesses worldwide, Magento Commerce is the leading provider of open omnichannel innovation to retailers, brands and branded manufacturers across retail B2C and B2B industries. In addition to its flagship open source digital commerce platform, Magento Commerce boasts a strong portfolio of cloud-based omnichannel solutions empowering merchants to successfully integrate digital and physical shopping experiences. With over $50B in gross merchandise volume transacted on the platform annually, Magento Commerce is the foremost provider to the Internet Retailer Top 1000 and the Internet Retailer B2B 300, counting more than double the clients to the next closest competitor. Magento Commerce is supported by a vast global network of solution and technology partners, a highly active global developer community and the largest eCommerce marketplace for extensions available for download on the Magento Marketplace. More information can be found at www.magento.com.   Our unique promotion     While we can’t fully quantify the size of the Magento community, we know the Magento ecosystem comprises of 250,000 merchants, 300 partners, over 1,000 solution implementers, 130,000 developers with 5,900 of them being Magento certified.      In 2015, the Magento community created over 2,500 pull requests and issues for Magento 2.0 on Github, presented over 500 talks on Magento or at Magento-centric events, produced over 100 podcast episodes centered around Magento, organized conferences and meetups in over 24 different countries, wrote three books about Magento, contributed to official product documentation, wrote countless blog posts to raise awareness and education and answered thousands of questions on both StackExchange and the Magento Forums (Lithium Community).     As you can see, we have an amazing and highly active community who are constantly contributing to our product and advocating for our brand. However, until now, we have never had a formal recognition program in place. The absence of this program sometimes created confusion when looking to stakeholders for beta invites, feedback, event invites, etc.   This year, we created the Magento Masters (super user) program, the culmination of over six months of research and strategic planning to develop an initiative that elevates our most active community members, recognizes them for their contributions, and empowers them to help others learn more about the Magento platform and to succeed in our ecosystem.   Creating this program was no small feat as we really wanted to make sure that we had a full picture of our community contributions. We went through several revisions of a scoring algorithm asking various stakeholders if we were missing any aspect that helped those in our community move forward. For every type of contribution, we took the time to think through how we felt it should weight in relation to other contribution types based on the impact that contribution likely had on the community. After pulling data from multiple sources we had access to including Lithium Social Intelligence, we were able to start surfacing names. As we added to the data we were able to qualify the algorithm was what it should be. While some names were not a surprise, and shouldn’t be, it also gave us more insight to other members in the community who were less vocal contributors. Being able to connect with these contributors allowed us to really grow these relationships with key community leaders.   In addition to surfacing key community leaders that may not have been top of radar, this algorithm and data collection also allowed us to begin to share numbers like those above with our community. Our company was proud and our community was proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish together in just one year. In reality, that year barely scratches the surface. This data also gives us quick insights into community leaders by region, role and company type which is often needed when identifying who to connect with for initiatives and opportunities.   As we thought through the program, we tried to keep a “What’s in it for me?” mindset for our community leaders, not just for us. Magento Masters members benefit from recognition both online and offline. This means a special badge and rank created for them and applied to their account on our Lithium Community platform as well as access to a private Magento Masters Lounge there. We also recognized them on our blog and at our annual conference, where we presented them with a physical award, which we’ll expand on more while discussing the campaign. Magento Masters will have increased access to things like beta programs, roadmaps and feedback opportunities as they arise. Some of this will be facilitate via a quarterly call with our product team and other key team members. We were also able to host them for a VIP lunch event at our conference and offer discounts on both certification and events.     Our goal in creating the Magento Masters program was to create clarity within our organization on who to look to as community leaders at the same time as being able to recognize them in a way they truly deserve – valued in front of their peers. We strongly believe we accomplished this.   Our strategy and tactics   Before beginning promotion of the Magento Master program, we worked with our brand and design teams to create a unique visual identity. After many whiteboard sessions, we landed on Magento Masters with three types: Movers, Mentors and Makers: Movers are Magento’s top advocates and ecosystem thought leaders who have demonstrated their expertise in driving innovation through Magento solutions. They are influencers in the industry in delivering best-of-class Magento implementations and advocate for Magento at industry events. Mentors are top contributors to the Magento Community who are highly active educating others and developing resources for them. They have proven expertise on building successful Magento implementations. Makers are frequent contributors valued by Magento and other community members. They actively engage with others in the Magento Community, sharing ideas, insights, and constructive feedback.   By creating these types, we were able to share clarity around why each Magento Master was selected with individual reasons supplied for each one when announcing them on our blog.   We first announced this program during our MagentoLive France event in Paris: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/introducing-new-magento-community-initiative-magento-masters https://twitter.com/magento/status/694477995839463424 https://twitter.com/ProductPaul/status/694477546386161664         Later that week, we echoed the announcement a presentation at a community-organized conference in Milan focused around how to get involved in the community and key people who were contributing in various areas of our community: http://www.slideshare.net/SherrieRohde/how-do-i-get-involved-in-the-magento-community-57914070.   Our 2016 Magento Masters were then selected and invited to the program based on their contributions to the community in 2015. Because our community is truly a “Total Community,” we created an algorithm that calculated their community contributions from key areas where we believe they truly help to move the community forward as a whole. These areas include our Lithium Community platform, StackExchange, Github code contributions, official documentation contributions, speaking engagements, blogging, published books and organizing both meetups and conferences.   We announced the Magento Masters via our social media channels, in our weekly community digests on the Lithium platform and on our blog: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/meet-2016-magento-masters-movers https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/meet-2016-magento-masters-mentors https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/meet-2016-magento-masters-makers https://twitter.com/magento/status/703257126282461184 https://twitter.com/magento/status/704375271286132736 https://twitter.com/magento/status/704740099456536577 https://twitter.com/magento/status/705546325354536960 https://community.magento.com/t5/News-Announcements/MagentoMonday-Community-Digest-2016-02-29/m-p/30701 https://community.magento.com/t5/News-Announcements/MagentoMonday-Community-Digest-2016-03-07/td-p/31406   During our opening keynote at our 2016 6 th annual Imagine conference in Las Vegas, our CEO, Magento Evangelist and Community Manager were able to bring 16 of the 20 Magento Masters on stage to recognize and award them in front of 2,500 attendees.     Our results   The results of this program exceeded our expectations, to say the least. Our Magento Masters are so humble and talented, which really added to the experience in the best way. It’s hard to even know where to start with the impact Magento Masters has already had for both our community and our company. Our community organized podcast brought our Magento Evangelist and Community Manager on for an exclusive interview: http://magetalk.com/magetalk-episode-79-magento-masters/ One of our Magento Masters has added this to his LinkedIn https://pl.linkedin.com/in/snowdog, was celebrated by his company with both a party https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153675678633192.1073741837.71921053191&type=3 and a blog post: https://snow.dog/blog/kuba-zwolinski-announced-magento-master/ . Other Magento Masters were also announced on their companies’ blogs: http://creatuity.com/2016/03/25/creatuity-ceo-joins-magento-masters/ http://store.fooman.co.nz/blog/magento-masters-kudos-to-an-awesome-community-initiative.html https://blog.limesoda.com/2016/03/anna-voelkl-zum-magento-master-ausgezeichnet/ http://www.somethingdigital.com/Blog/Meet%20the%20Team/Magento%20Masters.aspx Several others mentioned Magento Masters in their Imagine recaps: https://blog.limesoda.com/2016/04/magento-imagine-2016-we-are-magento/ http://www.somethingdigital.com/Blog/Events/Imagine%202016%20Recap.aspx http://divante.co/blog/imagine-magento-general-session-magentos-future-day-2/ https://www.iweb.co.uk/2016/04/magento-imagine-conference-day-two-recap/   We of course gave them some love in our event recap as well: https://magento.com/blog/events/we-are-magento-imagine-2016-highlights   Creating this program has inspired ideas across our organization about how to better implement councils, or involve the Magento Masters, in various decisions going forwards. It has also given us massive insight into actually being able to quantify what it is our community brings to the table (e.g. the stats I provided at the beginning) which has astounded and impressed both the community and those across our team.   Even before we officially announced the program, we had various departments coming to our community team in search of community members for various things (e.g. EMEA developers) and we were able to provide them with this information quickly and efficiently from the scoring algorithm created for the Magento Masters program. We are finally equipped with a way to connect key community members with key opportunities. Since announcing the community, several who were once engaged in our old forums are now inspired to be more active on our new forums and the community team, comprising of four Magento Masters, that organizes a Q&A hackathon for the Magento StackExchange has discussed including the forums in their “MageStackDay” events.   Also, one of our Magento Masters has been repeatedly approached on how to get involved in the community and especially how to get started speaking about Magento and our female Magento Master (fingers crossed for more next year) is truly being looked to as a mentor for other women in our community, encouraging them to contribute more to qualify themselves for 2017.   Digging Into the Numbers The Magento Masters program launch received over 250 individual posts across Twitter in support from our team, including our executive team, as well as from the community.   Our initial tweet announcing Magento Masters remains one of our top 10 posts in the past 90 days with 443 total engagements and 15,061 impressions: https://twitter.com/magento/status/694477995839463424   In addition, our tweet announcing the Movers also logged in as a top tweet with 425 total engagements and 16,656 impressions while our top tweet announcing the Mentors received 574 total engagements with 25,487 impressions and the Makers top tweet received 415 total engagements and 16,114 total impressions. A final wrap up announcing all 20 Magento Masters logged in at 340 total engagements and 14,655 impressions and our tweet congratulating them during Imagine logged in at 355 total engagements and 8,422 impressions: https://twitter.com/magento/status/719935530427756544, while several in the audience created their own renditions and our Magento Masters and their companies celebrated on social media throughout the conference. Our blog post announcing the program is our 4th most popular blog post, excluding product announcements, in Q1 of 2016 while our announcement posts spotlighting the Movers, Mentors and Makers weigh in at 17th, 14th and 12th, respectively.   On our Lithium Community platform, Magento Masters visit 92% more than other members. In the first month of implementing the initiative, Magento Master participation increased by 56% while other members increased participation by 6%.   Overall we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive reception and heard from our community that this was greatly needed. The next step? Individual in-depth profiles on our blog for each of the Magento Masters as well as launching into our quarterly calls to learn more.  
Company: Vodafone Spain     Contact: Alejandro Moreno ( Community Manager) Community:   Foro Vodafone  Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone Spain is part of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies... See more...
Company: Vodafone Spain     Contact: Alejandro Moreno ( Community Manager) Community:   Foro Vodafone  Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone Spain is part of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 57 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of 31 December 2015, Vodafone had 461 million mobile customers and 13 million fixed broadband customers.   Vodafone Spain has 14.255.000 mobile customers and 2.960.000 fixed broadband customers. All of them get benefit of the experience and capacity of a world leader that helps its customers to be better connected. For more info: please visit: www.vodafone.es   Our unique promotion and goal   Vodafone Spain launched their Vodafone Heroes Programme in 2013 for super-users to help other customers in their enquiries. There are currenly 24 active super-users in the Programme contributing to help other customers. However, the total number of nominated Heroes throughout those 3 years surpass the 100.   Our  strategy and tactics for  community    These super-users participate in a contest, fighting to unlock new badges while earning rewards points. There are 4 main categories that help us to achieve our goals and SLA: Speed, Wisdom, Aim and Creativity. We have implemented new badges on their profiles and created a catalogue of rewards as well as small benefits and ad-hoc contests.   Our results   Super-users activity in 2015: Over 3,500 customer served. 1700 posts managed directly via Vodafones Heroes. Over 1600 attributed Kudos and 500 accepted Solutions.    
  Company:  Alteryx  Entry submitted by: Julie Hamel (Senior Community Manager) Community: Alteryx Community Lithy Category:  Marketing Champion   Alteryx is the leader in self-service data analytics. Alteryx Analytics provides analysts w... See more...
  Company:  Alteryx  Entry submitted by: Julie Hamel (Senior Community Manager) Community: Alteryx Community Lithy Category:  Marketing Champion   Alteryx is the leader in self-service data analytics. Alteryx Analytics provides analysts with the unique ability to easily prep, blend and analyze all of their data using a repeatable workflow, then deploy and share analytics at scale for deeper insights in hours, not weeks.   Our unique promotion    When we began conceptualizing the future of community at Alteryx in early 2015, we made bold investments to begin a transformation of the way that our customers and employees connect with each other, discover new solutions to complex analytical challenges, and contribute fresh ideas to the broad industry discussion. If we were going to successfully launch our new community and scale alongside our rapidly-growing business, creating an equally-bold awareness and adoption campaign was critical.   The Alteryx Community team dedicated significant resources in a short timeframe to design an aesthetic that translates well across the boundaries of digital and physical promotional efforts. The team did a fantastic job of creating a natural feel to long-time users of our products and appealing to the forthcoming generation of business analysts. This led to three major themes that define the core our campaigns: - Be part of something bigger than yourself - Take pride in sharing your knowledge - Keep exploring Below are examples of how we’ve applied that strategy to execute tactically in a number of areas. The resulting lifts in awareness, engagement, and satisfaction around community have been amazing.    Our strategy and tactics   Video - To introduce the Alteryx Community and pique interest around launch, the team employed little Dot with the blue hair in a fun and light welcome video, which later made 2015’s Top Videos from Video Brewery. It was an instant hit with Alteryx Associates, who previewed the video at a pre-launch Community 101 All-Hands meeting. Externally, the video was shared via social channels a few days prior to the launch to tease our followers and promote our launch date.     Swag – People love free stuff. To raise awareness internally, all employees were provided with community superhero mugs and notebooks, where they were encouraged to help spread the words with our partners and customers. We continue to hand these out during the new hire boot camp alongside a Community 101 session to help employees get familiarized with the community and their roles in it. We occasionally send these out to customers to thank them for their participation as well.     Gamification – We’ve made great use of Gamification through an extensive collection of badges used to welcome members on their first visit, introduce them to new features, and to recognize their affiliations & status within the global community. Community Members who were migrated from the original community received the community founders badge at launch, which triggered email notifications to let them know the new community was live and thank them for their support. The competition to collect them all is fierce!   Contests - To help generate user content and create a fun & positive atmosphere we launched the 10 Things I love About Alteryx contest where we encouraged users to share reasons they enjoy the product and share tips with other community members. The 10 best quotes were gathered to create the first ever Alteryx Community t-shirt and the winner took away a GoPro!   Hangouts - Our community launch coincided with the release of version 10.0 of Alteryx Designer, so we hosted a live event using Google Hangouts allowing the community to get up close and personal with Product Management, executives, and our Alteryx ACEs (our superusers who beta’d the product) to hear about new features.  Hangouts have become a regular part of our repertoire. Our customers love tuning in to hear the latest and interact directly with Alteryx staff and each other!     Our results   After our re-launch in September 2015, post count increased by 2000%, going from an average of 30 posts a month to 1,000+! The community received 10,000+ unique visitors who generated nearly 100,000 pageviews. Active members increased by 2,300%. Metrics continued to trend up in October, with traffic peaking on the day of our first live event as 4,000+ unique visitors stopped by the community. Since then, we have hosted live Alteryx | Hangouts on a monthly basis, which have provided a great way for us to preview what we are working on, share tips & tricks, and connect with our members to recognize them for their efforts.   All of our efforts have had a major impact internally as well. Employees have embraced the community to support customers and collaborate internally. Having hundreds of champions to support our cause is a big key to our success. Employees make up only 1.5% of our visitors, but generate nearly 44% of posts and 38% of solutions (much of that in the internal employee-only area of the site). The community as a whole has generated 14,000+ posts and 1,000+ solutions in just 6 short months. Its passion and rapid growth continue to amaze us.
Company:  Post Office  Entry submitted by: Darren Jones (Social Media Manager) Social Channels: Twitter  and Facebook Lithy Category: Marketing Champion   With over 370 years of service, Post Office is the UK's largest retail network and... See more...
Company:  Post Office  Entry submitted by: Darren Jones (Social Media Manager) Social Channels: Twitter  and Facebook Lithy Category: Marketing Champion   With over 370 years of service, Post Office is the UK's largest retail network and the largest financial services chain in the UK with more branches than all of the UK’s banks and building societies put together. We also have growing direct channels such as contact centers and online - meaning they’re there for more customers, in more ways.   Post Office is now more than it ever was - an independent multi-channel business, with a vibrant, fast-growing financial services business and embarking on a new era of growth, modernization and customer excellence in serving the UK population.   Our unique promotion    In research, it was revealed that our customers had low awareness of Post Office's Sunday opening hours, and there customers had a negative perception of us as not being open around them. We were tasked with creating widespread awareness of Sunday opening hours. The strategy was to dominate Twitter for one day only with #LoveSundays, celebrating everything great about Sundays, from brunch to pajamas to Sunday dinner and - of course- Post Office's Sunday hours. Twitter was the perfect place to generate broad awareness and to engage our audience with the core campaign message.   Our strategy and tactics   Our strategy was shaped around using social media to help increase footfall into branches, increase sales of parcels/letters and overcome negative perceptions. The solution was to launch a #LoveSundays real-time marketing campaign, with a tiered content approach that focused on:  Prepared: Aligned to people's Sunday activities and we ran mini competitions throughout the day encouraging user generated content. Reactive: We produced social content reactively when topics relevant to our customers were trending in order to increase the reach of our message, as well as offering real-time, personalized customer service by helping customers notice that their nearest branch is open on Sundays.   LSW helped us organize all the massive conversations into appropriate queues, as well as helping us to surface customer data- helping us to delivery personalised conversations, specifically: ‘Notes’ and ‘Conversations’– allowed us to quickly understand whether the person had talked to us before, which helped our operations team with background information. ‘Snooze’ - allowed us to go back to key influencers after the campaign. ‘Klout Topics’ - gave us a quick snapshot of the individual’s interests, which we used to try and tie back to the Sunday opening message. For example, if someone was interested in gardening, then this opened up the opportunity for us to reply to the customer with an “open around you” message about them visiting us before their Sunday trip to the garden center. ‘Klout Score’ - understanding this was helpful to amplify the campaign by giving us the opportunity to engage with those with a high influence quickly/in the moment, and in the process – encourage them to retweet (for example- when the Church of England tweeted). ‘Import’ - allowed us to import particular tweets from influencers, and participate in conversations – based on what was trending at the time, for example, The Open.   Our results   The campaign was extremely effective and we exceeded all of our campaign objectives and benchmarks in just one day:   Campaign objectives: Reach and awareness of Sunday openings core message. Hit social media engagement rates of 1.5% on Twitter Increase visits to the branch finder on PostOffice.co.uk. Increase volume and income in Mails category.   Results: Over 2 million impressions on Twitter. Average engagement rate of 6.01% on Twitter (way above benchmark). #LoveSundays trended organically, without paying for a Promoted Trend. 866% increase in branch finder page views versus previous weekend.   We also had several thousand more customers in the week immediately after #LoveSundays. Across web and in-branch it grew volume (7%), value (10%) and income (5%) for instant short term gain in trading.   The campaign highlighted the importance and effect that good quality customer interactions can have on amplifying a campaign and changing perceptions of a brand, just as much – or more - than broadcasting status updates. As such, we expect both teams (customer service and marketing) to be working much closer together for future campaigns, as well as upskilling our customer care agents with marketing skills, so they can spot more ‘moments’ to help amplify our corporate messaging within their replies.   For more, please visit https://storify.com/PostOffice/the-post-office-is-changing    
Company: AmBank (M) Berhad Entry submitted by:  Anna Ramly / Nurul Hana Mariana Muhammad (Assistant Manager) Community: TRUE by AmBank – TRUE Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   AmBank Group is one of Malaysia’s premier fi... See more...
Company: AmBank (M) Berhad Entry submitted by:  Anna Ramly / Nurul Hana Mariana Muhammad (Assistant Manager) Community: TRUE by AmBank – TRUE Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   AmBank Group is one of Malaysia’s premier financial solutions Groups with 40 years of legacy in understanding Malaysian customers and provides a wide range of both conventional and Islamic financial products and services. While AmBank Group continues to grow dynamically and gain recognition as Malaysia’s preferred financial solutions group, its strategic partnerships with key global players has paved the way for greater international connectivity. Complementing its strong reputation as a key financial solution provider in Malaysia, its partnerships with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), Insurance Australia Group (IAG) and MetLife Inc has brought new energy and value in how the Group conducts its business to better serve its markets.  TRUE by AmBank, a solution designed for young professionals, is a new addition to the AmBank Group family and comprises not only of a TRUE Everyday Banking Kit (debit and credit card) but also the first bank in Malaysia to offer a digital community platform – TRUE Lab.   The TRUE by AmBank Story:   About two years ago, a group of young professionals sitting in an office in the city of vibrant Kuala Lumpur came up with an exciting concept to bring a fresh new perspective to banking.   The target market? Quite simply, young professionals. Thus came the creation of TRUE by AmBank, which was developed with the support of parent company AmBank (M) Berhad, one of the largest financial institutions in Malaysia, to attract an emerging and influential segment with strong purchasing power as well as abundance of ideas who’ll soon be shaping the future of the economy and the world.   The TRUE by AmBank brand consist of two concepts - The TRUE Everyday Banking Kit and TRUE Lab, Malaysia’s first digital, crowd-sourcing platform, designed to listen to the needs of young professionals (YPs) and banking customers nationwide.   Our unique promotion and goal   The TRUE Potential Campaign As part of the introduction to TRUE Lab, we designed a campaign to leverage on the power of online community to empower and engage in conversations with our target segment – Young Professionals.   The campaign concept was developed from insights that many Young Professionals are not exploring their true potential to have a more fulfilled life – and this could mean being a better human being or perhaps even a change in career path.   The goal was to crowd source participant’s untapped potential and dreams while sparking conversations and steer the community to actively engage in dialogues on TRUE Lab.   The campaign utilized the Lithium platform for participants to submit their entries on the ideation page, share and invite their family and friends to vote.     Our tactics and strategy for promotion   We went to the streets of Kuala Lumpur and quizzed Young Professionals on their dreams, goals and ambitions, only to uncover that most professionals stop pursuing their TRUE potential because of the rat race or money.   To create awareness, we developed an ad campaign targeted to the online digital space: ie YouTube, Facebook, blogs, Google, LinkedIn, Nom Nom and featured prominent Malaysian bloggers to entice those dream seekers to join TRUE Lab and share their ideas with their family and friends and invite them to vote or kudo their submissions. The kudo function was a factor in our judging criteria as the most popular ideas were then curated into the semifinals of the judging process.   The strategy of this campaign was to encourage users to share their dreams and aspirations, with the aim to get users to be familiar with using their voice in the community for future crowd-sourcing initiatives.     Campaign Results   The marketing ringgit spent on Facebook PPLA, Facebook PPVA, YouTube pre-roll ads and Google Display Networks proved to be effective when there was traffic driven to TRUE Lab, which resulted in the increase of membership registration and participation of the campaign. From this campaign alone, we received: 146,502 page views, 80,852 visits, 67,834 unique visitors, 1,309 new members 256 ideas and 1358 kudos Facebook - 9,153,793 impressions LinkedIn – 99,026 impressions YouTube – 1,059,607 impressions, 232,448 views, 171,858 unique viewers YouTube Masthead (Mobile) – 135,781 clicks, 7,115,162 clicks         YouTube Trueview Results over six-week period     Nom Nom Promoted Content (Blogs)   Impressions: 4,875,796 Clicks: 5,273       Key Learnings People loved the videos! – Facebook PPVA (Page Post Video Ad) achieved higher results than PPLA (Page Post Link Ad) with larger audience engagement level Mobile capability was essential to this campaign. Having a YouTube masthead for mobile helped increase clicks since it reached 2.8x more impressions than the desktop version. Kudo function enabled us to use this as part of our judging criteria to analyse popularity of ideas Having the ‘Share’ button in the Lithium platform allowed participants to share their submissions on social media, which helped bring more traffic into the website  
Company:  Digi Telecommunications Entry submitted by: Lee Yang Ching (Associate - Community Manager) Community: Digi Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Digi is a leading mobile communications company providing a comprehensiv... See more...
Company:  Digi Telecommunications Entry submitted by: Lee Yang Ching (Associate - Community Manager) Community: Digi Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Digi is a leading mobile communications company providing a comprehensive range of affordable, convenient and easy to use wireless services to simplify and enrich the lives of its customers.   Our unique promotion and goal    Digi is one of Malaysia’s leading telecommunications providers who is dedicated in providing innovative and wholesome user experiences. In 2015, we launched Community, Malaysia’s first people-powered hub that serves as a platform for Digi users, new and existing, to get answers to any and all of their questions.       To further help customers take charge and easily manage their accounts, we also provided customers with the MyDigi app. Customers could check their usage, pay their bills, and even buy additional subscriptions or credit reloads.   Both platforms were created to empower our customers and also provide them with a more seamless experience with Digi. However, one key challenge faced was that not many customers were aware of these platforms and thus not utilizing its unique features.   Hence, our keys goals were to: Teach users how to use Community and increase usage of ‘Kudos’ (the Like button) Increase membership and engagement on Community Awareness of the MyDigi app and its functions   The MyDigi Contest   As Malaysia’s first people-powered hub, we wanted to educate our customers that they were empowered to contribute and further shape the experiences of other Digi users. Hence, we came up with a strategy to help us achieve all 3 key goals at one go; the MyDigi contest.   We ran the contest via a blogpost on Community and incorporated attractive prizes, 30 Lenovo A369i smartphones to hook audiences and spark interest to participate in the contest.     Upon getting their attention through the awesome prizes, we then asked a question other telco service providers rarely asked:   "As a Digi customer, I would like to have <insert feature/idea/answer here> in the MyDigi app because <reason>.”   We kept the participation mechanics within 3 simple steps:     To sustain interest and encourage more creative submissions, we gave away 2 smartphones daily to the Top 2 entries of the day. Winners were selected based on the most creative and relevant, and also received the highest number of Kudos (Like button).   This tactic helped to ensure that participants submitted quality entries whilst empowering other Community members to give an entry they liked a “Kudo”, a key feature of Community that encouraged honest and helpful contributions to other users.   In order to comment or Kudo an entry, users needed to sign into our Community which helped boost new membership and engagement on Community. This tactic also helped to educate users on how Community works and experience the empowerment they have on this people-powered hub.   Through this contest we also managed to increase awareness and functionalities of the MyDigi app as users had reason to download and experience the app to share their suggestions on how the app could be better.   Our results   We received 83 entries from Digi users who had great ideas on improving the MyDigi app Community page views increased by 5% during contest period. User Growth from Jan – Feb (during the contest) was double the average monthly growth at 20% (average 10%) Blog page views leap by 76% more views with the contest blog post itself received over 5,300 views (average view 121) (making up 49% of total blog post views), and received 86 Kudos (86 times more than the average of 1 Kudo per post) for all the comments. Overall in 2015, we grew to have an average of 75K monthly unique visitors by the end of the year, with page views averaging at about 185K per month.   We successfully increased membership and engagement on Community through a simple strategy that inadvertently taught users how to use community and Kudos, whilst creating awareness about the MyDigi app and its functions.  
Company:  Orange Espagne SAU Entry submitted by: Daniel López Nieto (SocialMedia/Customer Care) Community: Orange Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Spain is the second market in importance for Orange Group, one of the mo... See more...
Company:  Orange Espagne SAU Entry submitted by: Daniel López Nieto (SocialMedia/Customer Care) Community: Orange Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Spain is the second market in importance for Orange Group, one of the most prominent telecom companies in the world, with more than 263 million clients during 2015.   Through different brands – Orange itself, newly acquired Jazztel, amena and Simyo, we have the trust of more than 19 million clients in Spain making daily use of our fixed and mobile services as well as TV.   Our unique promotion and goal    Organization of the offline “Event for superusers”, a meeting in the Orange Spain offices. The goals were:   Personally meet the most active users of the Orange Community. Show them the way we work daily on the Community. Get feedback and ideas to improve.   The event, that lasted a whole day, included talks of agents and community managers of the Orange Community, talks of directors of different areas of the company, an award ceremony for superusers and a focus group session to gather feedback for improvement.   The event also included an informal lunch in a restaurant in Madrid, as a way of bonding with the users, where everyone expressed their love for the event and encouraged us to repeat it on a frequent basis.   Our strategy and tactics for our community    The marketing campaign began with a gamification strategy to encourage participation of the Community users. We also encouraged them to register and participate in the Community through the different social media profiles of Orange. The gamification program was based on the challenge to obtain different medals for those with active participation. Four types of superusers were established: Solucionadores (or Solvers): They resolve doubts and problems of the community users. Friendly: Constant participation, always positive, in the different categories of the community. Master Tekkies: Expert users in different áreas (smartphone tricks, gadget and mobile reviews, etc.). Shopping Assistant: They recommend the most adequate tariff, Smartphone or offer to those clients in need of a certain product.     Users under these roles were recognized with customized medals that appeared in their profiles. Also, their participation was shown publicly in the community rankings.     Once they were identified, we created a private fórum only for superusers, where they receive the latest news about the Company and we offer them to be beta testers of some of our products.     After several months of constant activity in the private fórum, the superusers were contacted individually to invite them to the “Orange Superusers” event in Madrid. During the event, they received an award for their hard work on the community, a pack containing different Orange products, including a Smartphone.   They also had the opportunity to give a little thank you speech where everybody attended: superusers, directors of the company and the team in charge of the communities.     After the event, both External and Internal Communications created press notes and other communication published in several media and social networks.       Since then, the activity of the superusers increased, and it is actually themselves who promote other users to be a future superuser of the community. They have asked us to repeat the event in the near future.   Our results   The event was a total success, almost all of the superusers came to Madrid from different cities in Spain, some from as far as the isle of Ibiza. Engagement has improved (posts, problem solving, kudos…) and some of the ideas and suggestions from the event are now in practice.   Everyone that attended (superusers and company employees) published afterwards positive messages in their Twitter and Facebook profiles. And Orange sent an internal note to all employees detailing the marketing action that took place.    
Company: upc cablecom GmbH Entry submitted by: Oliver Lutz (Project Manager Social) Community: upc cablecom Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   upc cablecom is a leading provider of communication and entertainment in Switz... See more...
Company: upc cablecom GmbH Entry submitted by: Oliver Lutz (Project Manager Social) Community: upc cablecom Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   upc cablecom is a leading provider of communication and entertainment in Switzerland. Almost 1.4 million customers place their trust in the company’s various products for television, Internet, telephony and mobile.   The regional organisation for Austria/Switzerland generated revenue of CHF 1.7 billion in 2015 with more than 2,500 employees. upc cablecom has a strong parent company behind it in Liberty Global, which is headquartered in the UK.   Our unique promotion   upc cablecom had been running a community on an outdated platform for about 4 years. This platform was extremely limited in terms of moderation capabilities, gamification and features. Community moderators were faced with highly negative sentiment which could not be dealt with properly.   Lithium community was launched in June 2015 for upc. Target was to provide a scalable technology layer which could be used to further develop social activities. Expected benefit for the business was to provide an integrated state-of-the-art social and community technology for ease of use and effectiveness.   Specific goals we wanted to achieve (business case):   Quantitative: Increase NPS Decrease support cost   Qualitative: Improve sentiment drastically Go personal, human connection, adapt tonality, show the faces behind the company. Solidify the connections with our customers Increase internal awareness for social / community   Our strategy and tactics for community promotion   Based on our overall social strategy we defined tactics to gain the objectives listed above.   Tactics: Go personal and become truly social Surprise your customer – build human connections for the brand. Show presence onsite and offsite Try as much as you can, take up what works, abandon what does not work!   Since launch in June 2015 we worked on the following areas: Sweepstakes Videos Blog Community Live Talks Live Events Super Hero Programme Newsletters, personal letters   1) SWEEPSTAKES:    Push registration sweepstake   Target: Push registrations   Newsletter campaign for our customers in order to increase registration rate of the support community. Customer activity: Register and tell us why you deserve the new iphone 6s. Prize: iphone 6s     Halloween sweepstake   Target: Increase awareness and usage, create fun-factors   For Halloween we organized a sweepstake on tickets for the most exclusive Halloween party in Switzerland.   Customer activity: Tell us what your favorite horror movie is….   Sweepstake article in the blog       We produced a self-ironic YouTube Video (see chapter “Videos”) where we created a context between Halloween and a buggy product feature.   New avatars created for Halloween Especially for the occasion of Halloween we extended the avatar offering with a range of “spooky avatars”.     2) VIDEOS   We produced a number of homemade low-budget videos on different topics.   Examples:   Community promotional video Promoting the community. Video was used as TrueView campaign during 3 weeks and was published on YouTube. Main actor of the video clip is a community moderator. One of our community super users acted within this clip as well.     The „making-of” this video was published in one of our blog articles.   Halloween Video Self-ironic spooky Halloween video with reference to a buggy feature of one of our products.    Connect Box unboxing Video Production of an unboxing video for a newly launched modem. The product manager presented the new product. Users could ask questions online.     3) BLOG   Target: Content Marketing; drive traffic! We kicked off a blog in parallel with the community launch. Blog articles are produced on a regular basis and drive traffic to the community and to our website.     4) LIVE TALKS   Target: Increase engagement, drive traffic   To become even more personal we introduced a Community Live Talk on a bi-monthly basis. We are discussing specific topics with internal or external experts live. We got engaged on senior management level and brought senior management into our live talks. Users can ask questions upfront or during the live-session.   WLAN Live Talk       5) LIVE EVENTS   Target: Increase engagement For this year’s big company event we raffled tickets within the community. This generated a lot of interest and we had many community members on-site during the event. They got special treatment before, during and after the event and were really enthusiastic about it.   Live Ticker In parallel, community guys organized a live ticker during the event which was broadcasted via our community blog.     6) SUPERUSER PROGRAMME   Target: Strengthen peer-to-peer support We launched a new superuser programme this spring. Superusers are the fuel of our community and we rely highly on them in terms of peer to peer support. The relationship has been intensified over the past months. Our superusers love the programme and the appreciation which comes with it.     7) NEWSLETTERS/ PERSONAL LETTERS   Newsletters Target: Drive engagement A community newsletter is being sent out on a monthly basis to all registered users. We promote relevant topics and make sure that customers perceive us as number 1 source for relevant support information.     Personal letters Towards the end of the year we sent personal letters to the most active users of the community and said „Thank you“ for their engagement and their contributions..   Moreover, we produced a small video explaining with what we had been busy with during 2015.       Our results   Sweepstakes Videos Blog Community Live Talks Live Events Superuser Programme Newsletters, personal letters     1. Sweepstakes Push registration sweepstake 290 new registrations over 350 participants   Halloween avatars & sweepstake More than 100 users changed their avatar to one out of the Halloween range. Very positive feedback on the self-ironic video    2. Videos Community Promoclip Over 36’000 views on YouTube. Very positive feedback on YouTube & within the Community The YouTube Trueview-campaign performed clearly over the Google Benchmarks.     Connect Box unboxing: Top position in the (Google) SERPs for the product name 70 comments/questions on the new modem within the blog 8000 views on YouTube (without further promotion) 230 participants in the competition Very positive feedback on the personal style of the announcement     3. Blog 130 articles, 760 comments, 80’000 page views, 430 kudos since launch   4. Community Live Talks Over 40 questions raised by Community members upfront and during the talk High senior management attention Based on the results of our community live talks senior management decided to use the live talk format for internal communications as well.   5. Live Event & Liveticker High interest in the 20 seats Over 3000 page views blog visits (LiveTicker) during the event Very positive feedback (external & internal) High interest in the 20 seats Over 3000 page views blog visits (LiveTicker) during the Event Very positive feedback (external & internal) 6. Superuser programme - Programme was kicked off with 4 superheroes - Continuous exchange via Superhero board and Skype - Personal meetings on a regular basis   7.Newsletters and personal letters   Newsletters Open Rate ca. 35%, Click Rate ca. 20%, Resulting in a regular increase of contributions (Boards & Blogs)    Personal letters Intensified relationship with the top users
Company:  AT & T Entry submitted by: Becky Woodworth (Social Media Sr. Strategy Mgr) Community: AT&T Community Forums Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) helps millions around the globe connect with leading enter... See more...
Company:  AT & T Entry submitted by: Becky Woodworth (Social Media Sr. Strategy Mgr) Community: AT&T Community Forums Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) helps millions around the globe connect with leading entertainment, mobile, high-speed Internet and voice services. We’re the world’s largest provider of pay TV. We have TV customers in the U.S. and 11 Latin American countries. We offer the best global coverage of any U.S. wireless provider*. And we help businesses worldwide serve their customers better with our mobility and highly secure cloud solutions.   *Global coverage claim based on offering discounted voice and data roaming; LTE roaming; voice roaming; and world-capable smartphone and tablets in more countries than any other U.S. based carrier.    Tune into the AT&T/DIRECTV Merger!   Our unique promotion and goal    Following AT&T’s 2015 acquisition of DIRECTV, we began plans to merge our two communities. We collaborated with our skilled Lithium success team to outline the migration mechanics potentially affecting 1.65M users (AT&T – 1.5M members with Lithium; DIRECTV – 150k members with Jive.) We wanted not only to incorporate 200k DIRECTV posts and 150k users into the AT&T Community, but also to establish trust in, and build enthusiasm for, the combined community experience.   Our strategy for community promotion   After the merger, we began with a soft launch of a new DIRECTV community within the AT&T community, seeding content and creating a one-stop community experience for our customers. We also reached out to DIRECTV community super-users at this time, months before the content migration, to introduce ourselves, let them know we valued their participation and to invite them to check out the DIRECTV forum on the AT&T Community.   When the time came to migrate the legacy DIRECTV community’s membership and content, we knew we had to create an effortless customer experience for DIRECTV and AT&T customers, and just as importantly, we wanted to present the migration in a way that would help the migrated community members feel at home.   To this end, we invited DIRECTV’s most well-known super user – Litzdog911 – to be the “voice of the merger” within the DIRECTV community. Rather than having our team of AT&T employees try to communicate the benefits of the migration to DIRECTV customers, we encouraged Litzdog911 to share what he thought was important to fellow DIRECTV community members. On the DIRECTV home page – and in his own voice - Litzdog911 bubbled over with excitement and explained why he felt the change was so positive, i.e., the advantage of the AT&T/Lithium user experience.     With an eye toward an effortless customer experience, every communication (including Litzdog911’s personal message) pointed to “one source of truth” – an AT&T Community Blog outlining the timetable, sharing illustrative “how to” examples, covering FAQ’s, etc.     To increase awareness, we used our #1 featured home page tile to point users to the blog.     Additional communication elements included Private Messages to AT&T super users as well as an announcement in their lounge; a system notification to DIRECTV users and regularly-updated home page messaging in both communities.   Post-migration in January, 2016: Communication continued with home page recognition for LItzdog911, our January ACE (super user) of the Month…..     ….plus we contextually-placed authentication reminders:     Our results   Partnering with our Lithium success team – and with only 12 hours of “read only” down time -               We migrated 200k DIRECTV posts 100% successfully into their assigned boards and categories.               We migrated 150k DIRECTV users – including their user stats and avatars - with only three users experiencing minor, easily corrected issues.   In the first 30 days post-migration, 309k unique visitors benefited from DIRECTV content – a 27% increase as compared to prior months on its previous platform.   From January 1, 2016 to March 23, 2016 in DIRECTV, we have enjoyed:             1.36M page views             766k visits             588k unique visitors             12k posts             800 Accepted Solutions created   We will continue to adjust the volume, and we might even give the remote control a shake – but we are sure not changing the channel on our great DIRECTV forum community. It’s where it needs to be – on our Lithium platform, with our combined 1.65M members fully understanding what we did, and why we did it. Like Litzdog911 said, “It’s more fun over here!”  
Company: PayPal Entry submitted by: Carolynn Bae  (Head of APAC Customer Early Life) Community: PayPal Headstart Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   PayPal is a leading technology platform company that enables digital and mobile pay... See more...
Company: PayPal Entry submitted by: Carolynn Bae  (Head of APAC Customer Early Life) Community: PayPal Headstart Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   PayPal is a leading technology platform company that enables digital and mobile payments on behalf of consumers and merchants worldwide. We put our customers at the center of everything we do. We strive to increase our relevance for consumers, merchants, friends and family to access and move their money anywhere in the world, anytime, on any platform and through any device.   We provide safer and simpler ways for businesses of all sizes to accept payments from merchant websites, mobile devices and applications, and at offline retail locations through a wide range of payment solutions.   Our unique promotion   We launched the PayPal Headstart Community to increase engagement with small business owners in 6 countries to help them through to their first transaction after signing up for PayPal and for existing businesses to increase our share of checkout through PayPal. Rather than launch the new community in the usual way we gave business owners the opportunity to connect with experts through the community and ask a question that really mattered to them and their business simultaneously helping the community gain traction and also help the business owners. We called the campaign Ask an Expert and had 3x ecommerce experts and a $100 Google AdWords incentive to kickstart the conversation.     Our strategy and tactics for community promotion   We provided a small incentive to encourage businesses to open the invitation and to submit high quality questions. We leveraged the experts bio’s as an email and social media campaign utilizing Facebook custom audiences to capture the attention of our existing business and funnel them to the community. Our hypothesis was that business owners who are more engaged with us as they set up their business are more likely to successfully integrate PayPal into their businesses and receive their first transaction.     Our results   Within 3 months we had a 2.5% lift in number of businesses making their first successful PayPal transaction across all 6 markets. And unexpectedly we also had a significant 1.84x increase in number of transactions for business segment that had activated PayPal in the last 3 months. During the 2 week campaign period we had over 500 new posts and 100k views.   Value Analytics YTD Results as of 3/31/16: n = 266 75% of respondents indicated they were able to find the information they were looking for. 66% of those respondents indicated they would have phoned or emailed had they not found their answer.
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (2 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, busine... See more...
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (2 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 80,000 sites make better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW ® .   Our Unique Promotion   We launched external and internal Super User programs to give a recognition and commitment boost to super active community members. These programs publicly honored our strongest members for their outstanding contributions and gave them tools to expand their community leadership so they can get more out of their community experience – and help the community as a whole.   External SAS Super Users felt special because they: Received a badge and special rank icon that appears on their community avatar:  Had access to a private "Super Users" forum, where they can confer with their fellow "supers" and the SAS community managers. Were invited to "Super Users"-only meetings with SAS staff, where they get the inside scoop on SAS communities and other SAS goings-on. Received privileges like moving stray posts to the proper board and marking spam. Received periodic surprise community/SAS swag and personal gifts in the mail. They completed a “What are your favorites” Q/A so we knew what to send them. On their birthdays, we posted a “Happy Birthday” message on the community homepage banner that is visible only to the member with a birthday.       Internal SAS Super FREQs (FREQ is a name of a commonly used SAS procedure) received:   A special rank icon and badge:  Community management rights such as moving stray posts, featuring good ones and editing topics that need clarity. Note of appreciation and thanks to each of their managers. Choice of community swag: branded coffee cup or USB charger.     Our Promotional Strategy and Tactics   We identified our first pool of super members by analyzing community activity from Lithium bulk data. We decided to appoint a new group of Super Users/FREQS every six months and that “alumni” members will be awarded an Emeritus status and special badge. Example for Super Users:   We then defined program parameters like: Guidelines complete with “how-to” instructions for executing special tasks, posted on private board:   Promotions to serve two purposes: recognize super members and elevate awareness of communities in general.   Promotional tactics include:   Super Users Community Memo blog post and Getting Started TKB article. Feature on community home page: Social updates on SAS corporate, user-specific and personal channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook, and external SAS-related communities, using multiple text variations, headlines and this social tile:     Super FREQS: Intranet article that highlighted employee contributions and what it means to participate in the community, including quotes from the Super FREQs themselves on their activity. Intranet video about how being a community star is like being a super hero.   Be a Hero       Results   Expanded community management coverage Using bulk data from Lithium, we saw that Super Users acted on new privileges like topic moves. From Feb. 1 – March 27, Super Users moved 92 topics to appropriate boards while the community management team moved 35. What’s more, these moves occurred at all hours of the day/night due to the global scope of our Super Users. In effect, the Super User program allowed for 24/7 community moderation; our Super Users became an extension of the SAS communities team.   Our Super Users increased their participation in the communities, as well. Analyzing the 60 days prior to the inception of the Super User program with the 60 days post-program launch we saw:   Super Users increased their shared content/messages posted between 18-90%. The number of accepted solutions given to Super Users increased between 30%-300%. Yes, you read that right: 300% for one Super User in particular.   Super User social sharing of program perks In one instance, a Super User shared a piece of Super User swag through a creative social update. The swag installment sent to Super Users was a pen made out of reclaimed wood from an old SAS building on campus headquarters. The package included an article about the building’s history and a note from SAS Co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight. One of the Super Users tweeted about the pen, thanking Dr. Goodnight publicly for the gift.  
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (1 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, busine... See more...
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (1 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 80,000 sites make better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW ® .   Our Unique Promotion   We used the transition to Lithium as an opportunity to relaunch, reenergize and redesign SAS Support Communities. We aimed to make it easier for members to: Find correct information faster with intuitive searches Connect with peers Share what they know with others   We wanted members to recognize the immediate benefits of the new site, including: A quality mobile experience A new system of ranks and badges that rewards community contributions Better SPAM filters, keeping the noise level down so they can enjoy the good content   Our  Promotional Strategies and Tactics    The community management team deployed an integrated communication plan geared toward new and potential community members, employees and social media influencers to generate awareness of the relaunch.   After finalizing a launch-specific tagline for SAS Support Communities, “Your forum, transformed,” we came up with a succinct, evergreen tagline that invites community action: “Ask. Find. Share.”   Then we identified key pieces of “getting started” information for members, and produced six community articles and videos covering the points:   Welcome to the SAS Support Communities 3 ways to show off your skills on the SAS Support Communities How to get fast, helpful answers Community etiquette: The do’s and don’ts of the SAS Support Communities How to add SAS syntax to your post 5 features of an awesome SAS Communities profile   We held a soft launch phase for “super” active employee and external community members to gather feedback and create a sense of ownership among this influential group from the outset.   Social proved to be a critical channel for all promotional efforts. Over several weeks, we promoted the following assets across SAS corporate, user-specific and personal channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook, and external SAS-related communities:   How-to videos SAS Users blog post Six social tiles with quotes from community super users. Examples:     Multiple SAS-owned websites promoted the news including the SAS homepage, support site, and appropriate support pages like SAS Training and Books. Three SAS user e-newsletters promoted it as well.   The relaunch received third-party validation through earned media placements including a Huffington Post interview and Social Business Engine podcast episode.   We internally promoted the launch through a video, article on the SAS intranet, post on social media blog, email blast to marketing and sales teams, posts on internal communities and email notices to other communications groups.   Our Results   SAS Support Communities have enjoyed healthy membership and web traffic since their inception in 2006. The relaunch built on this momentum resulting in bumps to online visits, membership and engagement.   Analysis* of SAS Communities traffic, post launch: Comparing Oct 1, 2015-March 27, 2016 to same time last year (Oct 1, 2014-March 27, 2015) 19% increase in sessions (visits) (1.53M vs 1.28M) 25% increase in page views (3M vs 2.4M) Higher rate of return visitors (80% returning vs. new, instead of 74.5% returning vs. new) 31% increase in new registered members rate (14,510 vs 11,067)   *Sources: Google Analytics and Lithium bulk data/history   Traffic to specific promotional tactics contributed to the online traffic boost. Here are a few sample metrics:   Cumulative views on how-to pieces: Articles with embedded videos: 4,407 Stand-alone YouTube videos: 1,061   Breakdown:   Welcome to the SAS Support Communities: article: 1,399; video: 325 3 ways to show off your skills on the SAS Support Communities: article: 1,064; video: 265 How to get fast, helpful answers: article: 560; video: 123 Community etiquette: The do’s and don’ts of the SAS Support Communities: article: 738; video: 77 How to add SAS syntax to your post: article: 471; video: 200 5 features of an awesome SAS Communities profile: article: 175; video: 71     SAS-owned social channel engagement:   We sprinkled promotions from corporate and user-focused social channels for months following the community relaunch date of Sept. 8, 2015. From Sept. 8 through Dec. 31, 2015, here are a few promotion results.   137 posts 940 engagements (709 likes, 13 comments, 218 shares) 282,500 account followers   Sample comments:   1. A quoted active member retweeted and pointed to specific SAS product board:     2. Same member replied and cited tagline, Find. Ask. Share:     3. One update received a technical question from a SAS user:     4.  Supporting visuals: Please include any supporting visuals/graphics into your above answers. Insert them into your text copy, so we’re clear on desired positioning of the graphics. We will accept videos for this entry. All videos must be submitted as publicly viewable links on YouTube or Vimeo.   Answer #2 includes links to external promotions, such as community articles with embedded videos. In addition, here are direct YouTube links to the videos:   SAS Support Communities: YouTube playlist of all introduction videos Welcome! Boost your rep! How to get answers… Community guidelines Create an awesome profile New for SAS programmers    
Company: Vodafone Germany Entry submitted by: Sebastian Schärtl (Project Coordinator Digital Services ) Community:  Vodafone Forum  Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     Vodafone Germany is a telecommunication company based in Ger... See more...
Company: Vodafone Germany Entry submitted by: Sebastian Schärtl (Project Coordinator Digital Services ) Community:  Vodafone Forum  Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     Vodafone Germany is a telecommunication company based in Germany, with more than 14,000 employees and it's headquarters in Duesseldorf. It is part of the Vodafone Group, one of the largest telecommunication companies in the world. Currently, more than 45 million people are making use of Vodafone services in Germany.   Since 2015, Vodafone Germany and Vodafone Kabel Deutschland have become one company. Vodafone Germany provides mobile service, fixed network, internet and TV from a single source. Thereby, Vodafone Germany offers the customer a unique converged service experience. Converged service has an impact on the service strategy as well.   A merger brand strategy   Vodafone Germany and Kabel Deutschland decided to implement a common brand strategy. Following this approach we decided to merge our communities as well. Each community was based on different providers.   However, both communities had their own identities, topics, rules and working principles. For this reason – and to make them part of the story - service agents were deeply involved in the project to represent the agent’s perspective of the community.   Based on their platform expertise and operational experience, they provided the basis for a common community management and harmonized principles wherever necessary. Workshops revealed the key differences in moderation approaches between the Vodafone Germany and Kabel Deutschland communities.   In addition, agents visited each other to understand their daily business. This encouraged agents to work together more closely and intensively. Community coffee cups and a team poster were created to promote the team spirit. Above all, agents appreciated the team building measures:     Vodafone Community used the header to update the users. A changing visualization highlighted the upcoming merger. Additionally, more details were communicated within the community itself. Both user groups should feel as one new common community.   Our Super-User Event   Of course the user involvement is crucial as an active user base is core to any community. Vodafone Germany and Kabel Deutschland communities together accumulate more than 40 active Super-Users. Users appreciate posts from Super-Users, as they are considered authentic customer feedback. This year, one of the Super-users wrote his 23,000 th post. To continue the good cooperation, the Vodafone Community invited all Super-Users to a merger event in Düsseldorf. All participants received detailed merger information. During a brainstorming session, we, the core project team, agents and Super-Users, developed the major components of our Vodafone Community slogan “Know. Share. Help.”     Some users were skeptical, but Super-Users supported the community, to convince them of the advantages of the new converged community. In cooperation with the Super-Users, the Community also tidied up and moved posts. After having cleaned up, all content was migrated to the merged community, not to lose valuable user input. All users were migrated automatically as well, to make the move as simple as possible for the customers.   At the beginning of the common community, each Super-User got a personalized Community coffee cup and received welcome flyers.     Other events and contests   Related to the upcoming Christmas 2015, the Vodafone Community defined a strategy to get users engaged with the new community. During a competition, users learned more about the new community design structure and had the opportunity to win prizes. Users engaged with the Vodafone and Vodafone Kabel Deutschland product portfolio:     After the merger, all agents got an invitation to celebrate at the headquarters in Düsseldorf. Besides networking, the team analyzed the current collaboration, identified open issues and defined measures to get rid of them. Also the formerly separate Super-User events will be one common central happening in the future.   Now more than 200,000 users are on the platform to exchange, discuss and answer questions. The Vodafone Community is comprised of almost 1 Million posts. Wherever the community is not able to support, Vodafone service agents provide expert know-how.