Building Customer Marketing from the Ground Up: Apptio’s Journey to a Scalable, Impactful Program

Apptio’s customer marketing team, led by Katie Strange and Lauren Rappold, has crafted a model for growing customer marketing from a one-person function into a robust, scalable program. Their story illustrates how structured growth, stakeholder collaboration, and a focus on measurable outcomes can transform customer marketing into a powerful driver for customer-led growth and lifecycle marketing.

The Challenge: Creating a Cohesive Customer Marketing Program from Scratch

When Katie joined Apptio, she was the sole customer marketing hire and tasked with building an impactful customer marketing organization. At the time, customer marketing initiatives were scattered across different teams, with no formalized structure. Her first steps included meeting with key leaders from sales, customer success (CS), and product to understand existing efforts, identify gaps, and secure executive support.

This groundwork led to three initial objectives:

• Developing a Customer Journey: Mapping a post-sales customer journey aligned with Apptio’s broader goals was crucial. This allowed the team to identify key touchpoints for customer marketing programs and build initiatives around those moments.
• Establishing a Formal Executive Champion Program: Sales and CS needed a structured approach to engage executives at client organizations. Apptio’s customer marketing team established a program to support and guide these interactions, adding measurable value to client relationships.
• Launching an Install-Base Program: By working closely with sales, Katie’s team built an install-base program to identify the next best product fit, accelerating upsell opportunities.

The Crawl-Walk-Run Framework for Growing Customer Marketing Programs

Katie and Lauren used a phased approach to guide the team’s growth and the rollout of customer marketing programs, following a “Crawl-Walk-Run” model.

1. Crawl (0-3 Months): Laying the Foundation

In the initial phase, Katie focused on understanding internal needs and building strong relationships with key stakeholders. This phase emphasized creating immediate impact areas that established customer marketing’s role in supporting lifecycle marketing. Quick wins, like aligning existing field marketing initiatives with customer accounts, showcased the team’s value early on.

2. Walk (3-9 Months): Building and Launching Programs

During the Walk phase, Katie’s team began aligning customer marketing programs to the customer journey and setting up KPIs. This stage involved testing and refining initiatives, building dashboards in tools like Tableau and Gainsight, and integrating CS data into customer marketing metrics. By partnering with Apptio’s digital and campaigns teams, they could efficiently launch and track install-base campaigns and other post-sales initiatives.

3. Run (9+ Months): Scaling the Program with Technology and Processes

To sustain growth and increase scalability, Lauren focused on implementing systems that streamlined processes, including a formalized reference and advocacy program powered by Base. The Active Ambassadors program allowed Apptio to engage customer advocates and track advocacy activities, such as peer-to-peer references and product feedback. Integrated with Salesforce, this system enabled sales reps to request references, track engagement, and ensure that no customer was over-utilized for advocacy.

Key Programs and Systems for Scaling Your Customer Marketing

Apptio’s success hinged on creating structured, repeatable processes that allowed the customer marketing team to engage and support customers at scale. Their core programs included:

• Reference and Advocacy Program: The Active Ambassadors program provided a centralized platform for managing references and advocacy efforts, using a Salesforce integration to streamline requests and track attribution. This initiative improved sales efficiency, drove sales velocity, and safeguarded customer relationships by ensuring fair distribution of advocacy requests.
• Executive Champion Program: This initiative formalized executive engagement, allowing sales and CS to partner effectively with top executives at client organizations. The program improved alignment between Apptio’s internal teams and their clients’ leadership, strengthening high-level relationships and boosting retention.
• Install-Base Campaigns: Apptio leveraged targeted install-base campaigns to identify upsell opportunities. By combining Salesforce data with insights from Gainsight and other tools, the team provided tailored recommendations that supported customer growth.

Key Lessons for Building Customer Marketing Programs

Katie and Lauren’s journey from a one-person function to a robust customer marketing team revealed several critical insights for sustainable growth:

1. Secure Executive Sponsorship Early: From the outset, Katie ensured Apptio’s leadership was aligned with customer marketing goals. This executive buy-in, especially from sales and CS leaders, provided the authority needed to drive adoption and secure ongoing support.
2. Enable Sales and CS with User-Friendly Tools: To maximize engagement, Katie and Lauren focused on simplifying processes for sales and CS teams. For example, Apptio’s advocacy and reference program in Base features an “easy button” in Salesforce, allowing sales reps to request references with minimal friction, protecting the customer relationship while accelerating sales velocity.
3. Use Data to Demonstrate Impact: Metrics were built into every program from the start. KPIs tracked through Tableau and Gainsight allowed the team to show measurable results for each initiative, reinforcing the program’s value and helping optimize future campaigns.
4. Leverage Technology for Lifecycle Marketing: Integrating tools like Salesforce, Base, and Sendoso allowed Apptio to automate customer marketing activities and scale efforts effectively. This technology backbone supported Apptio’s lifecycle marketing strategy by providing a seamless process for customer interactions, from onboarding through advocacy.
5. Cultivate a High-Bias-for-Action Team: With limited resources, Katie and Lauren relied on team members who demonstrated initiative, accountability, and flexibility. This allowed them to run fast and build out programs despite headcount constraints, positioning Apptio to deliver on customer-led growth objectives.

Scaling for the Future with a Customer Marketing Platform

Apptio’s phased approach to customer marketing showcases the value of a structured growth model and underscores the importance of stakeholder relationships, scalable technology, and data-driven results. As the team grows, Apptio remains focused on using its customer marketing platform, Base, to drive advocacy, build brand loyalty, and support customer-led growth through a lifecycle marketing lens. Their experience illustrates how strategic investments in customer marketing can elevate the role of advocates, improve customer satisfaction, and contribute to sustained business success.