How can we help get the community more active?

[Guy_Goldstein6]

I'll admit before I start - I'm a long-time fan of the Marketo community and even I've been very slack about this one.

That said - I think this community is amazing, there's a couple of people around here who I follow religiously and I really like hearing the insights and the creative solutions that some of the edge-users in the community come up with.

That said - I think we can all admit that it's a little bit sad that Scott is constantly trying to beef the boards up with posts (which are cool - they're just less community oriented) and It's a little disappointing that there's 5 or 6 real posts every 2 or 3 days.

As a MUG leader I've personally struggled to get people onto the boards and engaged - and I guess my question to everyone is - If the more people on these boards helping get creative juices flowing, the more we all learn - how can we help encourage other users to come on more often, to ask questions, to get involved in discussions, and to be an active part of this community to?

[Josh_Hill13]

Hi Guy,

I feel like the forums are pretty active, esp in the past month. I think Greg gets to a lot of the questions well before us in the US

But MUGs are lacking and I hear from people that the move off LinkedIn didn't go so well. And it's hard to get people to see the Events when they barely login and don't understand the follow and alert functions. I don't have answers here, but maybe there's a way to combine incentives from the Purple program and the access to the userbase to encourage more logins and looking at the MUG area, at the least.

The forums are mostly populated by Champs and people who need help, so there's prob some group of users who are in the middle and need more of a reason to show up. With LI Groups, they were on LI anyway...

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Thanks for this post! We are very aware of the issues at hand regarding MUG engagement, and do wish people would simply log in and see how easy it is. But rest assured it is a top priority of mine this year and I have been working very hard to come up with solutions. If you have not noticed, here are some of the things we're doing:

1. RTP is now working on the homepage for most MUGs (we are slowly rolling this out and testing). So you should most likely see a personalized experience with your MUG called out on the homepage in the left CTA. Note this is based off of IP address. I have seen an increase in MUG membership since this was implemented.
2. First time log in pop up : When you log into Community for the first time you saw a pop up that promoted MUGs, well we are now trying to use RTP on that as well so it's personalized to the users city.
3. Expert Locator allows users to more easily search and find people in their region. We are also working on a leader specific functionality to tie on to this which would allow a leader to send a message to all the users in their region so they could encourage them to join the group.
4. Upcoming User Group Meetings : I'd request all members of Community bookmark this document which is pinned on the right side of Marketing Central​ and I'd ask that the MUG Leaders continue to update the doc as they have meetings!
5. Emails / Reach out
   1. New Customers : I have an email that triggers to new customers after they sign with Marketo to join Community, and one of the benefits there is to join a MUG and why. Remember, educating and getting users into Community is the first step...then we promote MUGs on the homepage!
   2. Current Customers : Scott K. Wilder​ has been working on a program to send emails to current customers also educating them about MUGs, how to log into Community and where to find MUGs

My question to you : Do you think creating LinkedIn groups again would help this engagement? You'd still need to drive members to Community to register.

Any more suggestions around these actions or other, please feel free to share here! We are dedicated to helping the MUGs be as successful as possible.

Best,

Liz

[Frank_Breen2]

Point 1 and 2.
The bad thing about MUGs is that you have to have your address in that MUG location to be accepted, whereas the LinkedIn MUG owner just had to allow you to have access, no matter where you lived. For example RTP showed me the London MUG group a few days ago, I've requested to join but have not been accepted due to my address I assume as I live in Dublin, Ireland. London is an easy flight for me and I'd be happy to meet in London. MUGs should be open to everyone no matter your location, as I'd like to join other MUGs too, as I frequently fly to America and could organise a trip around a MUG somewhere else too. I would prefer MUGs to stay in the community however.

Point 3

I'm a certified expert (30 Oct 2015) and I'm not on the Expert List (even after emailing certification@marketo.com), how is this created, where are you pulling the data from?

[Anonymous]

#1

Great suggestions about opening up the MUG on Community. Liz and I will discuss.

#2

Will get you the Certification Badge, etc. and get you on the locator

(There is a time delay in getting Certification Info on the site)

[Anonymous]

Hi Frank,

Thanks for your comments! The LinkedIn groups were managed by location also, so Community maintained that requirement. However, it was a bit more consistent in LinkedIn because location was always filled out, where as in Community it's not always filled out. I do understand your point about living in a place where you want to be a part of more than one MUG. As Scott said we are looking into ways to help you easily do this!

[Guy_Goldstein6]

Thanks Liz!!!

I certainly see all the effort that gets put in to making the community and the MUGs a success and appreciate all of it!

I think that there's probably a benefit in working with the linkedin groups - but you're right, it's still a whole separate ecosystem so it won't get the result we're after.

I can tell you that I was recently having a conversation with another long-time Marketo veteran, and the value of the community and the fact that it's a strong asset which differentiates Marketo from the rest was certainly part of the discussion.

That said, I've been a part of no less than a dozen new accounts in the past few months and at no point was an effort made to draw my "new selves" into the community. Maybe you could set up a track for new user emails that invites them to the community, and a second email inviting them to their local MUG (where one exists) as part of the basic user onboarding.

The other feedback that I heard a lot after our last MUG was that people were expecting emails about the events and reminders and neither got sent out. To be fair, they did - but only through announcements which meant that by definition the audience was significantly smaller than the total "candidates" for the user group, and they had to opt-in to receive announcements.

In my opinion, the community was probably the single defining feature of Marketo that made me a fanboy and not just a user... Then again - now we're getting into having a forum full of Marketing Automation experts give a Marketing Automation company ideas about Marketing Automation - Maybe you can run a contest

Liz Courter​ and Scott K. Wilder​ everything you're doing is thoroughly appreciated, you just let us know how we can help amplify the effect

-- Guy

[Jason_Hamilton1]

Agree 100% Josh!

Although I know they are two completely different systems it would grate if there was some integration between the two, ie points or pushes from one system to the other.

I do realize that complete integration is likely impossible but some way to connect the two would be helpful.

[Anonymous]

Liz has already jumped in and responded. Just to jump in here -- please let us know if you have any other suggestions for the Community. Thank you for the comment about my adding content to the site -- let me know if there's other content you think I should add, if I should change the frequency, etc. Liz and I are hear to work with you guys to make this place useful

Guy Goldstein​