On November 14th, Act-On’s Team hosted a User Group event in London. By all accounts, it was deemed a huge success. We wanted to share a recap and the presentation slides with you, our customer community so those of you not in attendance can benefit as well. We had over 30 customers join us including several who flew in from Germany, Ireland and Norway. Many thanks to those who participated!

We, as a team, focused on a number of hot topics that our users submitted for discussion:

• Best practices for automation and automated programs
• Optimizations for integrating CRMs
• How to leverage lead scoring and segmentation, including how to create personas
• Learning from peers - exploring how other customers are using marketing automation; success stories and key learnings
• How to measure impact and use Act-On’s reporting tools
• Training and certification resources to optimize use of the platform

Act-On Connect

We also heard at this event, that there are many of you who are unaware of an important customer resource - Act-On Connect.  Act-On Connect is our customer portal that houses key customer resources such as our robust knowledge base, access to support and training, as well as the customer community where you can share tips, tricks, and best practices with your peers. In fact, you’re reading this post in the Act-On Connect Community right now! We encourage all customers to leverage the Act-On Connect customer portal to help them succeed with their marketing automation efforts and initiatives. Search for any of the topics above and you’ll find articles and posts with useful information and how-tos.

Below is a recap of how the agenda flowed with the three sessions. More detail on each session is available in the slides linked below.

Product Roadmap Session

The roadmap vision session with Chief Product Officer, Aaron Johnson, was very well received. Customers eagerly participated in the section where AJ highlighted feature focus areas and requested immediate feedback. 

AJ and the team encouraged customers to raise product requests through the Act-On Connect Community Product Idea Board, and also to join the Early Access Program and Design Partner Program to help influence priorities and feature requests. There was a lot of interest in all of these options. 

Marketing Strategy Session

Act-On Experts, Tatiana Lea and Simon Litt ran a great session entitled, "Understanding and Achieving the End Goals". This was both a strategy session and a product session to make customers aware of the "Art of the Possible". They shared guiding principles, how to develop a marketing strategy, how to build and execute your strategy in Act-On, and ultimately, how to measure success.

Customer Spotlight Panel

Finally, the customer panel session featuring Act-On customers, Jenny Jones from Cunninghams, and Simon Baker from Marlborough Management Group, moderated by AJ, Tatiana, and Simon was insightful and engaging and resulted in some excellent dialogue.

What We Heard From Customers

1. We heard you would benefit from more tips, tricks and best practices on how to get the most from the platform. Not all customers are leveraging the customer portal, Act-On Connect, and are missing out on the valuable content and resources available there. 
2. We learned there’s a desire for more "customer only" webinars where we have customers presenting their uses cases to their peers; how customers went about deploying the use case, what worked well and what they learned for next time.
3. We validated that topics most important to our customers (listed at the top of this post) are beautifully aligned with the focus areas for which we are expanding resources, training, and opportunities for engagement.
4. We heard the desire to have more frequent user groups with work streams on particular topics included in the agenda. In the meantime, there was a request to schedule a less formal gathering so that users can meet and share best practices over a beer. We couldn't agree more!

Again, thank you to all who participated. For those of you who weren't able to make it, you can see the slides here.

Rest assured, we will be hosting more User Groups in the US and EMEA in 2020 and hope you'll join us!

Questions or feedback? Please reply to this post or email Sarah Moore, Customer Marketing directly at sarah.moore@act-on.com