How employee advocacy increased engagement by 394% with Oktopost

Meet IFS

IFS specializes in providing next-generation cloud-based enterprise software globally, delivering award-winning solutions that help companies engage customers, empower employees, and optimize assets. Known for its rapid growth, IFS has a team of over 6,000 individuals across more than 80 countries and is trusted by over 500+ partners and customers worldwide. Their software, particularly the IFS Cloud, is pivotal for organizations aiming to excel at their Moments of Service ™ - the critical point of delivering service when it matters most to their customers.

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The challenge

Thousands of things go into making a business successful, but growing 3x the market average consistently for over 5 years, requires technology that can scale at the same pace. With such growth, the IFS marketing team knew they needed to rapidly increase the number of MQLs generated, while also elevating brand visibility.

With the consistent growth of their corporate social media channels, the team pinpointed an excellent opportunity to tap into the power of employee advocacy to engage their IFS workforce. However, for an advocacy initiative to effectively achieve its marketing objectives, IFS needed to craft a program that would resonate with employees around the globe, make thought leadership accessible, and turn employees into genuine brand ambassadors, at scale.

The Oktopost solution

Making thought-leadership accessible

Rather than the marketing team producing all the content, they partnered with their field experts around the business to ensure that every piece of content created for advocates offered genuine insights that would help position employees as true thought leaders on social media.

These experts ensure content is created for their specific industry, business unit, solution, market unit, or region. This way, the IFS employee advocacy program has relevant content for advocates to easily share across departments. Oktopost made it easy for experts to create this thought leadership content and distribute it through IFS's advocacy program.

This led to 113K brand mentions since implementing Oktopost for advocacy.

Ability to prioritize quality content

Not all content is created equal. Especially when you span across industries and countries around the world. Oktopost enables IFS to ensure content is focused on a specific audience so advocates in the US don't post about an event in the UK and vice versa. Because advocates can select content that is most relevant to their specific audience, IFS has increased their engagement among new audiences.

In addition, by having multiple advocacy boards, IFS is also able to prioritize different content based on the advocate's role in the company. This way, if they want an executive to be the first to share a piece of content, they can easily implement that strategy. Once it's shared, they can move the content to be shared by other employees.

Finally, by being able to see their engagements inside the Oktopost platform, IFS can understand which content resonates most with each audience segment and create more content accordingly. This ensures that they are smart about the types of content they write, so their resources are spent on creating pieces that generate results.

Being able to choose content that resonates with advocates' specific audiences has led to a notable increase in engagement. This tailored approach has truly amplified our brand's reach and impact. Oliver Pilgerstorfer, CMO at IFS

Streamlined content creation with AI

The essence of IFS's advocacy program is to empower their employees.

Taking their thought leadership to the next level, IFS encourages their advocates to write their own content, as these original posts tend to stand out above the noise and receive better engagement.

Recognizing that writing, and tailoring posts are time-consuming and advocates can often get stuck in the creative process, the IFS team trains their advocates on how to use Oktopost's built-in AI technology for message creation to lighten the load, empowering all employees to articulate their thoughts eloquently. As a result, advocates can maintain authenticity and build their personal brand, with or without top-notch writing skills.

This made the adoption of advocacy more accessible across IFS's workforce.

To ensure brand standards are always met, Marketing provides guidance and maintains governance standards within the Oktopost platform.

With Oktopost's AI features, creating authentic content is just two clicks away. This enables our advocates to have an entirely unique post they can go ahead and share with ease. Oliver Pilgerstorfer, CMO at IFS

Flexibility to post whenever, wherever

Besides the ability to personalize content, the marketing team at IFS aimed to educate their employees about the advantages of advocacy, so they would be inspired to integrate it into their regular routines. This was particularly crucial for the revenue team, which stood to benefit the most as social interactions directly boosts sales pipeline.

Oktopost's scheduling feature allows advocates to log in during their spare time and plan posts at their convenience. Such flexibility facilitates regular content updates, extending IFS's reach beyond its current network.

Successful advocate engagement is crucial for the effectiveness of our employee advocacy program. Oktopost supports this with its easy-to-use features and the flexibility to schedule content at times that suit our advocates best. Oliver Pilgerstorfer, CMO at IFS

The results

Since becoming an Oktopost customer in 2019, IFS has published over 240K posts, generated 4.5 million engagements, amassed 547K link clicks, secured 3.12 million followers, and triggered 113K brand mentions. Additionally, there has been a 394% rise in engagement in the past two years as well as a 107% increase in brand mentions and 135% growth in followers. Out of their overall new followers across all pages and profiles from the past year, followers on advocate profiles account for 67%.

The key to their advocacy success lies in the active participation of their employees, who share content with their personal networks. This strategy introduces the IFS brand to new audiences who may not have been familiar with it previously.

To sustain this momentum and keep the team engaged, IFS introduced an advocacy bootcamp, specifically designed for customer-facing employees. Conducted quarterly, this boot camp provides an opportunity for new and seasoned employees to see the value of employee advocacy and the ease of using Oktopost. This initiative has been effective in fostering wider adoption and generating enthusiasm for employee advocacy among IFS employees.

Looking to the future, IFS is expected to fully utilize the Marketo integration to deepen their understanding of how organic social media influences their demand generation journey. This enhanced insight is expected not only to refine their social media strategy but also to demonstrate to their revenue teams the critical role of social media within the sales pipeline.

We are excited by the next phase of our journey with Oktopost, which will see us incorporate social engagement signals into our marketing automation platform, Marketo. This will allow us to utilize these valuable intent signals to drive business activities, from lead scoring to sales insights. Oliver Pilgerstorfer, CMO at IFS