Case Study: Blackbaud achieves 40X referral-pipeline growth and millions in influenced revenue with Influitive

How Blackbaud’s advocate marketing strategy influenced pipeline and revenue growth, turbocharging one marketer’s career

Blackbaud, a nonprofit software company moving to a SaaS model, needed a scalable way to turn satisfied customers into active advocates. In 2014 Michael Beahm shifted from channel/demand-generation to become Blackbaud’s first Customer Advocate Marketing Manager to revive a dormant reference program (1,600 contacts) and hit an aggressive goal of increasing referral pipeline 50% year-over-year.

He launched the Blackbaud Champions community on Influitive’s AdvocateHub to engage and reward customers, and within 10 days had 150 advocates and 77 high-value referrals. The program grew to 2,500 advocates, drove a 40x jump in referral pipeline from 2013–2015 (100 referrals and 400 references in 2015), influenced millions in revenue across 125 opportunities, and helped earn Michael promotions and industry recognition.

Blackbaud

Michael Beahm

Customer Advocate Senior Marketing Manager