114: Customer Marketing with Heart: Advocacy, Education, and Internal Champions - with Shannon Howard, Director of Customer & Content Marketing at Intellum
In this episode of Women in B2B Marketing, Jane Serra sits down with Shannon Howard, Director of Customer and Content Marketing at Intellum, to talk about the real work behind building lasting customer relationships that drive retention, advocacy, and long-term brand love.
From her early days in B2C to leading customer marketing in SaaS, Shannon shares how she has learned to scale connection without losing the human touch. The conversation covers what customer marketing really owns (hint: it is not just case studies), how to enable internal teams to advocate alongside your customers, and the power of being relentlessly curious about the people you serve.
Jane and Shannon get into:
- Why customer marketing is about more than just advocacy and what else belongs under its umbrella
- How to stay close to your customers even without a big team or budget
- The overlooked art of marketing internal programs like customer education
- Why reverse multithreading and relationship redundancy matter more than ever
- Approaching customers for feedback in ways that feel natural, not transactional
- Turning negative experiences into opportunities to create new advocates
- The value of surprising and delighting customers, including supporting causes they care about
- How customer marketing can also play a big role in Customer Success enablement
- Expanding the definition of “customer” to include past, future, and even non-paying advocates
- Building trust with customers by treating them like people, not just personas
Key Links:
Guest: Shannon Howard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonlagassehoward/
Host: Jane Serra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeserra/
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