Is your employee advocacy program successful?

At the start

The number of employees who accept the invitation to join the program is an indicator of the initial success of your employee advocacy program. It demonstrates your workforce's level of interest and engagement and how well the program is being received internally. 

After the first invitation round, the number of employees actively participating in the advocacy program is a critical metric to measure your employee advocacy initiative's ongoing success and effectiveness. 

Define 30, 60, 90-day goals 

30-day goals 

• Launch. Within the first 30 days, your primary goal should be successfully launching the employee advocacy program. This includes creating awareness about the program, training interested employees, and inviting them to join.
• Achieve X number of active members. Set a target for the number of employees you want actively participating in the program by the end of the first month. This could be a specific percentage of the total workforce or a fixed number.
• Develop a content calendar. Create a content calendar with brand messages, industry insights, and relevant articles for employees to share. The goal is to ensure a steady flow of engaging content throughout the month. If you have an existing content calendar, try incorporating Ambassify into it. You might not want to publish every content item as a campaign on Ambassify, but it’s a good starting point to decide which content should also appear as an Ambassify campaign. 

60-day Goals

• Increase employee participation. By the end of the second month, aim to increase the number of active advocates beyond the initial target set in the first 30 days. Encourage team leaders and managers to support the program and lead by example. If a team lead is active on the platform, this suggests to the team members that participation is important, and it will be much easier to convince other team members to participate as well. 
  
  
• Diversify content sources. Encourage employees from various departments to contribute to content creation. This will provide a broader perspective and diverse content that resonates with different audience segments. You can create a form campaign asking to submit content ideas, this is an easy way to allow collaboration, and you can reward employees for doing so. 
  
  
• Enhance employee training. Offer advanced training and resources for participants to improve their content creation skills, personal branding, and social media best practices.
  
  
• Evaluate and adjust content strategy. Analyze engagement metrics and identify the types of content that perform best. Use these insights to refine your content strategy for the upcoming months.

90-day Goals

• Achieve steady content sharing. By the end of the third month, aim for a consistent number of employees actively sharing content regularly. This will help build a sustainable advocacy program.
  
  
• Increase social media reach. Set a goal to achieve a specific percentage increase in social media reach compared to the pre-program period. This reflects the program's impact on extending your brand's visibility.
  
  
• Measure lead generation. Establish a system to track leads generated through employee-shared content and assess the program's contribution to the company's lead-generation efforts. 

Ambassify allows you to configure a set of tracking parameters for the links you configure in campaigns. We attach these parameters to the links in Ambassify when your employees share them. The most common example is Google Analytics which will automatically detect the presence of the utm_campaign, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, and utm_content parameters and use this in the reporting to show where your traffic is coming from.

• Foster a sense of employee advocacy community. Encourage employees to share their advocacy experiences, success stories, and tips with others. Building a sense of community can boost enthusiasm. 

What happens after the first 90 days? 

Activation Rate

At Ambassify, one of the main drivers to measure engagement is the activation rate, which is calculated monthly and defines the percentage of your total employee advocates who did at least one interaction that month.

Interaction Rate

A second driver for a successful employee advocacy program is the interaction rate. This KPI measures how many interactions your advocates perform per month. 

Return 

This engagement eventually results in a particular “return on investment,” which is also influenced by some metrics:

• Interactions. The first one is the most straightforward and easy to measure. How many interactions have resulted from these engagements?
  
  
• Potential Reach. Potential reach is based on your employees' network size and connections, combined with the total number of (monthly) shares they do. Multiplied with the shares per member and the number of members you have, this will indicate what can/will be your total reach per month.
  
  
• Total clicks. To measure your return on investment, our API tracks the number of clicks your employee advocates’ social media posts generate. The number of clicks can also help you understand how well the shared content resonates with your advocates’ audience. 
  
  
• Monetary return. It is an estimation of how much it would have cost to generate the amount of traffic using traditional advertising. This, in turn, is also an estimation of how much money you are saving by organically sharing your content through your advocates. In Ambassify, we calculate this based on a Cost Per Click saved in your account. 

Advocate feedback 

Regularly seeking feedback from participating employees is equally crucial as hard metrics. Understanding their firsthand experience with the program can provide valuable qualitative insights that complement the quantitative data. 

We encourage you to actively gather feedback from your employee advocates to enhance the program and ensure its continued success.

Ambassify reports

The Ambassify reports offer real-time insights into your program's performance, enabling you to pinpoint areas that may require improvement. If any aspects are not covered in the reports, feel free to contact your dedicated Customer Success Manager for further discussion. Additionally, we can create custom report dashboards tailored to your specific needs.

In conclusion, the success of your employee advocacy program hinges on several key factors. Initially, the number of employees accepting the program's invitation indicates their interest and engagement levels. As the program progresses, actively participating employees become crucial in gauging ongoing success and effectiveness.

The activation and interaction rates are key drivers for engagement, while interactions, potential reach, and total clicks measure the program's return on investment. Additionally, the monetary return provides insights into cost savings achieved through organic content sharing.

A successful employee advocacy program relies on a combination of data-driven metrics, employee feedback, and continuous refinement to achieve lasting impact.