Tuesday, November 8, 2011

 Customer references are moving increasingly to the forefront of marketing, branding and social media efforts—the content they provide is too important not to. Rochelle Silveira and Tina Ashamalla of the NetApp Global Reference Office will show how they're moving customer references to leading edge social media platforms to promote their stories, at the 2012 Summit on Customer Engagement, February 28-29 in San Mateo, CA.

Like many firms, NetApp's reference program doesn't own social media so had to find ways to work with the internal organization that did. Summit attendees will learn how they helped clarify the social media strategy for NetApp and developed a detailed business plan that gained support and endorsement from several marketing VPs. Attendees will also learn how NetApp is bridging the gap between "Social" and "Reference," which vendors they engaged to accelerate the initiative, and how they cultivate "Power Advocates" among its customers.

About Rochelle Silveira

As the Director of NetApp's Global Reference Office, Rochelle Silveira is responsible for the Global Customer and Pathway Reference Program, the VIP Advocacy Community, and Revenue Acceleration Programs. She has 20 years of experience in the high-tech industry includes expertise in the areas of Customer Reference and Relationship Management, Communications, Events Management, Go-To-Market Readiness, and Product Lifecycle Management, for companies such as NetApp, Sun Microsystems and Symantec. She holds a BA degree in Business Management from St. Mary's College, Moraga.

About Tina Ashamalla

Tina Ashamalla is, Senior Program Manager, Social Media & Advocacy at NetApp. She's responsible for the Advocacy program as well as the use of customer references within social media at the firm. She has over 17 years of experience in marketing and events and built NetApp's advocacy program from the ground up. Previously, she worked in both customer references and events at Oracle and as a consultant for HP.

Other presentations at the 2012 Summit on Customer Engagement will include

- How Customer Engagement Built a New Online B2B Sales Channel at Intel

- How National Instruments is using social media to fill its pipeline of customer advocates

The Summit on Customer Engagement will take place February 28-29, 2012 in San Mateo, CA. For more information please contact Bill Lee, Expectative Director, at bill@customerreferenceforum.com