By Geoff McDonald, CEO of Ambassador

Every once in a while, you get a reminder of why you do what you do.

This week, I read a client review on G2 that stopped me in my tracks. It simply said:

“They seem to have thought of everything, and made it easy to use. The best onboarding process I’ve experienced. They are thorough, organized, friendly, and they know their software inside and out.”

That’s the kind of feedback that doesn’t just validate the work—it energizes the mission. Because at Ambassador, our mission isn’t to build just another SaaS platform. It’s to create meaningful, scalable, human-centered engagement—powered by AI, but built for people.

Today, I want to take a moment to thank our clients, celebrate our team, and reflect on what it means when your company is recognized as a G2 leader—and more importantly, why it matters.

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What a High G2 Score Really Means

G2 isn’t just a rating system. It’s a reflection of how well you show up for your customers.

When clients consistently rank you highly, it’s not because of clever marketing or feature bloat. It’s because you’ve done the hard work:
✅ Built real value into your product
✅ Delivered consistently excellent support
✅ Helped your customers win—not just use software

For us, a high G2 score means we’re doing the right things: listening closely, responding quickly, innovating intentionally, and putting people first. It means that our clients trust us not only to deliver—but to care.

And in today’s crowded SaaS market, trust is the true differentiator.

But here’s what most companies miss:
G2 is a scoreboard for customer experience, not just product specs. It means our support team doesn’t leave people hanging. It means onboarding is proactive, not reactive. It means clients feel seen—and heard—at every step.

That’s what we’re most proud of. And that’s what we’ll continue to invest in.

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Everything Starts with Culture

The reason our clients feel supported and successful is because of our team—and our culture.

At Ambassador, our values aren’t just words on a wall. They’re how we operate every day:

• Clarity – We say what we mean and operate transparently, internally and externally.

• Be Intentional – We don’t ship fluff. Every feature, every message, every move is purposeful.

• Stay Close to the Client-Customer – We stay in the trenches with our customers. Their goals guide our roadmap.

• Invest in Each Other – We win as a team. We hold each other to high standards—and have each other’s backs.

• One Team – No silos. No egos. Just alignment, action, and impact.

Our newest value, Let’s Go, Let’s Get Shit Done (Lean and Mean), reflects the urgency, grit, and focus we bring to everything—from roadmap execution to client onboarding.

Culture isn’t just internal. It shows up in how we build. How we support. How we respond. And G2 proves it’s showing up the right way.

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Building What’s Next—With You in Mind

As we roll out even more features across AI, automation, and engagement—including Hiro and the upcoming Ambassador 3.0—we’re doing it with one guiding principle: client-first innovation.

That means:

• Faster onboarding

• Smarter, automated workflows

• Personalized, multi-channel communication

• Real-time feedback with actionable insights

• Seamless connections across referrals, loyalty, feedback, and email

We’re creating a platform that doesn’t just respond to customer behavior—it anticipates it. A platform that doesn’t just collect feedback—but understands it. A platform that helps brands scale their relationships—not just their reach.

And as we do that, we’re asking one question over and over again:
What would make this easier, faster, more human—for our clients?

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To Our Clients: Thank You

Your feedback, your trust, and your partnership shape everything we do. Thank you for the time you invest in us—and for allowing us to play a small part in your journey.

To our employees: you are why those G2 reviews sound the way they do. You show up with purpose, humility, and fire. You live the values. You make this real.

And to those just getting to know Ambassador: if you want a partner—not just a platform—who’s all-in on your success, let’s talk.

We’re building the future of customer engagement. With intelligence. With empathy. And most importantly—with you at the center of it.

With gratitude,
Geoff McDonald
CEO, Ambassador

The post A Letter to Our Clients, Team, and the Market: You’re the Reason We’re Here appeared first on Ambassador.

Ambassador’s Communication Co-Pilot is here—and it’s changing the way brands connect with customers. Now, you can build customized emails directly inside the Ambassador platform—empowering your team to launch smarter, faster, and more personalized communications without outside tools, delays, or dependencies. Whether you’re a small team, a mid-sized organization, or an enterprise brand, Communication Co-Pilot gives you everything you need to move faster, engage smarter, and grow stronger.

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Why We Built It

Today’s customer engagement teams are under more pressure than ever:

• Deliver more personalized messages.
• Launch more campaigns.
• Do it faster—with fewer resources.

Traditional email platforms weren’t built for this new world. So we built a better way. Communication Co-Pilot brings email engagement into the same ecosystem where you already manage referral, loyalty, incentives, and customer advocacy—allowing you to trigger communications based on real customer behaviors, all without leaving Ambassador. The result? Less friction, faster launches, and better engagement across the entire customer journey.

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“Communication Co-Pilot removes the usual roadblocks we see with traditional email tools. Now, our clients can build and launch emails that are deeply connected to real customer actions—without having to slow down or switch systems. It’s about giving teams the power to move faster, stay closer to their customers, and create impact immediately.” — Crystal McHenry, Client Enablement Product Manager, Ambassador

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How It Helps Teams of Every Size

🚀 Small Teams: Speed Without the Sprawl

For lean teams, moving quickly is survival. Communication Co-Pilot helps you:

• Create branded, personalized emails without needing outside design or dev resources.
• Trigger communications based on customer actions, milestones, or lifecycle stages.
• Launch engagement flows in minutes, not days.

Result: You keep momentum high—and your customers engaged—without overextending your team.

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🔄 Mid-Sized Teams: Control Without Complexity

As your customer base grows, so does the need for better coordination and segmentation. Communication Co-Pilot gives you:

• A centralized place to manage customer communications alongside referral and loyalty triggers.
• Personalization powered by your existing Ambassador data—no extra integrations needed.
• The ability to test, optimize, and scale without heavy IT or platform switching.

Result: You scale smarter, not harder.

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🏢 Enterprise Teams: Alignment at Scale

Enterprise organizations need more than just speed—they need cross-team alignment. Communication Co-Pilot provides:

• A unified platform where Marketing, CX, Product, and Success teams can collaborate.
• Consistent messaging across your referral, loyalty, and customer engagement strategies.
• Built-in reporting, A/B testing, and audience segmentation for faster optimization.

Result: You reduce friction between teams—and deliver a better, more cohesive customer experience at scale.

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Why It’s a Game Changer

With Communication Co-Pilot, you’re not just sending emails—you’re orchestrating smarter engagement across your entire customer journey.

• Move faster: No more waiting for outside tools, IT tickets, or ESP dependencies.
• Engage smarter: Personalize every message based on real customer data.
• Grow stronger: Align marketing, customer experience, and product engagement under one platform.

The companies that win the next era of customer loyalty won’t be the ones who move the slowest. They’ll be the ones who can listen, act, and engage—all from a single, agile platform. With Communication Co-Pilot, that future is now.

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Learn more about Communication Co-Pilot and how Ambassador is helping brands drive engagement at every stage of the customer journey. 👉 Visit our Communication Co-Pilot page to see it in action.    

The post Introducing Communication Co-Pilot: Email Engagements, Reimagined Inside Ambassador appeared first on Ambassador.

It seems like being a brand ambassador is a new craze when, in fact, empowered recommendations and relationships have been created using the power of word-of-mouth for centuries. You don’t need a host of celebrities to create a comprehensive stream of new leads and empower customers to champion for your brand. A successful marketing campaign relies on more than lights and cameras, the word-of-mouth action is what counts. If you’re wondering which segment of your customers will make for the best brand ambassadors, here are the categories you should be looking to fill with award-worthy brand ambassadors:

Best Director

What would an award ceremony be without this category? This spot is reserved for the Martin Scorseses and Steven Spielbergs of your network. Consider the fans and customers that have the personality and the insight to place your brand in front of the right set of eyes. Brand ambassadors worthy of the Best Director badge don’t just lead the pack, they clear a path and join each member of their network on a journey. They aren’t afraid to advocate for your brand, champion your service, and keep members of their network on the right track.

Customer in a Lead-Acquiring Role

Of course your company doesn’t have any favorite customers, but if you absolutely had to choose one segment to nurture, they would probably be the kind of customers that could naturally build intrigue for your brand. These customers will scrounge even the coldest marketing fields for warm leads, Leonardo Dicaprio style. Empowered brand ambassadors will be able to share exciting brand information and updates on behalf of your company while driving rich leads to your company. Plus, leads acquired this way close faster and stay longer.

Most Connected Customers

Referral programs provide a great opportunity for your customers to forge new contacts, but every good referral marketing program includes the kind of customers that everyone already knows. If your company has an influencer that could easily be swapped into the Kevin Bacon game with their astonishingly minimal degree of separation number, then they’re well-connected. These customers have great in-person skills, but are just as respected and sought after online. Well-connected brand ambassadors will know how to find information and they’ll be the first one to share it. Your brand will be able to earn a few cool points just by association.

Most Invigorated Network

Nothing feels better than discovering powerful groups that have the ability to catapult your brand. Actually, the only thing better is one customer that links you to their network of equally engaged and excited friends. If you publicly awarded this segment, they’d run onstage with tears streaming down their face and talk until the live orchestra played them offstage. In other words, members of this category have an immediate and relentless desire for new information (and an equally strong reaction when they receive it).

Outstanding Word-of-Mouth Performance

Some of your brand ambassadors won’t be into the glitz and glam of becoming a member of an exclusive group, you’ll need people on the ground that aren’t afraid to ring a few bells or send a few emails on your behalf. That’s where the power of word-of-mouth kicks in. Pinpointing people that can reach engaged and curious leads is like discovering a gold mine for your referral marketing program. Word-of-mouth gatekeepers give your brand the referral nominations and nods that will lead to a complex referral network.

And the award goes to…

A study by Wharton School of Business revealed 83% of customers are willing to provide referrals, but only 29% of those customers actually do. You’ll need an outstanding group  of vocal, informed, and engaged brand ambassadors to close that gap. Instead of praising your fans, clients, and customers from the corner office, referral marketing programs allow you to reward them in real life. Running a successful referral marketing program is a lot like winning your first Oscar statuette, it can validate your hard work and help spread the word to the masses.

Do you want to learn how to turn more of your customers, partners, affiliates, and fans into revenue generators?Request a custom demo from one of our referral marketing software experts today!

The post Award-Winning Brand Ambassadors appeared first on Ambassador.

Watch: How to manage customer relationships

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Download the Valentine’s Day Referral Marketing Kit > 

From quick check-ins to long-term collaborations, every customer interaction is valuable and has the potential to help guide the growth of your brand. So how can you develop a customer relationship strategy that is sure to show your customers that you love them? Let us count the ways.

Predict customer behavior

No matter the size of your company, your customers should never feel small. Develop a one-of-a-kind customer relationship by observing and responding to customer behavior. By tracking trends, you should start to be able to predict consumer behavior and be in the right place at the right time. Before scheduling your next email, find out if a certain customer segment is more likely to read email first thing in the morning or right before bed. If you know that a lead is email-averse, don’t hesitate to pick up the phone. Ease of use and convenient content is a treat for any contemporary customer.

Say thank you to improve your customer relationship 

According to the Wharton School of Business, 83% of satisfied customers are willing to refer products and services, but only 29% actually do. Always remember to ask your customers to refer your product or service and never forget to say thank you! Customers have the power to develop one-to-one solutions that can’t be created by your brand alone. Every time a customer regularly and authentically refers your business, send a note of thanks to acknowledge their help.

Reward, reward, reward

Give every customer the chance to become an ambassador for your brand. Providing this unique opportunity shows customers that you trust and respect their relationship with your brand. As you develop a network of ambassadors, show your customers that you appreciate their referrals by rewarding them for singing your praises. You can create meaningful rewards for specific actions and develop programs that reward particular segments of your business.

You can’t affect the bottom line if you don’t keep your patrons, buyers, or subscribers top of mind. And they can’t share their love for you if you don’t give them a way to. So why not add a great referral program to your quarterly to-do list? Our referral marketing experts gathered best practices to create a Valentine’s Day Referral Marketing Kit featuring How To Turn Your Customers Into New Revenue eBook, Valentine’s Day Referral Marketing Cheat Sheet, and The Benefits of Referral Marketing white paper. Grab your heart-shaped chocolate box and dive in!

The post Managing Customer Relationships: How To Show Your Love appeared first on Ambassador.

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Many brands are venturing outside of their office and within their network to find early adopters that can take out some of the mass marketing legwork by driving word-of-mouth. For many companies, the ideal marketing campaign is self-sustaining — an organic ripple that migrates throughout target markets and accurately represents your brand.

If you’re looking to get your business off of the ground while building a valuable consumer base and smoothing out the kinks of your product, you should start marketing to early adopters. Yes, those early adopters. The pillars of modern marketing myth and Everett M. Rogers’ legend that purchase first and ask questions later, then tell all of their fearful friends about what they can expect in the ominously near future.

Early adopters may not be your first choice, but when targeted correctly, they can build buzz within exclusive inner circles and eventually entice mainstream customers to give your product a try. Read on to learn about the qualities that your marketing team can master to think like an early adopter.

Dream Big

Don’t sleep on the power of user insight.

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia realized early on that hosts would play a major role in his business strategy. He wanted visitors to feel welcome and have a memorable experience with each stay, but wasn’t reaching the audience or driving the revenue that he had anticipated. While visiting a core group of early Airbnb hosts, he was able to step into the shoes of his prospective customers. The friendly and generous hosts were great in person, but the home pictures displayed on the website didn’t capture the welcoming spirit that he encountered on his trip.

Gebbia decided that professional images of the housing options would give visitors a more realistic glimpse of what they could expect from their stay. After implementing this change, Airbnb doubled its humble revenue of $200 per week. Gebbia admits that early adopter observations helped his company grow from one spare air mattress to a network of over 600,000 hosts that work to create a curated customer experience. For some startups, actual experiences from early adopters can deliver insight that influences product strategy and positively alters the company’s trajectory.

Think Bigger

Know when it’s time for a change.

When San Francisco startup Lumoid announced that it would rent out a limited batch of Apple Watches for a less expensive daily fee, Apple early adopters everywhere rejoiced. To build on that excitement, Lumoid furthered its existing “rent, try, buy” method and introduced a string of notoriously sought-after products to their lineup.

Talk about an innovative inception story. By appealing to a target market of aspiring early adopters, Lumoid early-adopted early adopters.

Since then, Lumoid opened up the possibility to explore other industries — ranging from photography to wearables — by understanding that the desire to adopt early and update often was a growing trend. Marketers should mimic useful patterns of early adopters  to create an agile way to reach their consumers.

Reach Higher

Discover new ways to grow.

A year after announcing the early adopter program on their website, Grove released a follow-up video showcasing testimonials from early adopters of The Grove Ecosystem. The at-home gardening system naturally appeals to a niche audience of environmentally conscious, health-savvy consumers, but this video was a subtle way to give a broader audience a sneak peek into the features and benefits of the product.

Who knew that oregano, tomatoes and a temperature-controlling app could be so endearing? Here’s the takeaway for marketers: Each early adopter campaign should bake social proof into it and empower customers to take the leap from brand awareness to brand preference.

Remember Innovative Marketing

Since early adopters are the first to ‘buy into’ your product or idea, they’re typically the best candidates to generate buzz. To find those early adopters, however, you must first learn to think like them.

Every market and product category contains these initiators who spread word-of-mouth, but it’s up to you to find, understand, and entice this important group. When you do that, your ideas migrate to the masses and the ‘diffusion of innovation’ reaches a successful endpoint.

The post Innovative Marketing: Think Like An Early Adopter appeared first on Ambassador.

One of the most captivating keynotes at the Summit was “How to Fix Word of Mouth Marketing” presented by Nate Elliott, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester. Elliott shared research that showed word-of-mouth is highly trusted and drives brand discovery across categories, but he blamed both vendors and brand buyers for falling short of its potential. He criticized social media strategies that aim to increase brand awareness but are ultimately used as “post and pray” tactics. Not only is WOMM being used improperly by brands, but vendors are not able to provide the metrics necessary to determine success.

Inflated statistics and misleading numbers can pull the wool over a brand’s eyes, but access and visibility to real data and metrics are a must-have when reviewing vendors. By trusting a vendor-partner that provides insights that includes shares, clicks, referrals, and most importantly, revenue generated, brands are able to see the true value in referral marketing software.

“Forrester is shining a much-needed light on the obstacles to the growth of our industry. While emphasizing the enormous commercial opportunity in the word of mouth space, Forrester challenges vendors and clients alike to raise our game to deliver our full potential,” said Suzanne Fanning, WOMMA President.

Another common challenge for brands that are running word-of-mouth marketing programs manually is losing the ability to capitalize on the large opportunity of gaining new loyal customers. People that have been referred by a peer typically stay loyal to a brand longer than those that found the company by other means. By automating the manual process of enrolling, tracking, managing and rewarding referrals, referral marketing automation enables brands to quickly scale their WOMM efforts.

While it’s a well-known fact that positive word-of-mouth is the most effective way to generate brand awareness, how can brands harness the power of word-of-mouth to gain new leads and immediate sales? We discussed this (and more!) with WOMMA next during the webinar, “Beyond Tweets & Likes: The Future of WOM.”

Suzanne Fanning and Jeff Epstein, Founder & CEO of Ambassador, next Wednesday shared word-of-mouth best practices on how to easily turn fans and customers into brand ambassadors and then convert them into revenue generators.

The post The State of Word-of-Mouth Marketing appeared first on Ambassador.

With word-of-mouth (WOM) driving billions of dollars in sales every year, it’s more important than ever for companies to focus on WOM and referral marketing efforts. Here are 8 stats about word-of-mouth marketing that you need to know right now.

The post 8 Word-of-Mouth Marketing Stats You Need To Know Right Now appeared first on Ambassador.

The post The Value of Word-of-Mouth Marketing appeared first on Ambassador.

Wouldn’t it be nice to organically arrive in customer conversations? What if your target audience could access your brand using a recommendation from a trusted member of their network? That’s where word-of-mouth marketing comes in and here are three benefits that word-of-mouth will add to your multichannel marketing strategy.

Customer-Centricity

Multichannel marketing boils down to creating multiple avenues for your customers to access your content. By developing uniquely optimized campaigns across networks, brands become more engaged with customer behaviors. Instead of building a multichannel marketing strategy that tries to predict where your customers will be, word-of-mouth marketing empowers customers to further their natural inclination to share new information. A standard multichannel strategy will follow customers wherever they go, but with a focus on word-of-mouth marketing, your messaging can land in the hands of trustworthy and influential customers.

Insightful Data

Thanks to referral marketing automation, word-of-mouth recommendations have advanced to provide the same kind of information as other digital outreach. With an automated word-of-mouth strategy, your multichannel marketing strategy can incentivize customers, fans, and influencers to refer your brand. Your customers can continue along the path of searching across channels and industries, but shareable, trackable links will transform this behavior into useful insight across the multichannel networks that matter most to your brand.

A Complete Journey

The ads and outreach associated with multichannel marketing are often confined to grabbing a prospect’s interest, but what are successful brands doing to nurture a more sustained relationship? How can companies keep the heart of customers beyond the point of purchase? Word-of-mouth marketing allows brands to follow the buzz that their product or service is creating beyond the point of purchase. To stay ahead of the game, offer your customers various paths to reach your product and an easy-to-understand way to talk about it. What could be more multichannel than that?

Multichannel Marketing Strategy

For companies that are tired of chasing customers (and conversations) from platform to platform, word-of-mouth marketing may be the missing piece to your multichannel marketing strategy. As you work to find innovative solutions, don’t forget about the organic pathway that word-of-mouth marketing provides. Your customers are already talking and now it’s time to join the conversation.

The post What’s Missing From Your Multichannel Marketing Strategy? appeared first on Ambassador.

The post #WOMSummit2018: The Rise of Authentic Relationships appeared first on Ambassador.