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Eating At Their Own Restaurant: How SurveyMonkey Powers The Curious
“Eating your own dog food” didn’t sound so appetizing, so folks started “drinking their own champagne.” SurveyMonkey didn’t want people thinking they were sipping too much bubbly on the job, so now they “eat at their own restaurant.” Put simply, they lean heavily on their own offering to strengthen their marketing, grow their company and—as they like to say—power the curious!
From finding out how much a person uses technology, to determining how a company’s culture is developing, the options are endless on what info you can gather with SurveyMonkey, and their marketing efforts put that to test. Leela Srinivasan, SurveyMonkey’s CMO, chats with Drew on how everything at SurveyMonkey—from campaign development to internal culture—is about creating and supporting a world of curious people.
Don’t miss what Leela has to share!
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What You’ll Learn
Power the Curious campaign
Prior to going public, SurveyMonkey did a brand refresh with its Power the Curious campaign in 2017. The company defined its mission as Powering the Curious. SurveyMonkey’s products and solutions enable organizations everywhere to measure, benchmark, and act on feedback. If these organizations can listen to this feedback and have a curious attitude towards it, then the feedback can drive growth and innovation.
Leela shares that she loves the notion of curiosity for two reasons. One, the notion of curiosity was one that their audience was leaning into. The smartest people display curiosity. Secondly, if you think about the idea more broadly, the value proposition for employees is massive. This campaign not only set SurveyMonkey up to market to the business realm but to employees and potential employees. SurveyMonkey could be the place where the curious come to grow, which is exactly what bright minds are looking for in a workplace.
How to build a culture of curiosity internally
SurveyMonkey uses its own tools to build a culture of curiosity. Leela shares that SurveyMonkey leverages its own platform to obtain living feedback from its employees. These surveys measure employee engagement and to find places that can be improved to make a company with more inclusion and belonging. All leaders in the company are given scores for their departments, and they are shown how their scores stack up against other departments in the company. All of this information pushes SurveyMonkey to be curious internally. They are given results and scorings that can drive its leaders to be curious and search for solutions on how to how a healthy organization.
Big drivers to marketing SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey partnered with 4 influencers to show that curiosity is self-defined. Serena Williams, Arianna Huffington, Draymond Green, and Jeff Weiner each created concise surveys to engage different audiences. These surveys were advertised on social media, billboards, and more to let the world engage with these influences. Curiosity was at the top of the whole thing. Success was measured by the volume of responses, and there was a lot of engagement. Throughout this campaign with these four influencers, a conversation was generated that said, “you can do this every day of the week by using SurveyMonkey. Find an idea you want to tap into. Bring these ideas to market and explore the things where you are involved in the world.” Be sure to look below in the resources mentioned for the findings from the influencers surveys.
Timeline
- [3:07] Who is Leela Srinivasan
- [9:07]] Launching the Power the Curious campaign prior to going public
- [15:42] How to build a culture of curiosity internally
- [21:00] How to teach curiosity
- [26:05] Big drivers for marketing at SurveyMonkey
- [29:50] The Curiosity Conference
- [32:35] Lessons learned from rolling this campaign out
Connect With Leela Srinivasan:
- Leela’s Bio on SurveyMonkey’s Website
- Connect with Leela on LinkedIn
- Follow Leela on Twitter
Resources & People Mentioned
- Tool: SurveyMonkey Audience
- Tool: SurveyMonkey Genius
- Tool: Inclusion and Belonging Survey Template
- SurveyMonkey’s Curiosity Conference
- Partnership: Serena Williams’ SurveyMonkey Results
- Partnership: Arianna Huffington’s SurveyMonkey Results
- Partnership: Draymond Green’s SurveyMonkey Results
- Partnership: Jeff Weiner’s SurveyMonkey Results
Connect with Drew
- http://renegade.com/
- On LinkedIn
- On Twitter
- On Facebook
- On Instagram
Meet the Guest
Leela joined SurveyMonkey in April 2018 and leads all marketing functions including brand strategy, growth marketing, and communications. Previously, she served as Chief Marketing Officer at Lever where she was responsible for all aspects of marketing and partnered with the People team on employer branding initiatives. Prior to that, Leela served as VP of marketing at OpenTable, where she built product marketing from scratch and established the foundations of a B2B marketing team. Additionally, Leela was a marketing leader at LinkedIn where she ran LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions business and co-founded the Talent Connect conference. She also spent three years in management consulting at Bain & Company, and five years in sales. Leela earned her MBA in general management from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and her MA in history and English literature from the University of Edinburgh in her native Scotland.