Announcing Orbit Champions Program Manager

Over the past 3 years, we’ve built a community growth platform for companies of all sizes, who are collectively managing more than 45 million community members. Our platform combines community data from disparate sources and surfaces it in an easy-to-use app with dashboards, workflow builders, smart alerts, an API, and more — all of which connect directly to your CRM. 

We’ve learned tons, but one lesson has resonated more than the others: mere access to data is not enough to grow a community. 

While data is obviously valuable, it is not sufficient to build and grow a thriving community. More data, more tags, more segments, more reports — none of that necessarily leads to improved outcomes. 

At the same time, we’ve had a front-row seat to the programs and playbooks of some of the world’s best community-driven companies, like GitHub, Miro, Patreon, CircleCI, and hundreds more. We’ve watched and learned as they’ve built programs on top of data in their Orbit workspaces that drive meaningful business outcomes while growing their communities. 

For them, data is an important input, but it's not an end unto itself.

Data is the fuel, not the engine

For leading programs, data is an accelerant, but it's not the engine itself.

Pretty much everyone wants to leverage community these days, but their primary question is, well, “how?” They don't need more fuel (data), but rather an engine they can crank up and get them moving.

So we asked ourselves, what if we could synthesize our learnings to provide every community builder with out-of-the-box tooling to launch and scale best-in-class programs without needing to manage multiple platforms or build complex custom integrations?

What if we could design our products such that any builder, regardless of their experience level, would have a head start in catalyzing their community?

What if we could provide companies with the fuel and the engine for driving community outcomes? 

Our first step towards realizing this vision is Orbit Champions.

‍Orbit Champions provides a complete solution for building a solid program modeled on the companies that do it best. With Orbit Champions, any company can launch, scale, and measure a top 1% champions program without investing in the custom development, complex spreadsheets, and data integration that is typically required.

With Orbit Champions, companies can:

Vet and manage your program application pipeline. Quickly review applicants or nominees, and move them through stages from new to fully onboarded.

Onboard new members and track progress. Send new members a personal onboarding checklist, then keep up with their progress inside of Orbit. 

Track and increase program contributions. Automatically keep track of key member contributions across your community, like contributing code, creating blog content, participating in forum discussions, and more. 

Proactively engage members. Send emails to welcome new members or re-engage inactive members, directly “from” you, right inside of Orbit

Measure the impact of your champions program. Visualize program participation, compare activity of program members to non-members, and surface program information inside your CRM. 

Scale your champions program effortlessly. The program feed will keep you abreast of everything you need to grow your program, including alerts about inactive members, new program applications, and more. 

Community is here, it’s just unevenly distributed

According to the latest Community Industry Report from CMX, 34% of community teams operate champions or advocates programs, and now, with this new offering, we plan to empower every other company to forge meaningful relationships with their top customers as well. Our hope is that every company can apply the lessons of leading programs and scale their impact on their companies and on their community members.

Champions is in early access now, so if you're interested in learning more about the Champions Programs feature, get in touch with our team or sign up for a demo and get on the waitlist. 

We’ll be sharing more about Orbit Champions and the future direction of Orbit in the next monthly Orbit Connect on May 25 — you can register to join here. 

And if you're new to the idea of champions programs, read our comprehensive guide here.

We're always happy to chat about how we can help you grow your community and achieve your goals. 

Thank you for being a part of the Orbit community. We look forward to seeing the impact that you will create with the Orbit Champions platform.