Better Together: How Community and Advocacy Create Customer-Led Growth

Community and customer advocacy teams often work with the same customers, but in different platforms, with different data, and toward different goals. That’s beginning to change.

Join Sunny Prabhakar, GTM Leader at Bevy, Jeff Ernst, Founder & CEO of SlapFive, and Todd Nilson, founder of Clocktower Advisors, for a practical conversation about how community, customer marketing, and advocacy are coming together, moderated by Cat Nilsson, Head of Community at CMX.

We’ll explore how these teams can share customer insights, coordinate engagement, identify advocates, and connect community participation to measurable outcomes like retention, expansion, references, and customer-led growth.

We’ll also look at what becomes possible when community and advocacy programs are connected through a more unified customer experience, including real-world workflows enabled by the Bevy and SlapFive integration.

About Todd Nilson
Todd Nilson helps organizations reduce risk and restore executive confidence in their online communities. With 25+ years of experience, he treats communities as governance systems, not just engagement tools. By identifying hidden misalignments and preventing the "compliance theater" that leads to failure, Todd has guided brands like SAP and Activision toward resilient, high-trust digital spaces. He is the founder of Clocktower Advisors and a leading voice on community risk and ROI.

About Jeff Ernst

Jeff Ernst is the Founder & CEO of SlapFive, a customer marketing software platform built to help B2B companies drive Customer-Led Growth. He has extensive experience across customer marketing, advocacy, engagement, and customer experience, helping organizations turn customer insights and the customer voice into measurable growth. Jeff is also the co-founder of the Customer-Led Movement and CustomerX Community and the author of From the Horse’s Mouth: How to Unleash Your Customers’ Voice.

About Sunny Prabhakar
Sunny is a GTM Leader at Bevy with 12+ years in enterprise SaaS, working with companies to build scalable customer ecosystems through user communities, forums, events, and AI-driven engagement. Sunny's focus is tying community investment to measurable business outcomes e.g. through product adoption, lower support costs, and stronger retention, so community programs earn their seat at the table rather than getting cut when growth alone isn't enough to prove their worth.