Project Proposal: Ambassador Program

[zobront]

Many of the C4 Outcomes focus on increasing referrals for new sponsors. This makes a lot of sense — most new protocols go to their networks to determine where to get an audit, and having people referring C4 is the surest path to high quality new sponsors.

The outcomes seem to assume that token holders will make referrals, but I have two concerns with this:

1. Most token holders are not strongly incentivized enough to make an active effort to bring in sponsors.
2. There are many non-token holders who would be great referrers.

To more effectively generate increased referrals, I'm proposing we create an Ambassador Program. Let's discuss the exact form this should take, but some initial ideas:

• Referrer gets a fixed percent of the prize pool (I'd propose 1%, matched by an equal value of $ARENA)
• We create a leaderboard of top referrers, and do some work to gamify this and reward the top Ambassadors
• We create an onboarding flow for new Ambassadors that effectively teaches them when to refer C4, how to talk about it, and provides them with resources to make it easy
• We create the internal flow for how to handle inbound referrals that makes referred sponsors feel like VIPs
• We build onboarding into the Ambassador program into the flow for past sponsors (they will be the best referrers after experiencing the product)

For context, this is a model we rolled out at the previous company I founded (see: Scribe Media Ambassador Program) and it ended up being responsible for 8 figures of revenue per year and many of our best clients.

If we decide to move forward with this, I'm happy to take the lead on mapping out the details, putting toget the C4IP, and coordinating with the team to build it into the process.

[adamavenir]

Great thoughts. Thanks for this. So glad to have you involved.

This also connects directly with some great ideas I have heard @kcperez kick around.

One thing @realfakepicnic pointed out when we were talking recently about the idea of referrals is that the most valuable relationships for C4 are long term ones; getting the first audit is great, the second/third/fourth means we are actually successful. (Cool thing there is the majority of our top tier projects have come back for additional contests.)

Obviously Ambassadors are going to be even more motivated if a share of one contest can actually mean potentially a share of multiple contests.

There's also huge value to C4 in those ambassadors serving as a long-term sponsor advocate and conduit for figuring out where things may have gone wrong and incentivized to get things back on track rather than having a sponsor quietly move on because of a substandard experience.

There are challenges for sure there, too--not impossible ones but definitely things that would need to be thought through. (I'm sure I'm saying things you have thought here already but humor me for the sake of just getting this documented.)

Who gets credit? If a dozen Ambassadors are hanging out in the MakerDAO chat and all of them tell someone asking for auditor recommendations to use C4, who gets it? (I bet you already have thoughts on this.)

How can we reward an Ambassador for landing subsequent contests without that being permanent rent collection or a barrier from rewarding others who may be participating in moving things along? Maybe it decays?

[zobront]

I don't have answers to all of these things, but we have considered them over the past three years running the program at Scribe, so I can share a bit...

• We ended up only paying Ambassadors for the original project they refer. If you're paying fairly for the referral they made, that's sufficient. In my opinion, if someone comes back for a second contest, it's really the C4 team who deserves the reward, as they earned the repeat biz, not the original Ambassador.
• The sponsor advocate is a great point, but it's something that will happen organically from the really good Ambassadors, and that you can't force with the others. I think there's more juice to squeeze from working on how C4 team can build the relationship to allow that directly, rather than try to do it through a third party.
• In terms of credit, after lots of complex schemes, we ultimately landed on a simple two part system: (a) a way for Ambassador to refer directly, which attributes referral to them and (b) if not referred directly, we trust the client's answer. It's not perfect, but it does a good job avoiding messy situations.

[iNadirAli]

The ambassador program is a great approach indeed as it works well previously for alot of companies and as you guys have shared your experiences as well.

I worked with a Blockchain R&D company and for services we started referral program as well but we collaborated with listing platforms to get referrals as that works best in that context.

As i have experience of outbound sales and techniques i can surely contribute in execution of this with resources and planning out the mediums and tools that can optimize this approach and help in developing resources that can aid ambassadors to reach out in a seamless manner and most importantly the standard of C4 is maintained.

I believe a dashboard or kanban board where every ambassador can add thier leads and we can track and verify standard would help. I personally implemented Clickup where my team adds on leads.

It's just a suggestion. I like to be a part of it and hopefully contribute positively.

Cheers 💯🙌