In early 2025, we published our perspective on the shifts we believed would redefine customer advocacy—from stronger measurement and deeper GTM alignment to the growing role of community and storytelling. With a year of execution behind us, those predictions largely held true, but the pace and depth of change exceeded expectations. Advocacy teams are now being measured on pipeline influence, retention, and expansion, personalization has become table stakes, and community has emerged as a long-term strategic investment rather than a programmatic feature. This retrospective looks at what we got right, where our thinking has evolved, and what advocacy leaders should be preparing for as AI-driven orchestration accelerates into 2026.

In 2025, expect increased emphasis on data-backed metrics to justify program value, the blending of advocacy and marketing roles, and the rise of personalized outreach powered by AI. Community-building initiatives, enhanced employee advocacy, and innovative formats like video storytelling will redefine how businesses engage advocates. These trends highlight advocacy as a business-critical strategy that fosters deeper connections, drives growth, and extends customer lifespans.

In the eighth and final edition of our Summer ‘ 24 Partner Platform Overview, we highlight Influitive, a platform with a significant history and impact in customer advocacy. Founded in 2010 by Marc Organ, Influitive has evolved into a comprehensive customer community platform, offering robust targeting capabilities, flexible challenge design, and comprehensive analytics. Discover why Influitive is a preferred tool for efficient management and impactful customer advocacy.

In this blog, Referential explores the benefits of integrating Champion’s customer marketing platform into your business strategy. In reviewing some of Champion’s exciting features, we look at how you can measure the revenue impact of advocacy interactions in real-time, enhance customer loyalty, and optimize your advocacy programs.

Referential serves a diverse range of clients, from Global 500 enterprises to start-ups. In this blog, part of our Partner Platform Overview week, we highlight our recent experience migrating a global enterprise client from their existing Customer Advocacy Platform to Base.ai. With a tight deadline and nearly a decade of data to transfer, we ensured a seamless transition in just under a month!

This blog features a Q&A with Senior Advocacy Consultant Barbara Leavy, in which she speaks about her experience managing the advocacy program at a fortune 500 company. Topics include navigating acquisitions, setting client expectations, the challenges of massive product portfolios and more!

Recently, our partners at Crowdvocate initiated a nomination process and subsequent vote to establish within the customer advocacy community a list of the who’s who, or the more influential among us in the advocacy community. It’s with great pleasure that we at Referential are able to report: we have two of our own voted in to share the spotlight!