Campaign Design & Targeting:
How Do You Build Campaign Plays For Expansion?
Building expansion campaign plays starts with clear growth hypotheses, a shared view of customer health, and plays that orchestrate marketing, sales, and customer success. The goal is to deepen value in existing accounts while protecting relationships and renewals.
Build expansion campaign plays by anchoring them in customer outcomes and aligning motions across the customer lifecycle. Start with defined expansion motions (adoption, cross-sell, upsell, multi-region rollouts), layer in clear triggers and segments, and design orchestrated touch patterns that combine digital programs with human outreach. Each play should have a target cohort, hypothesis, offer, channel mix, and success definition that revenue teams agree to in advance.
Principles For Effective Expansion Plays
The Expansion Play Design Playbook
A structured workflow to turn customer insight into repeatable, measurable expansion campaigns.
Step-By-Step
- Define your expansion motions — List the main ways you grow within existing accounts, such as adoption, cross-sell, upsell, and new region or business unit rollout.
- Segment customers and accounts — Group customers by health, product mix, potential, and renewal timing to identify where each motion fits best.
- Identify triggers and signals — Document usage thresholds, engagement patterns, and external signals that should start an expansion play.
- Design your play structure — For each motion, outline audience, value proposition, offer, channels, content, and recommended outreach sequence.
- Align with account plans — Review plays with account management and customer success to confirm fit with current strategies and relationships.
- Operationalize in your systems — Build segments, workflows, alerts, and task queues so plays are easy to launch and manage consistently.
- Measure and refine impact — Track win rates, average deal size, time-to-close, and renewal health to evolve plays over time.
Common Expansion Plays: Goals, Fit, And Metrics
| Play Type | Primary Goal | Best Customer Fit | Core Motions | Risks | Key Metrics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adoption And Depth | Increase usage of purchased capabilities | New customers and under-utilized accounts | Onboarding, training, best practices, office hours | Overloading users, misaligned timing with onboarding or support | Active users, feature adoption, product stickiness |
| Cross-Sell Solutions | Add complementary products or services | Healthy accounts with clear unmet needs | Use case education, workshops, bundled offers | Perceived upsell pressure, confusing value story | Cross-sell rate, opportunity creation, win rate |
| Upsell To Premium | Move customers to higher-value tiers | Heavy users hitting current limits or constraints | Upgrade paths, value comparisons, executive reviews | Price sensitivity, disruption to current workflows | Average contract value, upgrade rate, margin impact |
| Footprint Expansion | Expand into new regions, units, or teams | Proven champions and strong reference accounts | Reference calls, pilot programs, internal roadshows | Complex internal politics, limited internal sponsorship | New sites, new units, additional licenses |
| Renewal Protection | Secure renewal and create expansion options | Accounts approaching contract end dates | Health reviews, success planning, early renewal offers | Late engagement, misalignment on value realized | Renewal rate, churn rate, net revenue retention |
Client Snapshot: Expansion Plays In Action
A subscription-based services company mapped four core expansion motions and codified each as a repeatable play. By tying triggers to product usage and renewal timing, they focused outreach on high-potential accounts, improved cross-sell opportunity creation by 35%, and increased net revenue retention by more than ten percentage points within a year.
Well-designed expansion plays help teams move beyond one-time deals to deliberate, programmatic growth within accounts, reinforcing long-term partnerships instead of isolated transactions.
FAQ: Building Campaign Plays For Expansion
Quick answers for leaders designing structured, scalable expansion motions.
Turn Expansion Into A Repeatable Motion
Codify your expansion plays so every customer-facing team knows when to engage, how to engage, and what success looks like.
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