MEASURING THE RETENTION VALUE OF COMMUNITY

@evanhamilton

Retention is the most powerful thing a community can do for a business.

@evanhamilton

(And one of the hardest to measure.)

What you hear: “Build the best product and they will come”

@evanhamilton

What you see: “I’m going with the cheaper option”“Build this feature or I will leave”“They offered me a deal”

Switching is EASY.

@evanhamilton

Functionality

Gamification

Community,transformation

Changing the world

Relatively Easy

Difficult

Very Difficult

Easy

@evanhamilton

Most companies spend way too much time

here. Because this stuff is easy, it’s a constant

battle.

@evanhamilton

Because this is harder and more valuable, it’s a better use of your

time and money

@evanhamilton

But you get that. But upper management may not, and they may (rightly) be wary of doing

something others aren’t doing which seems hard to measure.

@evanhamilton

(And you should do it BEFORE they ask)

You need to show them.

STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR METRIC•Churn/Retention•Lifetime Value (LTV)

@evanhamilton

STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR METRICIf you have to:

•Satisfaction•Net Promoter Score (NPS)

@evanhamilton

STEP 2: START WITH CORRELATION•Causation is hard•Spending 6 months trying to get your first measurement is bad•You need to start building the faith•If you see no results, you can quickly refocus

@evanhamilton

STEP 2: START WITH CORRELATION•Take your community members and look at their metrics before they joined the community•Take that same group and look at their metrics after they joined the community

@evanhamilton

CASE STUDY

CASE STUDY

“People who were active in the Salesforce community in the last 3 months spent 2x more than people who were not active.”

Erica KuhlVP of Community

@evanhamilton

STEP 3: ANALYZE AND SHARE•Share with team•Caveat that it is not causation and you’d love to measure that

@evanhamilton

STEP 3: PUSH FOR CAUSATION•Get your finance team to help, buy your devs/analytics team beer and ask them during a lull•A/B test - invite Group A into the community, don’t invite Group B. Look at metrics before and after.

@evanhamilton

STEP 5: REVEL IN YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

•Community takes time and expertise; most communities fail•You are building an emotional connection•You are making the customer more successful•It’s much harder to leave a group of people you’re connected to than a faceless company

@evanhamilton

SUMMARY•Choose your metric•Start with correlation•Analyze and share•Use correlation metrics to get support to measure causation•Revel in your competitive advantage

@evanhamilton

THANK YOU

@evanhamilton evanhamilton.com

THANK YOU

@evanhamilton evanhamilton.com