aligning your community to meet your business goals
TRANSCRIPT
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Aligning Your Community to Meet Your Business Goals
Presented by CMX and Vanilla Forums
David SpinksCMX Founder
Community Expert
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Mélanie AttiaVP Marketing at
Vanilla
Community Advocate
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Agenda
• Redefining the role of community in business• Defining your objectives• Mapping your objectives to the SPACE model• Use cases• Defining community health• Questions
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Redefining the role of community management in business
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CustomerCommunity
Customer Experience
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Investing in community leads to ROI
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What is the value of community?
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The SPACE Model for
Community Value
S upport
P roduct
A cquisition
C ontent
E ngagement
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Support: the community helps other customers with their
questions and needs.
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Goals:• Reduce support costs•Get customers the answers more quickly•Defend your brand when needed
Metrics:• Time to get answers•Number of questions answered• Customer happiness (NPS)
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Product: the community helps you improve your product by sharing
feedback and ideas.
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Goals:• Surface important product feedback and ideas• Improve customer/seller success• Increase customer retention
Metrics:•Number of feedback items or ideas shared•Number of items applied to product• Lifetime value
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Acquisition: the community helps your business achieve marketing
and growth goals.
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Goals:• Create evangelists•Distribution of content• Curate stories to use in press
Metrics:• Traffic and signups• Conversion to Sales•Number of evangelists and events
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Content: the community is contributing the content that
makes up the product.
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Goals:•Motivate people to contribute• Scale content creation and development• Reduce costs of content creation
Metrics:•Number of contributions•Quality of content• Content / Code shipped
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Engagement: members come together around a common interest
related to your brand or product.
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Goals:• Retention and loyalty• Create contributors for other community types
(ambassadors, product feedback, etc)
Metrics:• Return customers• Increased ambassadors• Reduced complaints
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The SPACE Model for
Community Value
S upport
P roduct
A cquisition
C ontent
E ngagement
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Community Measurement Strategy
Community Health
BusinessObjectives Revenue
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Community Health = Growth + Repeat Activity
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Measuring Community Health
1. Track the growth/churn of your community
2. Track how often members are coming back and taking repeat actions
3. Optimize content to create a quality experience that rewards members, driving growth and repeat activity
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# members at end of period - # of members at start of period# of members at start of period
Growth =
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• IE: If you had 500 members at start of month, and ended with 450, your churn rate would be (450-500)/500 = -10% (aka 10% churn)
• IE: If you had 550 members at the end, then (550-500)/500 = 10% (aka 10% growth)
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Tracking Repeat Activity
# or % of members who have taken X actions in the last 30 days
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Only Metric That Matters (OMTM): A metric that you’re confident will improve the quality of your members’ experience.
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→Medium: total time reading (TTR)→Facebook: 7 friends within 10 days of signing up→Twitter: visiting at least 7 times a month→Linkedin: profile views→CMX: posts with at least 3 responses
Only Metric That Matters
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Track to Optimize
TimeFrame
Content and Experience Changes Made
Growth/ Churn
Repeat Activity (posted 3+ times in last 30 days)
OMTM (7friends within 10 days)
Month 1 Added auto welcome email
10% 5% 7%
Month 2 Personally emailed new members
-3% 14% 12%
Month 3 Recommended friends to follow
7% 16% 14%
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Community Measurement Strategy
Community Health
BusinessObjectives
Revenue
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Measuring Community Impact on Business Objectives
1. Identify the action that’s driving value (“the valuable action”)
2. Measure frequency and quality of that action
3. Optimize to drive quality action
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Identify the Valuable Action Using the SPACE Model
S upport Answers to questions
P roduct Ideas and feedback shared
A cquisition Referrals and signups
C ontent Content contributed
E ngagement Advocates created
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Measure Frequency and Quality
Action Frequency Measure of Quality
Answers to questions
Number of answers postedper question
Was the problem solved?
Ideas and feedback shared
Number of ideas posted per month
Was the idea actually used in the product?
Referrals and signups Number of signups per week Do the signups actually use the product?
Content contributed Number of articles submitted per month
Are the articles actually approved for publication?
Advocates created Number of members who mention brand in community
Are the mentionspositive?
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Community Measurement Strategy
Community Health
BusinessObjectives
Revenue
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Community Members Create Business Value in Two Ways:
1. Value of Member: the members themselves become more valuable
2. Value of Member Actions: The members take actions that result in driving business value
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Increased Value of Member + Value of Member Actions - Cost
ROI =
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Measuring the Value of a Member (good for getting buy-in)
Compare a segment of engaged community members to a segment of the average customer• Ie. LTV, Repeat purchases, $
spent, % converted to sales
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“Members of Dell Ideastorm spend about 50% more than the average customer”
- Bill Johnston
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“The average value of an idea on Ideastorm is $10,000, and the total revenue from Dell’s Ideastorm is in the $100’s Millions” - Bill Johnston
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How Much is the “Valuable Action” Worth?
Action Revenue Answers to question $ saved per answered questionIdeas and feedback shared $ value of an ideaReferrals and signups $ value of a signupContent contributed $ value of an articleAdvocates created $ value of an advocate
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Increased Value of Member + Value of Member Actions - Cost
ROI =
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Community Measurement Strategy
Community Health
BusinessObjectives
Revenue
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Keep Learning with CMX→CMX Training: The Fundamentals of Community Strategy→CMX Summit East: May 18-19
Connect on twitter: @cmx @davidspinksVanillaForums.com
What does Vanilla Forums do?
Helping organizations of all sizes:
üEngage customersüDrive loyaltyüEmpower advocates üReduce support costsüIncrease collaboration
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Vanilla for business powers over 200 million interactions
monthly
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For thousands of beloved brands
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Questions?
Questions?VanillaForums.com