I have another ask. What metrics do you all present to your stakeholders that show positive outcomes that community contributes to the business? I was tasked to create an internal doc of my role in community and how I can shine a light on it by adding items in there that other execs (in charge of budget to add more team members or similar members) want to see. Two things I already see are: 1) Increase in registrations and attendance to customer meetups (engagement) 2) a show of loyalty -- see the correlation between churn and drop off in community or upsells and renewals to attendance in community. Any thoughts?

I would present to them what they are most interested in knowing, and that you can actually get data on. Example: At Shopify, the revenue org had 5 business goals. As a community, we picked 2 of those goals to ladder up into. (to focus on) 1. Customer Acquisition 2. Product Adoption Those were two things that we had access to data on, and could show real tangible results in, and we knew that that was what on the radar of what our leadership cared about. Hope that helps!

Thanks @Nikki Thibodeau! I can see where to start following Customer Acquisition (in my case I would look at upsells or renewals-- our community is private) but how did you follow Product Adoption as it relates to community?

We made a correlation between product adoption and participating in community (engagement). Through cohort analysis we showed that folks who participated in events or used the online community were more likely to adopt products. With that proven (through a few tests), we were able to report on engagement metrics to infer tracking toward product adoption. We weren't equipped with the proper tooling to say Company X attend Y event and adopted Z product across the entire customer base and product suite. So we had to get crafty on how to report on it!

This is super helpful @Nikki Thibodeau! I think tools like Common Room or InSided can be useful on some of these metrics. Esp integrated with Salesforce. I can see how this metric product adoption is useful. I need to ask my Director to see if that's something the stakeholders want to see.

I think the way Nikki framed it is perfect - get alignment with the goals that are most important to your boss and key stakeholders and drive that narrative. At my last company it was driving retention, and helping PMM/product with gleaming insights on product-market fit.