Community Measurement – Other Ideas
January 21 2010 by Jason Peck ~ 0 CommentsThis is Part 8 of a 9-part series on what to measure and how to determine ROI of your community website.
It’s been a while but we still have two more pieces to cover as part of this series on community measurement and ROI. We last left off before the holidays, talking about measurement of messages that are sent to people within your community.
Today, I want to cover some other things you can measure that might not fall into any one category or just haven’t been covered here yet. Let’s jump right in:
Sales resulting from special promotions/deals - It’s important to give people a reason to join your community and part of this may be access to exclusive promotions, discounts and deals–especially if you’re an online retailer or B2C company (though this can also apply to B2B as well). Make sure to track sales of any special promotions you offer your community members as well as how they react to non-community specific campaigns and promotions.
Affiliate/Partner revenue – There may be an opportunity for you to bring your partners into the community and offer special deals to community members, with you getting a share of the revenue generated, or you charging the partner a fee for the access. One example of this could be a car-enthusiast community that offers a discount on a subscription to Car and Driver Magazine to community members. If you’re doing this, test different offers (and where they’re placed) and partners to see what works and what people want.
Subscription fees – There are a few different ways this could work. Maybe your community is a pay-to-join type of thing. Or maybe it’s an added value as part of an existing subscription package. In this case, it’d be interesting to look at the impact of the community on subscription fees, new signups and length people stay around.
In another scenario, maybe the community is free and one of your goals is to get people to pay for an outside subscription (or maybe there is a private group within the community that people must pay to join). In any case involving subscriptions and fees, you should track them and analyze things to see what is working and what isn’t.
Additions/Subtractions to the community – Test, test, test. Add new features, functionality and content to your community. Modify certain areas or sections. Maybe take things away that aren’t being used. As you’re doing this, keep detailed notes on how this affects your signups, retention numbers and whatever else it is that’s important for you to measure.
Compare – I’ve probably mentioned this before, but with everything you’re tracking relating to your community, you should be comparing it to other things you’re doing. How valuable are your community members vs. your email subscribers vs. other customers? How much are community members spending vs. the other groups? How often are they ordering? What is the average order size? What products/services are they buying? You get the point.
These are just a few other things to consider tracking. What do you think? I’d love to hear things you’re tracking that might not fit into any category or maybe aren’t typical things people think of.
*photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfenwick/783545386/
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