Role Of Community Building In User Retention

Building a Successful Customer Community: More Than Just a Forum A well-run customer community isn’t just a place for discussions—it’s a strategic asset that builds deeper relationships, strengthens product adoption, and creates a sense of belonging among your customers. A thriving community can: ✅ Drive retention – Customers who feel connected to a brand and their peers stay longer. ✅ Enhance product adoption – Peer-to-peer learning helps customers use your product more effectively. ✅ Create organic engagement – Customers help each other, reducing support burden and strengthening loyalty. What Makes a Customer Community Successful? 1️⃣ Clear Purpose & Value 🔹 What’s in it for customers? Whether it’s networking, product knowledge, or industry trends, a great community serves a defined purpose. 2️⃣ Strong Onboarding & Early Engagement 🔹 Communities fail when members don’t know how to participate. Structured onboarding, welcome guides, and initial engagement prompts are critical. 3️⃣ Diverse Participation Opportunities 🔹 Not all members engage the same way. Offer different ways to participate, such as: 🔸 Discussions & Q&A threads 🔸 Live virtual and in-person events & expert AMAs 🔸 Exclusive beta groups & insider content 4️⃣ Encouraging Organic Conversations 🔹 A common mistake? Over-moderation. Let members shape discussions while providing light guidance to keep engagement strong. 5️⃣ Recognition & Incentives 🔹 Gamification, ambassador programs, and member spotlights keep engagement high while rewarding contributors. 6️⃣ Measuring Community Impact 🔹 Successful communities don’t just “feel good”—they drive real business impact. Here's what you can track: 🔸 Retention & renewal rates for engaged members 🔸 Reduction in support ticket volume 🔸 Peer-led referrals & advocacy participation 🔸 Expansion growth A well-structured community provides a unique, scalable way to engage customers, making them feel valued while strengthening their connection to your brand. When customers learn, share, and grow together, everyone benefits. What’s the most valuable community you’ve been part of? What made it work? #CustomerCommunity #CommunityBuilding #CustomerEngagement #CustomerSuccess #B2BMarketing #RetentionMarketing

The world preaches loyalty, but how many brands actually live it? Last month, I got an invite to something called Summer Smash, 1st Phorm International's invite-only community event in St. Louis. Think three days of HQ tours, private pre-parties, high-energy workouts, rides, and live music from artists like Ludacris, Lil' Jon, Pitbull, and Steve Aoki. The whole thing sells out in under a minute each year. Pure community building at it's finest. I couldn't make it due to personal obligations, but here's what blew me away: they still sent me a surprise box packed with over 10 of their top products (proteins, apparel, energy drinks, protein sticks), plus a handwritten note that felt genuinely personal, not like a marketing ploy. We've gotten so caught up in digital tactics that we've forgotten about the power of high-touch moments that forge actual emotional connections. This kind of follow-through is almost unheard of in today's brand world. Most companies would've moved on to the next person on their list. But 1st Phorm gets something that a lot of brands miss: real loyalty isn't built through campaigns or offers, it's built through experiences that make people feel like they belong to something bigger. That's where lifetime value really takes off. Summer Smash is far beyond just an event; it's the kind of experience that flips the loyalty script entirely, where customers don't just buy, they simply belong. Here's what I think other brands can learn from this approach: ➟ Send unexpected value for no reason. A surprise product or handwritten note shows customers they matter beyond their purchase history. ➟ Build exclusive communities around shared values, not just products. Whether it's in-person events or virtual experiences, give your best customers something they can't get anywhere else. ➟ Create moments people actually talk about. A few hours with A-list talent or behind-the-scenes access beats another discount code every time. ➟ Lead with gratitude, not growth metrics. When thank-you moments drive your strategy instead of the other way around, authenticity follows naturally. The bottom line: loyalty is earned through emotion, experience, and belonging. If your brand isn't building that, you're just another transaction in someone's day. When did you last surprise your customers with something that wasn't even on your roadmap?

Everyone obsesses over Meta ads and TikTok Shop But here's what actually matters: Your owned channels. At Obvi, we've built a 100,000+ member community and found a clear hierarchy in what drives consistent revenue. Here's exactly how it breaks down: 1. SMS Highest revenue driver, but most brands use it wrong. Yes, you're paying for every message, but the reach is unmatched - you hit your entire customer base instantly. The key is to reserve it for major launches and your best offers. If you blast too often, you'll burn your list. 2. Community (100,000+ members) Our Facebook group isn't just another dead forum. It's a living ecosystem →  - Give us Instant product feedback - Creates user-generated content naturally - Drives organic sales - Costs nothing to reach - Builds real brand loyalty Pro tip: We found our best moderators by watching who was already helping others in comments. They were customers first, advocates second. Now they run it better than we ever could. 3. Email Still valuable, but open rates aren't quite what they used to be. The real power is in integration. Here's exactly how we structure major product launches: 1. Tease in community first 2. Go live in group to announce 3. SMS blast with exclusive link 4. Email sequence 5. Community engagement The result? Consistent sold-out launches. Here's what most brands get wrong: They treat each channel as a separate silo. Your customers don't live in one channel - they move between them. When you integrate your channels properly, each one makes the others stronger: - Community creates content for emails - Emails drive group membership - Group engagement justifies SMS messages - SMS drives immediate action This isn't theory - it's exactly how we've built Obvi to where it is today. Stop thinking in channels. Start thinking in ecosystems.

In social media and marketing, cult hopping is when people jump from one brand’s loyal following to another. They leave one tribe for the next because the energy, the identity, or the community feels stronger. It happens every single day online, and it is happening in hospitality whether you realize it or not. Think about the guests who swore they would never sail with any cruise line other than one brand, then a newer or fresher line entered the market with better content, stronger digital presence, or a community that simply felt more alive. Suddenly those “lifelong loyalists” are now singing the praises of another brand. That is cult hopping. The same thing happens with hotels. A guest may have been a diehard fan of one luxury property in Miami Beach for years, but then a new hotel opened with a stronger sense of community, an engaging social presence, and an emotional narrative that made people feel like insiders. That guest shifted allegiances overnight. This is the danger and the opportunity. If you think your guests are loyal only because of your rooms or location, you are already behind. Loyalty today is built around how a guest feels connected to your story, your community, and your brand identity. Cult hopping proves that people will leave if you stop innovating. So what do you do about it? 1. Build a living, breathing digital community. Post content that makes people feel like part of something bigger. Show faces, stories, and experiences, not just rooms or plates of food. 2. Continuously evolve your brand narrative. Your content from 2018 will not hold people in 2025. You must stay relevant to culture and to the emotional currency of your audience. 3. Anticipate that guests are cult hopping from other brands. Welcome them. Onboard them digitally with content that acknowledges their shift. Make it clear they just joined the better tribe. 4. Retain your own base by creating moments of belonging. Give your guests reasons to proudly identify with your brand both offline and online. The ROI is massive. When you protect your base from cult hopping away from you, you secure repeat bookings and lifetime value. When you attract cult hoppers from other brands, you not only gain new customers but also free advocacy. Remember, cult hoppers evangelize their new community loudly. They will tell their networks why they left the old brand and why they are obsessed with yours. In an era where attention is everything, you can't buy that type of authenticity. The hospitality industry is still far too comfortable assuming loyalty is permanent. It is not. Loyalty today is fragile and fluid. Guests will stay with you until the second you stop delivering energy, identity, and belonging. Then they will hop. The question is, are you building a brand strong enough to keep your tribe and bold enough to attract the ones ready to leave someone else’s? --- If you like the way I look at the world of hospitality, let’s chat: scott@mrscotteddy.com

Sometimes suffering needs a companion, other times it needs a solution. A community can help you get both. Bad puns aside, if you are a D2C brand focusing on niche solutions, you need to build community as a part of your offering. Let me explain why with example of a IVF clinic. We'll call it Beyond The Stork aka BTS. Let's understand the user PoV first! Imagine this - you are one half of a couple who is struggling with infertility issues. It's mentally exhausting, financially draining and definitely doesn't make up for a great tea time conversation. You are visiting doctors, trying all sorts of treatments but it's taking longer than you would want. You feel lonely and helpless and even though your inner circle is empathetic you don't have a support system because they can't relate to you. Cue: A community of people who share your pain, your struggles and have found success through the same doc/clinic/offering as the one you are being recommended now. Would you prefer BTS or rely on the ads that started showing up to you thanks to the non-stop intrusive listening of social media platforms? Quite a picture eh? Let's look at how you can utilise this behavioural insight and create communities with very specific biz objectives, without diluting the humanity of your customers!! 👉 Acquisition - Word of mouth is the most reliable source followed by user generated content (UGC) including reviews, tips and tricks to make the journey more bearable and a general support system who won't judge your users' 3am rant. 👉 Content & information distribution - A community, specially if it's a private kind is a safe space for people to open up and discuss things that matter. It also provides a venue for anyone in a fix trying to navigate the complex journey to parenthood. The same content may be utilized to create awareness on more public platforms across formats such as website articles, podcasts, social posts and success stories. 👉 Product and feature request - Building is hard, getting real insight into user behavior is harder. Communities allow you to get the pulse of users because of the pull mechanism. You can analyse data, understand patterns in the discussions and interactions. An already engaged person will have a higher motivation to share feedback than whatever controlled group study you conduct.While I have taken an example of a fertility clinic, the fundamental idea will apply to everything niche. What do you think? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, I am Nipun - a lifelong community first founder with a successful exit to my name. If you are exploring communities for your app, want to understand the right use case or want to figure out community strategy, slide into my DMs. We can help you integrate social community features in your app in way lesser time than it takes to determine if IVF is a suitable solution for someone or not.

PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions opened up its Discord for the first time yesterday, and one day later the team, including PlayerUnknown himself, livestreamed a fireside chat with their community. Every developer should be doing this. As an attendee of the first Discord stream, my takeaways on the team and the project, in their own words: "Iterative + Small teams = The Dream" Concise, to the point, very demure, very mindful. If you are making a game, or even a business these days, creating and fostering a community has never been more vital, as it can be the deciding factor between success and obscurity in today's competitive landscape. If you do not care about driving growth, enhancing reputation or strengthening connections with key stakeholders, feel free to ignore. The team made it very clear they intend build together with the community, and when done right, the following can occur: ➤ Early Feedback: Communities help identify issues and opportunities during development. ➤ Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Active members promote the game, and the best marketing tool. ➤ Player Retention: A loyal community keeps players engaged, extending the game’s lifespan. ➤ Continuous Improvement: Ongoing feedback drives updates, keeping the game fresh. ➤ Brand Loyalty: Fostering relationships with players builds a long-term relationship. In a crowded industry, this can set you apart from competitors. On Discord, developers can have: ➤ A Central Hub: Announcements, discussions, and support in one place. ➤ Visibility: Active engagement increases exposure and attracts new players. ➤ Authentic Engagement: Direct interactions build stronger connections. ➤ User-Generated Content: Communities create content, expanding reach. ➤ Influencer Growth: Communities often nurture influencers to amplify your message and game. By fostering strong communities, game developers can build loyal player bases and drive business growth. I'll say it again: Every developer should be doing this.

What have I been up to at ZoomInfo, on the team building our first community? 👀 👇🏼 First - what's happening in these B2B powered communities that's so valuable to members, and the company, alike? ↪️ Conversations about buying decisions - dark social in action. ↪️ Real time reviews of products and features. ↪️ Q&A about product/roadmaps for companies. ↪️ Product-specific training sessions. ↪️ Programs tailored to members for learning, mentorship, product knowledge, etc. Plus, lots of great networking, knowledge-shares from peers, and my personal favorite: a jobseeker securing a job from a community connection! Justin Levy and I want to ensure that members join Modern GTM and see an immediate value add to their day to day life. We have really smart people in the community sharing daily tactical tips from the ground. And here are two major KPIs we track internally: ⭐ Deals closing at higher velocity when impacted by community programs/initiatives, defined as a person joining the community before they become a customer. ⭐ Retention attributed to community with X customers from a given account involved as active members. Would be incredible to play a small part in ZoomInfo's massive success with net new customers, and all of our thousands of existing ones, too. ~~ So, how can you get your internal teams involved in community building so everyone can benefit from the space? I think of it like this: ✅ Product: run product launch teaser sessions with community for early feedback, create test groups for product betas, regular product training sessions gain traction with all kinds of community members - prospective or customers ✅ Research: source groups of relevant people and incentivize them to hop on a call to answer questions/walk you through their workflows, listen in on any channel discussions for insights ✅ Sales: get to know your buyers and potential buyers, take a research cap and observe, run weekly sessions on platform demos/sales skills/thought leadership for members to engage with you in ✅ Marketing: get bites of content from the community to leverage in promo, create content WITH community members, give them opportunities to activate across socials, create 1-1 matching programs for references, do a series on customers in your community ✅ CS: create an easy and more informal path to getting common questions answered, use slackbot to identify common questions and create an FAQ sheet that's easily accessible, create regular content for customers within community ❤️ 🚀 #communitybuilding

❓Question: What's the impact of Community on Customer Success? 🔢 Data: Community Members w/ Activity + CRM Accounts w/ Churn/Renew Event Details for Q2. Match on email domain as UID. ✅ Analysis: “In Q2, customer accounts with at least 1 active community user were 3x more likely to renew their contract with us.” 📢 Narrative: “Customers that are active in the community tend to learn the product quicker, adopt new functionality at a high rate, increase their spend, have higher satisfaction, and remain customers longer than those that do not engage in the community. As a result, the Customer Success organization is scaling self-service resources at a faster pace, seeing increased satisfaction across all accounts, and is steadily lowering the overall cost to retain customers.” =============== The numbers have changed, but the story is true. Nearly all measurements for community business outcomes KPIs and ROI are attributions based on cohort analysis, or comparisons of customer accounts with and without active community users. Having this level of insights flips the conversations you're likely having right now about next year's budget from "what does community cost?" to "if we invest more in community, can we raise our retention rates?"

3 things to remember this BFCM, that I wrote about for Ad Age: We're living in a post-funnel world where... - 50% of consumers do most of their brand research AFTER they buy -78% find things that attract and make them loyal to brand AFTER purchase - Pre-purchase is increasingly dedicated to only price and feature research It’s clear that post-purchase is where real branding begins. The greatest opportunity for brand building is increasingly happening after the first sale is made, not before it, and that means new rules for making sure your brand is connecting with your user, especially this holiday season. #1) Lean into post-purchase rationalization. After making a purchase, humans have a natural inclination to keep looking for proof that they made the right choice. We’ll look for stories and signals that we bought the right thing in order to avoid the emotional discomfort of buyers' remorse. That immediate window after conversion, when your user is already looking for a connection, is exactly when your brand should be stepping in. It’s a perfect opportunity to shape perceptions, tell deeper stories and create branded experiences that historically would have happened before purchase. Your brand needs to sell the hardest after the sale is made. #2.) Create loyalty to the group first, brand second. Community is quickly becoming the first layer of brand, and in a post-funnel world where consumers are researching price and features before anything else, community might be the only chance you get to imprint your brand before your user buys anything. We already know community is often where consumers get their most trusted reviews and recommendations before converting. It should also be where you signal what your brand is really about. When you’ve created and stewarded a community of brand enthusiasts that genuinely connects people to one another, you’re not only creating a stronger group - you’re sending a branded signal that reaches people before purchase with more relevant, trustworthy, branded content at the time they are most likely to be looking for it. #3.) Go deep, fast. Start with presumed intimacy. When so much of branding takes effect after purchase, you don’t have time to drip campaign yourself into a meaningful relationship with your customer. Create a reflective and deep storytelling experience that assumes your buyer is already invested in the brand. Even if it's their first direct, unmediated touchpoint with you, people in a post-funnel world are already primed for deeper levels of engagement. Consumers want to understand who they’re supporting and the larger business they’ve bought into. You can read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/gUenawUi #branding #brandstrategy

Read any 2024 social media predictions article and you’re bound to find something about private brand communities. To validate the prediction, I wanted to reach out to a brand that’s been investing in community since they were founded in 2020: Topicals. I asked Natalie Browne Holmes, Director of Community and Social Impact at Topicals, if she were talking to a CMO and advocating for why they should invest in building out a community space for their brand, what would be her elevator pitch? I loved this quote from her answer: "Now, more than ever, your community is not just an extension of your marketing strategy, it's a living and breathing part of your brand's story. From the images and videos they share, the virality of their content, and the impact of their reviews, community members play a crucial role in amplifying your brand on social platforms. Community is not only a low-cost avenue for cultural connection, it's a powerhouse for brand amplification. Investing in community building enhances customer retention through meaningful interactions, turning customers into long-term brand advocates. This approach not only nurtures intimate connections but also provides valuable data-driven insights. In essence, investing in a community role is not just about building a space; it's about cultivating a thriving ecosystem that propels your brand to unprecedented heights of success."