TL:DR – If you want to prove the value of your community, but have limited time, access to data, and no in-house data team, this method will help.
We’ve always needed a method to prove community value, which:
- Easy enough for the layperson to understand. It needs to be comparable to methodologies in widespread use today.
- Is causational rather than correlational. Yes, of course members do [x] more than non-members (that’s why they’re members!).
- Doesn’t require access to data. Gaining access to clean data is becoming harder each year. This limits the ability of most people to prove community value.
Over the past few years, we’ve found a lot of success with what began as a ‘quick and dirty’ method to prove community value: Community-Driven Impact score
We introduced CDIS a couple of years ago; it’s like Net Promoter Score (NPS) – but adapted for community.
Let’s dive in…
The Community-Driven Impact Score (CDIS)
Essentially, it’s a survey you send out to members with a straightforward question:
“To what extent has visiting/participating in our community influenced [outcome]?”
For example:
Question:
To what extent has visiting/participating in our community influenced your decision to renew your subscription?
Now include the response options:
- It was the primary reason I renewed
- It strongly contributed to my decision to renew
- It somewhat influenced my decision to renew
- It had no influence on my decision
- It made me less likely to renew (optional, if you’re open to negative influence).
- I haven’t visited/participated in the community
Each of these responses have an attribution value of the renewal and then we simple calculate the responses to estimate the community ROI.
Imagine you can tell your boss:
5% of our community visitors said the community was the primary reason they renewed their subscription, while 13% said it strongly contributed to their decision, and another 29% said it somewhat contributed.”
This is the kind of information that’s as easy to understand as NPS, CSAT scores, or almost any other method of demonstrating value.
You can leave it like that or go further and estimate the potential value of the community by this method:
- 5% of total community visitors × 75% of their renewal value.
- 13% of total community visitors × 50% of their renewal value.
- 29% of total community visitors × 25% of their renewal value
Gives you a ‘back of the napkin’ calculation for measuring community value.
The other great thing about this question is that it’s flexible enough to measure almost any outcome you want from the community:
- How did visiting/participating in our community influenced your decision to [renew subscription]?
- How did visiting/participating in our community influenced your decision to [purchase item]?
- How did visiting/participating in our community impacted your satisfaction with ?
- How did visiting//participating in our community impact your ability to achieve [desired product outcome]?
- How did visiting/participating in our community influenced your likelihood to utilise [features of product]?
Three Things We’ve Added In Recent Years
Since introducing this, we’ve added three new thins in recent years:
- Separate responses from participants from non-participants. The responses from participants are typically higher than those from the average visitor. So separate responses from participants from visitors, as you see in the table above. Ask a qualifying question or split the survey.
- Adjust attribution estimates of value to suit your purpose. We’ve kept it simple with options of 75%, 50%, and 25% – but you can adjust these to fit your specific needs. This warrants an internal discussion about the attribution value to assign to each response.
- Estimate an exact value. By combining the above, we can estimate a precise return on investment (ROI) instead of sharing vague sentiments. This gives a precise number to work with.
You can still use additional methods to prove the value of your community if you like, but I suspect this method is gaining traction because it’s so easy to deploy and adapt.
If you want, we’re happy to set it up for you – simply drop us a line.
Good luck!
