The community retention playbook
Becky Pierson Davidson shares the community retention playbook she used to reduce refund requests at Bossbabe.
Community is key to driving growth, engagement, and retention for many businesses today. Today, Becky Pierson Davidson, a community-driven product strategist, shares her playbook for creating communities that convert and retain members:
1. Craft a welcoming community onboarding experience.
Personalize and humanize the onboarding process. Live orientation calls with a community manager helped new members feel welcomed and connected.
"At Bossbabe, we basically added a weekly orientation call that every new purchaser that would show up at the live orientation call. They helped create a sense of belonging so new members feel like they're not only supported by our team but also their peers who had similar goals."
2. Identify and fix retention issues in the customer journey.
Analyze behavior data to find drop-off points. Survey members to uncover the emotional triggers behind churn. Address weak spots to improve retention.
"By looking at that data, we were able to come up with some of the questions to help us identify retention issues in the customer journey. We ran a survey, and we found new members were often overwhelmed with too much info. "
When people first join a new community, it's easy to overload them with content and information. Start slow, focus on the most critical elements first, and gradually ramp up engagement.
3. Help members level up at the right time.
"How do you recognize when your customers, subscribers, community are playing it small and encourage them to take it to the next level? That's really when magic happens. When we nailed that at Bossbabes, growth started to pick up."
The best community experiences have customers "ascend" or level up through different levels or offerings to increase engagement and retention.
Consider offering products or services at different levels that help customers level up gradually. Each product or service should provide a transformational experience to wow your customers.
4. Build a strong identity and sense of belonging.
"You can't have identity without values. So I think it's really important to talk about values from the beginning and really make people understand this is what we're about. And if you're a part of this, then this is what you're about."
Creating a strong sense of identity within your community is crucial for retaining members. Ensure your community has well-defined values that resonate with your target audience and communicate these values clearly.
That’s all for now, friends!
Have a powered-up day,
Ramli John
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