Part 2: The Future of Marketing: Exploring the Power of Digital Communities

Over the past 18 months, marketers have rapidly transformed their channel mix to develop alternative ways of influencing their key audiences. These changes have been driven by the evolution of audience needs and expectations in changing times – audiences who have all become digital natives.

What's at stake? Earned Engagement – planning for and measuring how we earn the attention of our key audiences in changing times.

You will learn:

• What is the "Engagement OS" system and how it delivers earned engagement 
• How the Engagement OS can help position your brand to best engage your customers 

In Part 2, Laliv and Michael continue with the conclusion of their podcast conversation, where they delve deeper into measuring the ROI of communities and quantifying their revenue impact, tips to learn how B2B brands can ensure the longevity of their communities, and guidance for those looking to start their own. 

Transcript

Laliv Hadar:                   Thanks to those of you who turned into part one. Now we're going to continue with part two of our podcast conversation on the power of digital communities. You talked earlier about the fact that really you need internal buy-in for a community to be successful. From your management and leadership and from your entire organization, that makes a lot of sense. How can businesses measure the ROI of their communities and what metrics should they be tracking? And in addition, and this is something you touched on as well, can you quantify or put some structure around the revenue impact that a community might have? While again, it may not be the core goal in mind, clearly there's that benefit as well, so ROI, metrics, and then is there a way to quantify the revenue impact of a community?

Michael Cooksey:          Absolutely there is. I think that every business is going to measure the ROI of their digital communities in a slightly different way based on what their intended outcomes are. When I look at the community, I'm looking at engagement metrics. I look at time spent on page, I look at bounce rate, I look at conversions, enrollments. Our community is an open community, meaning anybody can take advantage of the resources there, but you have to enroll in the community in order to post a question, post an answer, connect with another user, and so on. But if you wanted to use it as a support resource for reference only, it is open and it is available, so we look at those types of metrics. We look at overall traffic, who's visiting from where, what languages are there browser settings set to. That helps inform us with regard to a need for localization and internationalization. As I mentioned, we look at time spent on page overall engagement metrics in Google Analytics.

                                    From an ROI perspective in terms of dollar impact, we do also look at, for reference only, pipeline that is generated from the community. Again, I mentioned before, and I want to emphasize again here, we do not and we are not entering... Our strategy around digital communities is not based on money, just to put it plain and simple, and as I mentioned, I don't think that anybody should really entertain the world of digital communities or starting a digital community if that's your only goal. It is an organic outcome and there is an organic benefit to having brand communities and that it does impact loyalty, retention, renewal, engagement, and of course, as I mentioned, pipeline.

                                    So we have a special report that we look at with the converting page path that shows this is where this deal or this opportunity originated. Very often it originates on the community. Again, without having that intention, it just naturally happens, so we do look at the dollar impact that the community has in terms of pipeline, and I mentioned ticket deflection there. There is a formula, a ratio that you can use to determine what your company is saving in terms of millions of dollars on ticket deflection through digital community use. But like I said, those are nice-to-haves for us and we don't measure the success of the community on anything financial. We measure the success of the community based on, did we help the customer achieve their needs? Everything else is a natural outflow of that.

Laliv Hadar:                   Right. And given the business that you're in at Qualtrics and the incredible survey and beyond measurement tool that Qualtrics is, are you surveying your audience regularly? Or do you use your own tools to essentially measure some of those metrics? I imagine you do.

Michael Cooksey:          Absolutely, absolutely, yes.

Laliv Hadar:                   Great.

Michael Cooksey:          We are an experience management company. That is our bread and butter and we would not be good representatives of our brand if we were not taking into account the experience of community members on the community. That informs our strategy to a huge extent. We, for example, identified a need through our previous product ideation category on the XM community that customers want more transparency. They want to know what's happening with the ideas they submit. They want to be able to see where those ideas sit in the roadmap or if they've been implemented, so we took that feedback and we partnered with our product team and later on this month, we're launching a brand new product ideation experience called Evolve, and that experience is essentially going to be a direct pipeline for customers to see what the product team is working on, what their priorities are, where their ideas sit or are prioritized that they've submitted, and we've essentially removed the community team as the middleman, and that was all based on surveys feedback, looking at what the experience is that our members want to have.

                                    And so the refreshed experience is going to be a Coda dashboard that is exactly the dashboard our product team works for. It's going to be available to all community members and they can see, okay, this is what's in development, this is when it's going to be delivered. They can upvote ideas they like, they can favorite ideas that they like. All of that was based on product feedback that we received. I also do annual state of the community surveys for our customers on the community to see what they want more of, what they want less of, and of course, we also look at metrics like which posts and which pages on the community are getting the most traffic and the most engagement. That informs the content strategy as well when it comes to what we're talking about with customers and what we're creating for them to help support them.

Laliv Hadar:                   Great. Yeah, that's so there's like a natural relationship there, too, to a lot of probably the content you guys publish and thought leadership, et cetera. And we're at the forefront of how brands engage with their audiences, oftentimes primarily through live or digital events, working with large B2B brands, a lot of them in the tech space as well, and I'm curious, too, given that this community at Qualtrics is primarily a digital manifestation, but you mentioned a series earlier, more of a web series that you guys do, how events configure into your strategy, both in person and in digital virtual? Would love to hear a little bit more.

Michael Cooksey:          Absolutely, yeah. So we do have a series of digital events that are part of the XM community. It's called Community Connect. That takes the form generally of customer spotlights or customer education, anything that we feel would enhance the end-user experience for our customers, and a lot of those events are live events, webinars hosted usually through Zoom or a similar medium that anybody around the world can join and we replicate those events for each of our global time zones and occasionally even in different languages for different geos.

                                    We also use the Qualtrics community to support in-person events, so for example, we have a series of events that are happening around the globe very soon that are outshoots of our annual conference called X4, which happens in Salt Lake City every year. X4 sees approximately 10,000 attendees every year. Not everybody can make it to Salt Lake City, so we also run local X4 events at a smaller scale, for example, in Sydney, in London, et cetera. So people who attend those events will be able to continue the conversations that they started at the in-person event through private event-specific categories on the community. So the XM community, which is an online community, is something that's available to all Qualtrics customers. You log in using your existing Qualtrics credentials, so there's no separate account needed, and if you attend those events, the event organizers will tell you, "Here's where to go to continue the conversation or continue networking or to learn more about the things that we've discussed at these events," so the digital community supports and augments the in-person community experience as well.

Laliv Hadar:                   Nice, nice, and it sounds like it serves as an extension, so it's really beyond the one-and-done event, which is something we're heavy believers in.

Michael Cooksey:          Absolutely.

Laliv Hadar:                   Yeah. It sort of has to be more of a campaign approach of multiple touchpoints and so it sounds like that digital community is the evergreen presence that allows that and extends that ability to interact and touch.

Michael Cooksey:          Yep.

Laliv Hadar:                   Excellent, excellent. Well, we're running a little bit long here on our conversation, which I'm finding fascinating, so I'm going to ask you two more questions.

Michael Cooksey:          Okay.

Laliv Hadar:                   One is, what are some new both trends as well as maybe new tactics that brands are using to engage and grow their digital communities? Could be trends in technology or any sort of newer tactics that you're seeing in the space would be awesome to hear.

Michael Cooksey:          No, what we've identified as being impactful are different programming types that support your company's mission, so we are introducing soon a series of video content called Two-Minute Tips, and those are essentially two-minute clips or videos on how to accomplish something within the Qualtrics platform, and we are hosting those on an XM community YouTube channel where we feed folks into the XM community as well, so comments are turned off on our YouTube channel and we tell people, "Here's the two-minute tip video of the week. If you want to discuss this more or ask questions, come see where it's posted on the XM community."

                                    We're also looking at turning our monthly release notes into a video format as well. A lot of people are hungry for video and they're also hungry for content that is brief and easy to consume and we find that the video format works really well for that, so our monthly release notes are also going to be in the form of a video recap as well that will be posted across multiple channels. We are also starting our own XM community podcast. I would love to have you as a guest, Laliv, if you're welcome, if you're open to it, and we also have a series of written programming, Getting Started Mondays, Base Camp Wednesdays. Having those regular intervals informs customers when they can look out for that content and it also teaches them what that content is all about and how it can support them on their journey with Qualtrics products. So just utilizing video, utilizing the written medium, but making sure it's something that's easily digestible is my recommendation for anybody who's looking to really make an impact in their digital community.

Laliv Hadar:                   Nice, nice. I love that and I'd be happy to be a guest on your pod.

Michael Cooksey:          [inaudible 00:13:30].

Laliv Hadar:                   Absolutely. Okay, so I said two more questions, but I actually have two more questions, so from here on, so one is... I think they're really important ones that we sort of wrap our conversation in. One is, how do businesses ensure the longevity and sustainability of their digital communities? And then the last one's going to be about getting started. If you don't have a community yet or you're just thinking about it, what are some first few steps that brands can take? But yeah.

Michael Cooksey:          Got it. My advice would be to be extremely strategic before you start your community. Put pen to paper or digital pen to paper, whatever format you prefer, make sure you have a roadmap, and map out, what are the different categories that we would have on the community? How would we segment our topics on the community? How are we going to incentivize participation on the community? For example, at Qualtrics, we have a rank and rewards program that incentivizes customers to participate in the community by earning swag, merchandise, as well as private coaching and mentoring sessions with XM scientists and other experts in the field and so making sure that you have a plan in place before you start your community. Don't just jump into it with an experimental mindset like, "Well, we're just going to set something up and see what sticks." Be very intentional with it.

                                    Also, keep in mind that when you start a community platform, changing platforms is going to be very difficult down the line and can negatively impact your community if you don't do it right, so make sure you do your research on what platform you want to use and make sure it's one that you want to stick with for the long term and will meet your growth needs and can scale with you. Don't just look for what's cheapest, look for what's going to serve you in the long run.

                                    And for brands that are getting started, I would recommend as much as possible, make sure you are hiring or consulting with community people. I think that there are certain segments and industries out there, a lot of people think mistakenly, incorrectly, "Well, I have social media accounts, so that means I can do social media," and that's not always the case. I know that the same can be said in the marketing world.

Laliv Hadar:                   Yes.

Michael Cooksey:          People think, "Well, I feel like I'm naturally marketing savvy, so I can set up a marketing plan and roadmap that's going to be effective," and it turns out not to be, and the same is true with communities. You really want to make sure you have someone with experience in the world of brand communities. They are going to know all of the potential pitfalls to watch out for and they're going to know how to engage your audience best. Don't outsource community to somebody just for the sake of saving a few dollars. Really make sure you have at least one person with extensive community experience either advising you as you get started or with you for the long haul because ultimately having that community professional is going to make your digital community more successful.

Laliv Hadar:                   Great. Wow. Michael, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. I know I learned a ton and I always do in speaking with you and have in the past, so I really appreciate it.

Michael Cooksey:          Absolutely. It's a delight to speak with you as always. I'm glad we were able to reconnect this way.

Laliv Hadar:                   Yes, definitely, and for our audience, thank you so much for tuning in and come back soon. We'll have another episode of the Xcast in the next couple of weeks. So thank you again, Michael, and have a great day.