welcome programs Archives

Five Ways New Member Programs Impact Long-Term Engagement in Your Community

February 24, 2022 By Jim Storer

One of the most consistent findings in our State of Community Management research is on the impact of new member programs in getting increased long-term engagement. It makes sense – having someone welcome you, give you some ground rules on behaviors, give you a tour of the community, etc., makes new members more comfortable, and you’re more likely to dip a toe in a new community if you have ideas for how to do it.

One of the hardest things to remember is that while the new member process can seem boring and rote to the person conducting it, to the new member it’s all brand new.

Luckily, automation has come a long way in the last few years, allowing even the smallest community team (we see you, lone wolves) to have a big impact on the way new members start their community journey with you.

Here are five ways you can make sure your new member onboarding process helps your audience feel connected to your community and set them up for long-term engagement.

1 – Create a member journey: Start at the very beginning by designing a welcome campaign for new members. What do you want them to know about your community? How do members typically engage with each other? What are the most common questions new members ask? You can use these questions to draft a series of emails that are easy to digest and help your new members get acclimated to the details of your community. Delivering the information in small, easy to act on, pieces makes sure they don’t get overwhelmed and give up.

Another easy way to help members learn the norms of your community is to create a sandbox or learning space within the community. Once you identify what behaviors you want to encourage in your community, you can design ways for new members to engage in low-stakes ways as they get started. This could include introduction threads, quick-start guides for filling out profile details, or gamified touchpoints for exploring the community itself.

2 – Personalize the experience: Even the largest communities can provide personalized experiences for new members. You can use automated emails to introduce yourself (and/or your community team) and make sure new members how they can get in touch with you. Smaller communities or communities with a low volume of new members can even offer personal calls. If it’s larger, offer group calls at regular intervals. Next: throw out the canned emails. While automation is your friend, the template emails that come with a lot of platforms don’t convey the tone and culture of your specific community. You can use platform templates, but make sure you rewrite them to match the tone and voice of your community. The goal is to make all emails and automated messages to feel like they’re coming from a real person: you!

3 – Nurture member growth Just because you planted the seeds doesn’t mean these new members will sprout into active, engagement users. One way to stay connected is through drip campaigns in email, the platform, or elsewhere to keep in touch with new members. Use these regular touchpoints to encourage key behaviors, engagement in certain content and programming, or give access to new areas as they progress through their community journey.

Alongside that automation, make sure you’re personally checking in. Make time (even if it’s just 15 minutes a week) to monitor and measure their engagement and reach out at regular intervals. We’ve found it’s helpful to set up a reoccurring 15-minute (or longer) block of time on your calendar to do personal outreach each week.

4 – Celebrate and feature new members It can be tempting (and often easier) to recognize long-term community members for their contributions, but highlighting new members is equally important. Consider content that will spotlight new members to the rest of the community so they can get to know each other. Another easy way to get new members in front of the whole community is to tag them in regular programming, like a weekly work-out-loud thread.

Another way to engage and encourage new members is to celebrate their “firsts” – first posts, first questions, first events, etc. You can use their ”firsts” as opportunities to connect, reinforce behaviors, and get feedback – and this can often be automated within your community platform.

5 – Involve your community in onboarding Use your advocates, champions, or veteran members as a “Welcome Wagon” that can reach out and connect with new members. This creates connections as well as identifies members who can help each other as peers. Make sure you, and your welcome wagon members are modeling the behavior you want to encourage. Have veteran members welcome, like, ask questions, share, etc. around new members and feature/encourage that behavior to model the ideal engagement in your community.

This is the one area where automation will be least helpful. You may need to backchannel and prompt members to help or connect with a new member. If a new member shares a question and people aren’t answering right away, reach out to a veteran member who you know will have a great answer and ask them to respond and tag another member to get a conversation started.

The goal of all new member programs is to set your members up for success in your community, and that is going to look very different depending on your use case, the size of your community, and your ideal engagement goals. You want new members to have good first experiences and see how to engage and get valuable interactions to make their time in your community rewarding.

Five Best Practices for Onboarding New Members

May 11, 2020 By Jim Storer

How you welcome your new members matters – one of the most consistent findings in our State of Community Management research is on the impact of onboarding programs on getting new members to engage in a community.

It makes sense – having someone welcome you, give you some ground rules on behaviors, give you a tour of the community, etc., makes new members more comfortable, and you’re more likely to dip a toe in a new community if you have ideas for how to do it.

In this webinar, Kelly Schott shares five best practices for onboarding new members into your community.

In online communities, new member programs matter – SOCM2016 Fact #9

August 15, 2016 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training

You walk into a new place – maybe you have a new job, are a new member of a class, or a new volunteer somewhere. Everyone is gathered in groups, or rushing around and doing their thing. You stand there. Maybe after an uncomfortable amount of time someone comes up, shakes your hand and says, “Come on in, just get started,” and rushes away.

Help a newbie out?

Where do you go? What do you do? And how do you find out?

It’s not a good feeling, and if you don’t have a welcome program for new members, it’s how those newbies feel when they log into your community.

You’re also not alone. The Community Roundtable’s State of Community Management 2016 finds barely half of communities have anything their managers consider a new member program, and of those, some percentage consist of an automated email and/or a technical guide. It’s a start, but it’s potentially a missed opportunity. Our best-in-class set of communities were far more likely to offer a program for new members, including personal or automated welcome emails and getting started guides, but also incorporating training, welcome calls and webinars, video tours and other elements.

SOCM2016_Fact_#9_NewMemberPrograms

New member programs don’t have to be hard.

Need an easy way to get folks connected and help them settle into the community culture? Try something as simple as a welcome thread. It can be a place where you encourage a first post, or a thread where you as the community manager and party host introduce new arrivals. Then members can say hello and offer guidance – or it can be something you nudge moderators and advocates to take on in a rotating basis, ensuring that new members feel welcome.

Developing new member materials isn’t hard – your chosen methods should make sense for the size, use case and goals for your community. But consider it – because communities with new member programs had a third more active members than those that didn’t. That’s the long-term power of a short-term investment in the people in the community at a time when they need you most.

We can’t wait to hear what you think – tag your thoughts with #SOCM2016 to join the conversation!

Are you a member of TheCR Network? Download the research inside the Network here.

Want to get new community members off to a good start? Be human.

August 26, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to talk with members of TheCR Network about Best Practices in New Member Programs. It was a great, member-driven sharing of ideas and approaches to using welcome programs as an opportunity to begin getting members involved and contributing to your community.

The discussion was for TheCR Network members only, but in preparation for it, I took a look again at the data we collected for the State of Community Management 2015 report, where we singled out new member programs as one of the “quick wins” you could take advantage of to improve engagement in your community.

In the SOCM, we note that not only do communities that have new member programs get higher engagement levels than those without, we note that there are a few new member approaches that get the highest engagement levels – personal emails, video tours and welcome calls. (Click here to download the SOCM and see the charts.)

Looking at the survey responses, I noted that easily reproduced/automated items like Getting Started guides and automated welcome letters were the most common elements of welcome programs, while other items like welcome calls, video tours and personalized emails were less common.

But interestingly, I noticed something else. It was those less common tactics that correlated with a much higher rate of engagement and member content creation.

As I looked at it– it struck me that in every general instance, the more human the approach, the more successful it was. Note that human doesn’t have to mean personal. Personal is important, and personal outreach can be powerful – especially with executives and other key stakeholders whose needs and perspective are uncommon or unique. What human means is that the more the approach connects with the audience as individuals, and the better it is at presenting the community as a human entity, the greater the engagement.

Some examples:

Personal emails beat automated emails: Why? You know my name!

Personalizing an email in this day and age isn’t a heavy lift. With templates, smart email programs and more, making an email somewhat personal is very easy. Adding a human element of your own, if you can, is even better – and personalized emails outshine the automated in terms of community engagement.

Video welcome tours beat getting started guides: Why? I see your face.

The getting started guide is a great tool, and it may be necessary reference material for community members. But even the best of them aren’t likely to inspire me as a new member to say, “OMG, I totally want to be a part of that community!” What might? Seeing a human face telling me about the features of the community and what makes it a valuable place. Now, even before I get started, I can picture what a member looks like. (Also a reason why getting members to post profile pictures has good value.) Presumably, I join communities to connect with people, not use architecture, so it makes sense that seeing those people increases the likelihood I’ll engage.

Welcome calls beat welcome webinars: Why? I connect with you.

There is an asterisk here – in that a well-crafted webinar can create interaction, too. But in general, a canned webinar for new members cannot replace an actual human being calling them. There are practical reasons why this won’t work for every community, but if you think about it, there’s nothing that drives home that your community is run by actual people like letting new members speak with one of them.

Not to mention that there is no better way to get to know your community members than to, umm, personally get to know your community members.

The research shows there is no magic bullet for new members – and communities should mix and match their methods to fit their needs. But in general, when thinking about how to get new members connected to the community – the approach is simple.

Put a human face on it.

New member programs matter

August 10, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research and Content, The Community Roundtable

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

I try not to take too many words of wisdom from old shampoo commercials, but that Head and Shoulders Shampoo tag line does resonate for me when we think about communities. Joining a community is a major step for a member. In external communities, it often means they have an issue about which they need to learn – or a resolution. In internal communities, it can mean something as basic as a new job or promotion that brings them into the community.

Regardless, joining the community marks the moment when they have to walk into the room and say hello.

How do you think they feel when no one even notices?

Bottom line – the research backs up what intuition tells us. Communities that create new member programs to get members settled, help them understand expected behaviors and navigate the community have higher levels of engagement than those that just leave the front door open for people to come in.

Another piece of this we should note – and will write about more later. When building out your new member program, think about making the most human connection possible. Program elements that feature real people having real conversations have a greater impact on engagement than handing out a new member guide or automated welcome message.

But if you’ve taken time to create a community – the research shows, it’s worth taking time to give new members the best possible first impression.

Investing in new community members pays off

July 13, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

You walk into a restaurant. There are people dining, chatting, having a good time – and there’s an empty table, but there’s no one there to greet you, seat you or give you a menu.

Do you stay?

You might, or you might leave. Either way, it’s not a comfortable first impression.

Turns out that what holds true for restaurants holds true for online communities as well. The State of Community Management 2015 survey finds that communities with programs to welcome new community members are more likely to have lower rates of inactive users and more user-generated content than communities that don’t welcome new folks in.

We highlighted setting up new member programs one of our quick wins for improving engagement, and giving them a more human face – through custom welcomes, calls or video, for example – can drive up new members’ future engagement even more. They don’t take a huge investment of time, and they are in most cases easily scalable.

And the payoff is noteworthy – communities with new member programs had about 20% more active members, according to our survey respondents – and they scored 10 points higher on our user engagement scale, which estimates the relative contributions of members and the organization in a community.

But enough of my talking – someone is standing in your doorway. Go say hello and show them around.

Each new member of TheCR Network gets a welcome call when they join. Learn more about TheCR Network and how it can help you advance your community by visiting communityroundtable.com/TheCRNetwork