The North Star Framework for Effective Member Retention

Sarah, the visionary CEO of CommunityTech Foundation, faced a critical challenge in community building. Her once-thriving hybrid platform, designed to connect change-makers and foster social innovation online and in person, was experiencing a sharp decline in engagement.

Paid membership renewal rates were stalling, and growth had stagnated, jeopardizing the financial viability of the endeavor and eroding support from crucial sponsors. Compounding the problem, the community generated insufficient revenue to pay herself and a team, severely limiting time and resources for investment.

However, Sarah also saw a glimmer of hope. Successfully revitalizing the community could open up more revenue sources, such as sponsorships, more membership fees, and organic growth through higher referral rates — without excluding those less fortunate from community membership, an ideal central to her mission. This potential for transformation fueled Sarah's determination to find solutions to her community building challenges.

Traditional solutions often fall short in addressing these challenges in a few ways: • Launching new offerings or products: While this could reignite interest, it risks complicating the platform and stretching resources thin without addressing core engagement issues. • Aggressive marketing campaigns: This might boost user numbers temporarily but could lead to a 'revolving door' effect if underlying retention problems aren't resolved. • Surveys: While providing valuable feedback, reaching inactive members or users and getting honest responses about community engagement poses significant challenges. To overcome these limitations and revitalize CommunityTech's community, Sarah realized she needed to take a more innovative approach to community building. Let's dive into the five strategies she implemented to foster lasting engagement and innovation. By implementing these strategies, social impact executives can create impactful innovations that build a community of dedicated advocates sustaining their mission for years to come.

Sarah recognized that to build a thriving community, she first needed to understand the current state of affairs. The problem was clear: engagement was declining, but the reasons remained elusive or she felt she was relying on untested assumptions. A community audit would provide the insights needed to develop targeted retention strategies. Key Steps 1. List: Put every member, user, or customer into a table. 2. Enrich: Add columns next to these users and enrich with data (see toggle below for examples). Take tiny steps, you can can always add more later.

Tip Don’t conflate what people say with reality. People default to positivity to avoid conflict. • Instead, consider evidence quality. Actions speak louder than words or your assumptions. • For instance, a community member might tell you they’re satisfied. But you notice they decline offers to renew when you make an early ask via an early-bird discount, to refer others in their network to the community, or to attend or volunteer at events.

While she now had a better understanding of the problem, she felt overwhelmed - there were so many issues to tackle.

CommunityTech's resources were being spread too thin, trying to cater to everyone equally in their community-building efforts. She realized that trying to serve everyone meant that she was serving no one well.

To identify the biggest areas of impact, Sarah turned her attention to segmenting and targeting the most promising niches within her member base. Key Steps 1. Bright spots. Find your “raving fans” based on key outcomes, such as high engagement with relatively low or moderate effort. 2. Generalize. Brainstorm common patterns between these members in order to prioritize the segments, topics, and activities generating the most success. In other words, what distinguishes successful from unsuccessful efforts with them? Filter your table and find commonalities between key enriched data, such as: • priorities or challenges addressed; • what they believe they can get here that they can’t elsewhere; • top efforts that resonated (topics, types of activities or engagements, formats, etc) 3. Refine and validate. With these new insights, narrow down your core member-facing sales material, focusing primarily on what is creating the most value and targeted to the interests of your raving fans. Test this material with your target market by linking to early renewal conversions (or other outcomes of interest).

Tip It's tempting to pursue new ideas that seem like easy ways to expand your offerings. Yet expanding too quickly can lead to financial instability and stretch already thin resource, juggling multiple projects that aren't optimized or losing focus on your core advantages. Instead consider: • Getting your top existing segments (starting with your raving fans) and use cases into a profitable, repeatable model before rapidly expanding into entirely new segments or use cases • If you do decide to grow into new areas, start with small and focused prototypes and validate before heavy investment. • For instance, for more cost-effective growth, consider starting with: (a) similar segments (i.e., an adjacent market sharing many traits with your raving fans) (b) related use cases (i.e., easy-to-deliver upsells linked to your core strengths)

Even though Sarah has sharpened who she is most trying to serve, she still faced a remaining problem. Without a clear, measurable goal, her efforts to improve community engagement were scattered and ineffective. To address this, Sarah established a “North Star Metric” based on CommunityTech's refined value proposition, formalizing what she knew was most important to her raving fans. She recognized by measuring how she was most generating value, she could start making improvements to it. Key Steps 1. Hypothesize: Again, review your data and identify commonalities between your raving fans. Note that if this is is new, it may take a few tries to get it right. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of progress. Again, pull up data of your raving fans and find commonalities between: • their definitions of success • specific moments they felt their investment was worth it; and/or • what they believe they get from us they can’t get elsewhere

2. Map the journey and top challenges: Identify the top 3-5 key steps to get your member to the north star. Find and prioritize the most common and important obstacles, especially for your target segments closest to achieving their north star metric. 3. Roadmap and experiment: based on those challenges, refine your programs or create new solutions, building upon bright spots and existing assets and strengths (see below). Log interventions, clarifying what is or isn’t working on your north star metric. Common solutions include • personalized onboarding, including the creation of joint success plans and expected community and participation guidelines • tailored nudges to opportunities that will likely delight them within the first 30 days • smaller groups or “buddies” with engaged members to deepen connections

Establishing a clear North Star Metric has been transformative for CommunityTech, enabling the organization to laser-focus its efforts. This strategic pivot has not only significantly enhanced member satisfaction but has also fostered a more robust, interconnected community. We invite you to reflect on your own community building efforts. What metrics guide your organization? How can you align your strategies with the needs of your members to boost engagement and drive innovation? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and let's continue to learn from one another as we work toward creating impactful, engaged communities.