Presenter: Mike Rowland, Impact Interactions
Notes: Brenna Robertson, Google (not official note taker)

• Have to first identify what the economic Value: (Don't confuse traffic or behavior metrics with value)
• Cost Avoidance
• Increased subscription
• More frequent purchase
• Higher Purchase level/amts
• Faster close
• Lead generation cost
• 3 buckets to look at communities:
• Traffic - PV, visits, visitors, etc.
• Behavior - What they do when the get there, who they are, download/visit, contribution/member, responses by goog vs. customers
• Value - can attach an economic value to it. Need $ to get to a true ROI model. See above list.
• Have to build relationships w/ the folks in your company. Need access to other systems. You cannot build ROI from community analytics provided by software vendors
• ROI Frameworks:
• Cost Avoidance
• The person who proposes the question needs to verify the answer. This is a feature needed in the platform.
• # of community support resolutions X $ complimentary support resolution (1-800 number) = total cost avoidance -> economic value
• Track over set period of time (e.g. quarterly or yearly)
• ROI = (total economic value - total costs - like cost to set up forum) / total cost --> over one period and as a percentage
• Increased subscription
• Customer database compared to community database
• cust. database = Average churn rate (e.g. the number of months the avg user subscribes) X price/subscription = customer value
• Community database - look at active members and see if the churn rate is better or worse.
• Price will be the same, so you'll have to see if the churn rate was more or less. If subscriptions are longer, than you have a higher customer value for community members.
• Shows you slowed the churn rate down.
• More frequent purchase or Higher Purchase level/amts
• eCommerce DB
• What is the avg amt customers spend/purchase?
• go back to comm DB and parce out active members and compare to ecommerce DB (which ones spend more/purchase?)
• Do comm members have a higher spend/purchase? active comm users X avg $ they spend = economic value
• Need to trend this and see how it fluctuates.
• what is the average number of items in completed shopping activity? (e.g. 1.6 items) Do comm members buy more?
• Avg cost/item X avg # items = economic value
• CRM decrease cost
• Want to find what avg value of customer is
• Faster close of sale (Good for large purchases like software or hardware systems)
• How fast are organizations moving through your CRM system to sale?
• Identify active organizations in community DB to compare them to avg organizations.
• How long does it take the avg. organization to go through sale stages? What's the cost/sale? Do active organizations in your community go through more quickly and spend more?
• Lead generation cost
• Similar to above, but use cost to generate a lead for average customer versus those which originate in community/social media campaigns
• How can you tell if a user came to your comm and then bought your product through a 3rd party reseller? You can't.
• Users of support communities become brand neutral after their issue becomes resolved.
• Hidden costs of community for ROI Analysis, make sure you count these:
• Servers
• development costs
• customizations
• widgets
• maintenance
• Participate.com whitepaper by Joe Cothrel - Return on community investments" --> http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/images/presentations/Business_Forum_ROI_final.pdf

For those of you who have more detailed issues or would like to learn more. Please contact Mike Rowland at Impact Interactions (410) 604-3304 http://www.impactinteractions.com