The "64% Rule:" What Real Customer Engagement Looks Like
When a company’s goal is insight and co-creation with customers, it’s critical that they not only know who they’re hearing from, but that this group of customer advisors comprise voices that are targeted, diverse, and ongoing. Active participation is a crucial measure of not only the quality, but the cost-effectiveness, of a company’s investment in customer collaboration via social media. But despite the explosion of social media, the “1% rule” first identified in the early 1990s, still largely holds true. Opinion, feedback and knowledge-sharing forums such as blogs and rating and review sites show the same social technographics that they did at their inception: 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing. While roughly 35% of the Facebook users who log in weekly update their status, that content is generally private and inaccessible to market researchers, and the public feedback gathering tools within Facebook – as of this writing, a simple polling capability – show response rates of about 5% (based on very limited data).
In contrast, in the private, recruited 300-500 person insight communities run by Communispace Corporation, an average of 64.1% of community members contribute new content every month, and only 7.5% “lurk,” i.e. read content but do not contribute.
This study of participation trends in 246 Communispace communities comprising 86,275 members, explores the variables that influence participation and customer engagement. The factors that have the greatest impact on participation are community size (smaller is better), volume of new business-related activities for members to engage in (more is better), and whether all members share the same native country or language (commonality helps). However, in all other respects, participation is remarkably consistent regardless of industry vertical, member demographics, and community purpose.
Exclusivity, intimacy, privacy, the opportunity to forge relationships with other members and with the sponsoring brand, high-touch facilitation, and the knowledge that one’s voice is being heard – these are all important factors driving engagement. And the total number of members – whether the group feels like a large reception vs. a crowd vs. a mob – is a major determinant of whether those essential conditions can exist.