Key Strategies for Building Succesful Online Communities

Community from a business perspective

Andreas Stjernström

The online community wave is here to stay

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Agenda

» About EPiServer

» Communities from a business perspective

» Success cases

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About EPiServer

» Probably the world’s fastest growing platform for web publishing and

information management for midsized to large enterprises and public

organisations

» Founded in 1994

» +90 employees up from 26 employees 24-months ago

» Headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden

» Own offices in Sweden, Norway, UK, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands,

South Africa and a development office in the Ukraine

» Revenue :

» 80% from software

» 20% from hosting services for EPiServer customers

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What Is an Online Community?

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» A digital meeting place where the target group has at least one common interest

» A digital meeting place where unique values are created through interactive communication

» A digital meeting place with no limitation in terms of time or place

500 000active members

Community vs. Web Site

» A community has more editors = numbers of members

» A community has a higher degree of personalisation

» A community has more dynamic information

» A community has more page views per time unit and

per visit

» A community has many tools for communication

between all participants independent of time and place

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The Value Creators of Internet

» Enthusiasts

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1995 2000 2008

Visitors Visitors Visitors

Visitors Visitors Visitors Members

» Companies » Visitors

Where Do the Users Find Information?

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Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Bloggar.se (Blog)

Who Has Control of a Brand?

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» ”The consumer” chosen as the advertising agency of

the year by Advertising Age

» Experiment with

Mentos and Coca-

Cola that was

distributed in

communities

increased Mentos

sales by15%!

Keys to Success with Online Community

» Offer different types of communication tools

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One to Group

Keys to succeed with Online Community

» Offer different types of communication tools

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”Creators”

”Contributors”

”Lurkers”

5%

20%

75%

Business Value from Online Communities

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Collaboration Promotion & Marketing

Business Value from Online Communities

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Collaboration Promotion & Marketing

From a Community Member

» ”The knowledge of 32,815 members is enormous. If

nobody has been able to answer my question, the

answer is mostly obtained in the forums or the clubs

at Shortcut. This is what I call aggregated

competence…”

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Members Help Each Other

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» 9 replies with tips and

recommendations within 3 hours

Example – Social Democratic Party

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Only for members of the party

Networking and members search

File sharing

Collaboration through groups

Discussion forums

Integrated Web mail functionality

Business Value from Online Communities

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Collaboration Promotion & Marketing

“Pinpointed” Communication

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CLUBS / GROUPS

OUTDOOR

TV & RADIO

NEWSPAPER

MAGAZINES

NEWS E-MAIL

SEO

DIRECT MARKETING

INTERNET BANNERS

TA

RG

ET

S

Internet

EPiSERVER COMMUNITY

“Pinpointed” Communication

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FILTER

» Demographic

» Interest

» Status

» Club

» Geographic

”Women in London 25-30 years old

interested in sailing without children

with many friends that like to travel

and is currently at home”

» Category

» Activities

» Friends

» Etc.

Hi Anna!

Do you also want to somewhere warm and

sunny after a long winter? As a member we

now offer you and a friend a special price on a

trip to Barcelona and to check out the start of

Volvo Ocean Race.

Click here to receive your special offer or read

the blog entries from last year.

NEW MESSAGE

Community Members Are Worth More

» 2 x as loyal compared to anonymous visitors

» 4 x more revenue compared to anonymous visitors

» And with a lower contact cost

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- One-third of all users

but two-thirds of sales

Users of community features

represent about one third of all

visitors to the leading e-tailing

sites studied but generate two-

thirds of their sales.

- Users of community

features are twice as loyal

We found that the more a

person uses the community

features of a site, the more that

person tends to visit it and to

make purchases there.

Source: McKinsey – The case for on-line communities

Example – Community of Sweden

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Community to market Sweden

Activities after 4 months:

Over 40 nationalities

More than 8000 pictures uploaded

Over 500 travel stories posted

EPiServer Community 3

» Platform to create communities

- Efficient

- Flexible

- Reliable

» Powerful administration system

» Out of the box Template Community

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EPiServer Community 3 – Function Library

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My Page

Forum

Clubs/Groups

Blog

Image Gallery

Video Gallery

Rating

Expert

Webmail

Moblog

Chat

Direct Message

Tags

Calender

EPiServer Community 3 - Administration

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Success Cases

Communityofsweden

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Marketplace of Sweden

All content created by members

Still in Beta phase

Approx 4000 members without any

marketing or PR

Use EPiServer Community functionality

creatively such as categorising all

content in seasons (spring , summer etc)

Also very creatively using of tagging

functionality, geo tags, descriptive tags

on all content .

Adidas

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Running Community in Nordics,

Baltic Countries

50 000 new members in 10 months

Most successful online campaign

30 % of traffic in store from

Community (Compared to 3-4 % in

other campaigns)

Resdagboken – (Travel Diary)

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» 226 000 members

» Approx. 20 000 ongoing trips

» 80 million page views/month

» 5-600 000 uploaded

pictures/month

» 12,5 million images

» 20% of traffic in online store

The National Board of Housing, Building and Planning

» Government

authority

» A Community for

people working

with one specific

law

» Complex law

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Stockholm School of Business

» Approx. 3000 members

» High percentage online

» Started by the students

» Information exchange

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The Council for Negotiation and Co-operation

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» Joint organisation of 26

affiliated unions

» Representing 700 000

salaried employees

Cancerfonden

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”Sosserian” – Largest Political Party

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100 000 active

members

Existing Intranet

Added Community

Layer

LO – Labour Union

» 300 000 members

» Users decides the

agenda for next

yearly meeting

» Users get more

involved

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HMV

» Community for music

and movies

» Artists, albums,

singles, DVDs

» Users create content

and connections

» Direct link to online

store

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Motorcyclenews

240 000 members

32 000 pictures

279622 comments

on 53308 topics

Rate My Bike

Todaysgolfer

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160 000 members

32 000 pictures

9 200 comments on

8 500 topics

Rate My Swing

Kattsajten (Cat Community)

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Community within web site of Swedish most

popular weekly magazine

Community for cat people. First functionality

was mypage, upload pictures and voting on

others pictures

Advertising more expensive on this part of

their site

More than 900 pictures of their cats

Extended functionality

Deloitte

» Two Communities

» Students

» Alumni

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Modette

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Fashion Community with focus

on blogging about fashion

Approx 9000 members

Very high login frequency and

high activity

Exceeded sales budget for 12

months after less than 7 months

Advertising is more expensive

than their other magazines’ web

sites

Pacemaker.net

Tasteline

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Food and beverage web site and

Community

550 000 unique visitors/month

185 000 members

12 000 recipes

1,9 million recipes views each month

200 000 print outs of recipes/month

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EPiServer Community - Customers

Thanks!

» Andreas Stjernström, EPiServer Community Specialist

» andreas.stjernstrom@episerver.com

» +46 (0) 70 526 48 45

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Bondeliv (Farmer Community)

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SingelRingen

» Community for single

people

» Member when buying

the ring

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Yours.co.uk – 50+ Community

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MyGoodDeed.org

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Senior Citizen Community

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Photoanswers

» Started Dec 2007

» 48 000 members

» 29 000 pictures

Netdoktor

» Health Community

» 50 000 members

» 10 sub communities

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EPiServer Mail

EPiServer Mail

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EPiServer Mail

Application ServiceEPiServer Mail Editor

EPiServer Mail - Statistic

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» Click per link

» Who clicked what link

» When Opened

» Export of Statistics

» Statistics in Real time

» Opened

» Unique Opened

» Bounces

» Click