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aluciani
aluciani
Helper ⭐️
August 17, 2026

Onboarding New Members - How Do You Measure Success

  • August 17, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 54 views

I have a community onboarding workflow that sends out 7 emails with the first month. I am considering to reduce that number to 5 or maybe 3. My sense is that these emails are not driving members to return and post/reply to topics. Here are some metrics, not sure if they are good or not: 

  • Open rates: 27 - 33%
  • Clicked rates:: 5 - 10% (not all emails have a link to click)
  • Unsubscribe rates: .6 - 2.6%

I’d like to know how others are treating their new member onboarding. Is anyone doing anything with AI as it relates to onboarding?  I want to build a best in class onboarding workflow. I want to stop early churn before it starts.

BTW - most of our emails contain links to parts of the community to explore, for example become a member in user group > user group page, etc - This might be the problem. My thinking is show people the community before they begin to start posting. 

2 replies

mitchell.gordon
mitchell.gordon
Expert ⭐️
August 17, 2026

Just wanted to start by saying this is just me and there is no correct way to fully do anything in the community space.

We created a Get Started page which has the Ts and Cs on it, some best practices, places to go ect. We push this upon registration. 

Dont get caught up thinking something you are doing isnt working or failing. A lot of people “are lurkers” in community platforms. Getting individuals to participate is always hard. Focus on the super users in your community to help get responses/solutions to those who ask that first question. Ive always seen better success focusing on those who want to contribute over trying to get every individual to participate.

    atwhite
    atwhite
    Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    August 19, 2026

    I agree with ​@mitchell.gordon on a few things. There is no definitive way of doing things.

    And yes, no matter what you do, a large portion of your members will always be content to view only rather than engage. Traditional wisdom is 90% passive, 9% active, and 1% superuser. 

    Not sure if Gainsight still does this, but our instance came with pre-built member segments in the User Segments area that are loosely tied to these percentages so you can easily see. I believe they split the “passive” category into “inactive” (haven’t logged in for 90+ days) and “passive” (have logged in within 90 days, but haven’t taken an action). We customized our segments to remove employees, etc., and just look at what our customer members are doing. 

    Additionally, rather than trying to explain the entire Community in your campaign, you might consider getting them to focus on doing one thing or taking one key action. “Building the habit” creates far more stickiness than a broad awareness; once they make one post, the barrier to entry for making another is lower. Or once they’ve logged in a second time, it’s easier to get them to come back a third and a fourth. Etc. 

    Basically, just help them find their next right step—ideally aligned with what you ultimately want them to do. We point our members toward an “Introduce yourself” thread where they can meet others and make their first post in a low-pressure environment. After that, it’s things like “Join a group,” “register for an event,” “subscribe to a forum,” etc. 

    Hope that helps!

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