Latest / The CMO Podcast with Fexingo: Marketing Leadership, Budgets, and Executive Strategy / Why CMOs Are Betting on Customer Communities
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this number that's been stuck in my head all week. Sephora's Beauty Insider program has over 30 million members, and those members spend five times more than non-members. Five times. That's not a loyalty card discount play — that's a community engine. Luna: Thirty million people voluntarily opting into emails, events, forums. And Sephora didn't build that with performance ads. They built it with a sense of belonging. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what a growing number of CMOs are betting on in 2026. Instead of pouring another million into Meta or Google, they're funding community platforms. Private Slack groups, branded forums, ambassador programs. The logic is simple: owned audiences have no click cost. Luna: But owned audiences take time to build. A CMO under pressure for this quarter's numbers can't just say 'trust me, in three years we'll have a community.' How are they selling this internally? Lucas: They're tying it to retention metrics that the CFO already cares about. Customer lifetime value, repeat purchase rate, net promoter score. Harley-Davidson's HOG community — members stay with the brand an average of 12 years versus 4 for non-members. That's hard to argue with. Luna: So the CFO sees a direct line from community to reduced churn to higher LTV. That's a much easier conversation than 'we need to build a brand.' Lucas: Right. And the community itself becomes a research arm. Sephora tests new products with Beauty Insider focus groups before committing to a full launch. They get qualitative feedback and early purchase data. That's better than any survey. Luna: Quick honest thing — a handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making this many of these. If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used, that's the only reason we can keep going ad-free. Lucas: Yeah, and we try to earn that support every episode. So back to communities — the other big shift is that CMOs are hiring dedicated community managers, not as junior social media roles but as senior strategy positions. Notion has a 'Head of Community' who reports directly to the CMO. Luna: That's a title that didn't exist five years ago. What does that person actually do day-to-day that's different from a social media manager? Lucas: Social media is broadcast — push content to an algorithm. Community is facilitation — create environments where members talk to each other. The community manager at Notion runs user groups, hosts virtual meetups, surfaces power-user tips. They're not posting brand content; they're curating user-generated value. Luna: And that user-generated content becomes the best marketing. A Notion template shared by a user is way more credible than an ad from Notion. Lucas: Exactly. Now, the pushback I hear from some CMOs is 'we tried a Facebook group and it died after three months.' And that happens when you treat community as a campaign instead of a capability. It needs dedicated staffing, moderation guidelines, and a reason for people to keep coming back. Luna: What's the retention metric that tells you the community is working? Beyond just membership numbers. Lucas: Active participation rate — not just logged-in users, but users who post, comment, or react at least once a month. Sephora targets 20 percent active rate in Beauty Insider. Also, community-influenced purchase rate: how many members buy a product they first heard about in the community. Luna: That's a tough attribution problem. How do you know the community caused the purchase? Lucas: You can track referral links, promo codes unique to the community, or simply survey members. Sephora does a quarterly survey asking 'where did you first learn about this product?' Community consistently ranks above ads. Luna: So the CMO gets hard data to defend the budget. I like that. But let's talk about the risk — what if the community turns negative? A private Slack for customers can become a complaint hub. Lucas: That's the fear. But the best communities actually reduce support costs because members answer each other's questions. Adobe's community forum resolves 70 percent of support tickets without any Adobe employee. You just need clear moderation and a culture of helpfulness. Luna: Ironically, the companies that fear negative feedback the most are the ones that need community the most. If your product has issues, you want to hear about them from loyal customers before they go public on Twitter. Lucas: Exactly. So the CMO who builds a community is also building an early warning system. That's a hard ROI to quantify, but it's real. And it's why we're seeing community budgets grow even as overall marketing spend tightens. Luna: One more example — what about a B2B company? Communities feel very consumer-brand. Can a SaaS company pull this off? Lucas: Absolutely. Salesforce has its Trailblazer community — over 2 million members. They share best practices, job postings, even code snippets. That community directly feeds into Salesforce's ecosystem lock-in. The more you learn from other users, the less likely you are to switch to a competitor. Luna: So the community becomes a moat. That's a term CFOs understand. Lucas: Right. And the cost per member on an owned platform is typically under a dollar a month for a basic forum. Compare that to customer acquisition cost through ads — which for many B2B SaaS companies is now over $200 per lead. The math starts to look obvious. Luna: But the CMO still has to get buy-in from a board that wants to see a direct line to revenue. How do you present community ROI in a board deck? Lucas: You show cohort analysis. Members acquired through community have a 30 percent higher retention rate after 12 months compared to ad-acquired customers. Then you model that out over three years. Even conservative assumptions show community pays for itself within 18 months. Luna: So the argument is: community isn't a cost center, it's an efficiency play. You spend less on acquisition because your existing customers do the selling. Lucas: Precisely. And that's why I think we'll see more CMOs appointing a 'VP of Community' within the next two years. It's moving from experimental to essential. Luna: I wonder if the next frontier is integrating community data with CRM — so the sales team knows when a prospect is active in the community and can personalize outreach. Lucas: That's already happening at companies like HubSpot. They score leads partly on community participation. A user who asks a question in the forum is warmer than one who just downloaded a whitepaper. That's a smarter use of marketing budget. Luna: So the CMO of 2026 is less of an ad buyer and more of an ecosystem architect. Lucas: That's exactly the shift. And the ones who figure it out will have a defensible advantage that no algorithm update can take away. Luna: Alright, next episode we should talk about the flip side — the communities that fail and why. There are some spectacular blowups. Lucas: Save that for next time. For now, the message is: build a place your customers want to belong, and the math will follow.