2025 Association Community Benchmarks, Trends, and Tips

Today’s episode of The Member Engagement Show is a special presentation of a recent webinar covering the release of Higher Logic’s 2025 Association Community Benchmark Report: “From Data to Action.” Kelly and her guests Eileen Quinn and John Micah Yates, strategic advisors on the Higher Logic customer success team, walk through the results of the study and offer strategies to increase member participation and engagement. Topics include:

• Highlights from the report
• Strategies for increasing engagement in your online community
• Average community size, logins, and discussions
• The most common types of engagements
• What kinds of engagements are lagging
• Community digest open rates
• How many users make use of resource libraries
• If AI is pulling people away from online communities
• Login trends based on months of the year
• The inverse trend between size and participation
• The relationship between community age and engagement
• How automation rules impact engagement
• How gamification impacts engagement
• How volunteering, mentoring, and job boards impact engagement
• Tactics for growing communities
• Ways to increase discussion and contribution activity
• How much, if any, of your content should be gated
• Tips for avoiding over-emailing

Some Helpful Links:

Webinar Recording

2025 Association Community Benchmark Report

Podcast episode with Christin Berry of ASAE

Podcast episode with Karen Saverino of Smithbucklin