Why we value all community members (especially those who love free stuff!)
As a kid, I played Super Mario Brothers, Simcity, Donkey Kong (the list goes on…) But as I got older and busier, I abandoned gaming entirely.
Then the smartphone happened. Followed by Candy Crush Saga. (I’m not actually a Candy Crush fan; I’ve played it a few times but don’t find it that exciting). What I truly love is its sister app, Papa Pear Saga, which resembles a virtual pinball machine and is unfortunately highly addictive.
But here’s the thing. I will never pay to level up. I will not pay 50p to acquire power-ups or to skip a level, even one that’s taking me months to beat. I’m what the marketing industry calls a “freeloader” — an engaged user who likes free stuff.
Does this mean I’m not a valued member of the Papa Pear community? Not in the eyes of its creator King Games. “Your enthusiasm is what matters to us. Even if you don’t pay, we hope that you will tell your friends about it,” a King Games executive told me the other day during the Open Co conference.
At first I thought, “Great PR line.” But then I realised she made a very good point. Building loyalty and engagement with your users isn’t about extracting as much money as you can from every single one of them. It’s about creating a community of evangelists.
A freeloader like me, for example, might rave about the game to my friends who then might actually spend money on Papa Pear. That’s why King Games wants so badly for me to keep playing (and loving) it. They understand that all users including freeloaders have the potential to produce indirect value — often through word-of-mouth recommendations.
Team Communities thinks about our audiences in a similar way: we value their contributions and their engagement, not just their dollars or pounds or euros. That’s one of the reasons we created the Communities Forum, a mailing list that gives members exclusive access to events and opportunities to take part in experiments. Some members aren’t FT subscribers or even registered users — some of them have attended FT Live events or been part of one of our experiments. And we appreciate each one of them.
By opting-in to our forum, our members are telling us that they want to be part of the FT community. That they want to interact with us!
We therefore don’t treat the Communities Forum like a broadcasting platform. For us, it’s about building a relationship with our members, sharing useful articles, services and products where applicable and encouraging two-way interaction.
Our goal is to surprise and delight the FT’s global audiences. We strive to create delightful experiences and make it as easy as possible for our audiences to access the FT’s brilliant journalism, on any platform (including offline and at events).
We believe that quality journalism is worth paying for. We also recognise that while some of these members may never directly subscribe to the FT, they might attend an FT Live event or sing our journalists’ praises to their boss, who later buys a corporate subscription.
Either way, we hope our audiences become evangelists of the FT. We’ll accept subscriptions, too ☺
