TL;DR
Many coworking space operators think having members is the same as having engaged members. The truth is, the two couldn’t be more different.
Members will fill your space with people. Engaged members will fill your space with community.
Which would you rather have?
In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about member engagement based on our 10+ years in serving coworking owners and operators in the industry. We’ve gathered insights from some of the top minds in coworking, along with Optix founder and CEO Kia Rahmani who created one of the first coworking spaces in the Greater Vancouver Area by focusing heavily on hospitality and member engagement.
By the end of this article, you’ll have all of the information you need to have a thriving and engaged community of members.
Member engagement refers to how active your members are within your coworking space and the broader coworking community. An engaged member is someone who shows up to your events, books desks on a regular basis, makes conversation in the kitchen, and is happy to put up their hand to help out when needed.
In a conversation with Tessa McLoughlin, Founder of KWENCH and passionate community builder, she said she likes to think of member engagement as, how many friends have you made since joining KWENCH?
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The more friends you have at work, the more likely you are to stay at a job—85% more likely it turns out. Turns out the same is true for a coworking space.
"We've all stayed in jobs that we hate because we love the people, but we've also all left jobs that we love because we don't like the people. So that's the thing for me, it doesn't matter how beautiful your space is, it's about the energy you bring."
Member engagement is an important predictor of success in a coworking space because it is correlated with better member retention, member satisfaction, and higher revenue overall.
Think about it: if your members are highly engaged in your community (attending events, making friends), they are more likely to remain a part of your community for a longer period of time. They contribute to higher revenue both directly and indirectly by spending more money in the space via event tickets and add-ons and by increasing customer lifetime value (CLV).
Jamie Russo, Founder of the Everything Coworking podcast, often talks about the immeasurable importance of CLV. One of the best ways to impact this? Member engagement.
Member engagement is different from member satisfaction or member retention because it is specifically looking at how much your members interact with your coworking space. Here is a breakdown of these three similar (but very different) words:
An engaged member is almost always satisfied with the space. But someone who is satisfied with the space, may not be engaged. See the difference?
Together, member engagement, member satisfaction, and member retention help paint a holistic picture of the member experience in a coworking space.
Engaged members are more likely to bring in high-quality referrals via natural enthusiasm and word-of-mouth marketing. Considering 88% of consumers trust word-of-mouth marketing, this is powerful. Your engaged members are the ones most likely to turn into champions who recommend your space to others, greet new members, and even give tours.
At KoWorks, Founder Adam Hyman runs three coworking locations with just one person (himself!). In lieu of a community manager, he relies on super engaged members to give tours, introduce new members to other people in the space, and create a positive environment. Members do this because they genuinely love the space and they want people to feel welcomed.
“The minute someone walks through the door, we will build an initial connection on who they are, what they do, and what brought them to KoWorks. Immediately we'll see if we can introduce that person to someone within the community so they have one familiar face they can recognize.”
Members who are engaged in a coworking space, meaning they are actively participating in and feel a part of the community, are also more likely to respond positively to upselling and cross-selling services. According to SpringerGabler, people are more likely to spend money at a place when they are satisfied with the experience.
Because these engaged members are participating more in your community, they are also more likely to come up against opportunities for cross-selling. You need to be a participant in the community to participate in cross-selling and up-selling. This is another way that member engagement contributes to revenue.
| Engaged members | Disengaged members |
| Attends events regularly | Rarely attends events (if ever) |
| Refers friends to the community | Does not refer friends |
| Active in the digital community | Rarely contributes to the digital community |
| Regularly makes bookings | Only comes into the space sporadically |
According to the Customer Success team at Optix, the best way to measure member engagement in your coworking space is to look at key performance indicators (KPIs) including monthly active members, event attendance rates, member retention rate, member NPS or feedback scores via a coworking survey, and group engagement levels.
Coworking KPIs to measure member engagement
While operators like Jerome Chang, Founder at BLANKspaces, opt to only look only at revenue to gauge member engagement, many operators prefer using a collection of leading indicators to determine member engagement.
While no set benchmark exists for member engagement, we can take a look at the benchmarks of other coworking KPIs to make some inferences.
Rather than relying on industry benchmarks, you’ll have more success by gathering a baseline of your KPIs and tracking them over time to identify improvement opportunities.
The only way to know if your member engagement is improving over time is by measuring KPIs and tracking them over time. Along with the gold standard of tracking quantitative data, you can also examine qualitative data over time including:
Now that we understand what member engagement is, why it’s important, and how to measure it, let’s take a look at how we can start to influence member engagement and create a more connected community.
How you design your coworking space is usually your first step in cultivating member engagement. According to ResearchGate, informal communication in a workplace increases job satisfaction and feelings of belonging—so think about how you can cultivate just that.
Here is how a few Optix clients choose to encourage informal, casual interaction through the intentional design of their coworking space.
Salon22, a coworking space for women located in New Orleans, Louisiana, opted for no closed seating in their community-focused coworking space. This design choice was quite the risk considering private offices account for close to 70% of revenue in a coworking space on average.
However, their risk paid off. Not only does Salon22 have a beautiful open seating space designed to cultivate connection, they also have a strong community of people enjoying the space.
“The way that Salon22 was designed was actually intentionally not to have private offices or cubbies so that when we're there, members get to meet each other.”
Mitchell Purdy, Founder at Suite Genius, operates three coworking spaces across the greater Vancouver area. While each space has its own unique flair, there is one thing you’ll find in all three spaces: open, welcoming kitchens.
Kitchens are a natural gathering place, and Mitchell finds that by having kitchens stocked with fancy coffee and filtered water, it naturally draws people together and encourages spontaneous interactions between members.
Typically, the more amenities (on-site gym, coffee) that are offered in a coworking space, the more engaged your members will be because they’re spending more time in the space. However, this really depends on the type of amenities you offer and how much your members value them.
A group of lawyers may really appreciate a printer, whereas a community of wellness fanatics will prefer an ice bath and sauna. If you want your amenities to have a tangible impact on member engagement, you need to choose amenities that people like, and promote these amenities accordingly.
Adam Hyman, Founder at wellness-centric coworking space Koworks, offers an ice bath and sauna at one of his coworking locations. Prospects who express interest in wellness offerings are shown these features during the tour. Assuming the amenity is attractive to them, they’re more likely to convert, and they’re more likely to stay.
Set the tone for engagement by creating a member-centric onboarding program in your coworking space that includes a welcome email package, an in-person tour or check-in, an introduction to your digital community, and a follow-up over the coming days or months.
An automated welcome email package is a great way to get people excited about joining the community, while also getting them oriented to the ins and outs of your space. If you have any house rules, this is a good place to introduce them along with instructions for your access control system.
In 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast, expert marketers in the coworking industry Taylor Mason and Kevin Whelan discuss the importance of email automation, including the value of a simple automated welcome email.
If this person hasn’t had a tour of your coworking space yet, take the opportunity to show them around the space and introduce them to members of the community. It’s a great way to get your community manager acquainted with the new member.
If they have already had a tour, still take the opportunity to check-in in person and make sure they’re getting acquainted with the space and the community. A little in-person check-in goes a long way.
A digital community can be just as valuable as your physical community, especially when it comes to creating an engaged community. While your members may only be in your coworking space a few hours a week, they can be connected with your online presence 24 hours a day.
Add them to:
Optix offers the best online community platform with Inbox+. Watch the 90-second video below to see how operators use Inbox+ as a replacement for communication tools like Slack or Whatsapp.
Onboarding doesn’t end on day one. Keep your members engaged with continuous check-ins, be it online or in-person. This can be an opportunity for members to share feedback on their experience or just for you and your team to keep building the connection.
If you’re looking at the list of things to do to engage your members and feeling overwhelmed, fear not. The good thing is you can automate many of the tasks related to member engagement including:
While most coworking software integrates with Zapier to accomplish these tasks, Optix can automate all of this (and more!) directly in the platform, without the need for any other tools.
The types of events that drive the highest engagement in a coworking space depends on your demographic (ICP) and members’ unique preferences. Chris Pereira, Community Manager at Suite Genius, made an excellent point in our webinar about community building: the events that people want have changed.
Post-COVID, people are gravitating towards day-time, alcohol-free events including Waffle Wednesdays or Taco Tuesdays as opposed to the popular happy hour. They credit this change to people wanting to go home after work, along with a lower interest in alcohol among younger demographics.
Regardless of what works for Chris, the important thing to remember is that the events that will drive the highest engagement are the ones your members want to attend. So send out a survey, try out a few different formats, and pay attention to what drives the highest attendance to help inform your event engagement strategy.
“I noticed that when we provide drinks for folks, most people reach for the non-alcoholics. I'm like, okay, maybe this isn't everyone's jam. And so to get more numbers out, we introduced Waffles on Fridays.”
To engage members who don’t spend a lot of time in your physical coworking space, you can rely on online digital communication including automated email nurture sequences, ad-hoc messages and check-ins, in-app pop-ups, feedback surveys, and group conversations.
If you have a lot of virtual mail clients or people who don’t use your space regularly but pay for a membership plan, the best way to engage them is with regular digital communication. You can do this through a combination of automated and ad-hoc messages.
Some other ideas are:
In this case, technology will be your best friend in keeping members engaged who may not be on the premises or attending events every day.
We wrote a whole article outlining how coworking software improves member engagement, but here’s the gist of it.
Coworking software can help improve member engagement by:
The most impactful of these in our opinion is the ability to automate many of the time consuming touchpoints that go into member engagement (think welcome emails, follow-up messages, nurture sequences). This helps member engagement both by helping members feel more connected and by freeing up your team’s time so they can reinvest it in community building.
That’s how the team at KWENCH has been able to automate nearly all of their manual touchpoints while still maintaining the human touch that people have come to know, love, and expect of them.
Check out the video below to learn how Optix can improve member engagement with Automations:
Collecting feedback from your members, either by surveys or through having qualitative conversations, is an important part of making members feel seen, heard, and a part of the community.
Feedback can help impact member engagement by:
We often find that operators do a lot of guessing—guessing what events their members want to attend, guessing what amenities their members want. A much better way of approaching it is by simply asking them.
The best way to gather useful feedback from your members is to send out automated surveys at regular intervals and to be strategic with the questions you’re asking.
The best surveys happen immediately after an experience. Think about the moment after you check-out of a hotel or just after your Uber Eats order was delivered—both of these moments offer the perfect opportunity to collect feedback because the interaction is fresh in the user’s mind.
Many of our clients choose to use Optix to send out automated surveys either after a booking has been made a set number of times (ie. 5) or as part of automated onboarding experience.
No matter when you choose to send out a survey, make sure the timing makes sense. And perhaps more importantly, make sure the questions are relevant.
What do you really want to know about your members’ booking experience? If you’re just asking generic questions because you think you should, you’re not likely to get useful data. Instead, think about the questions you actually want to know the answer to.
Track the answers to these questions over time to get a better understanding of what your members like (and don’t like) about using your services.
One of the best ways to re-engage members who are at risk of leaving your coworking space is by offering a promotion or deal that benefits both you and them.
Jessie Ouimette Caron is the Co-founder at indoor golf simulator Le Birdie. Much like coworking spaces, she runs a seasonal business which means she needs some tricks up her sleeves for when things get slow. This summer, she decided to send complimentary passes to anyone who hadn’t visited in the past few months. In exchange, she asked for a simple Google review.
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive with people excited to share their experience in exchange for the free pass. An exclusive discount or promotion could be just what your customers need to get them to re-engage.
“I thought, if this is going to happen with seasonality, that's when I'm going to use this strategy to reengage. With the app, I can message them and then it pops up on their phone. Yes, it's summer, but if they see we're doing a tournament, maybe they’ll pop in.”
One very effective way to get members engaged is by celebrating milestones in your coworking space. It’s a tactic we see work time and time again, especially for more community-driven coworking spaces who are eager to connect with other members.
One easy way to make this happen? Automation.
You can repeat this process for anniversaries and keep an out for achievements to include in your monthly email newsletter.
If you’re looking to maintain high member engagement across multiple coworking locations, the best place to start is by creating a consistent experience.
Having a standardized set of operating procedures (often referred to as SOPs) help ensure that you and your team know exactly how to respond to any situation that may arise. This may include:
Not only do SOPs keep your team organized, they also create a better experience for your members.
If member engagement is important to your business and coworking brand, it’s worth it to take the time to instil this value in your team. Tori Taylor, Co-founder at Bad Company, shared in an Optix webinar on member retention that she’s happy for her community manager to spend most of her shift simply talking to people in the community. She sets the standard that connecting with members is the most important part of their job, and she trains the team on this accordingly.
One very important thing to remember however is that what works at one location may not necessarily work at another. This was something that Justin Moran, Owner at five-location coworking network Workspace, found out the hard way. When scaling to his fifth location, he took what worked at the first four and blindly applied it. Much to his dismay, it didn’t work out as he’d hoped.
He came to the conclusion that every location has its own unique strengths, opportunities, and member base. That’s why he insists you can’t simply copy/paste from one location to another and expect success.
“It doesn't matter what works here. If you're opening a new space, you need to figure out what works there.”
A budget for your coworking member engagement initiatives will depend largely on the types of initiatives that you choose to run.
If opting for more events, meet-ups, and in-person experiences, you may want to consider setting a higher budget compared to if your engagement strategy relies more on digital communication.
A reasonable event budget is around $250-$500 per event according to conversations with our clients.
TIP: You can do events on a budget by relying more heavily on member participation and creating strategic partnerships with businesses that may be willing to offer complimentary food and beverages in exchange for the exposure.
When it comes to creating a long-term member engagement strategy for your coworking space, follow this simple framework: launch the initiative, measure its success, collect member feedback, and iterate.
Develop a hypothesis for what kinds of initiatives you think your members will want to participate in most.
Once you have a hypothesis based on your ideal member and what you think they’ll like and appreciate most, develop your initiative from there. Not sure where to start? Ask your members for input via a simple survey.
After you launch your initiative, whether it’s an event or an automated email sequence, measure the success of that initiative by tracking relevant key performance indicators (KPIs). This will give you an objective sense of its success.
The other important part of evaluating the success of your initiative is by collecting qualitative feedback from members. This may be something you choose to do after the initiative has been running for some time, as opposed to after one standalone event or one standalone email. That will help you get more accurate data.
Finally, it’s time to iterate. This could mean by launching completely new initiatives or by making improvements to the initiative you launched previously. Whether its a simple improvement or a complete overhaul, the idea is to do something you think is better based on the feedback you collected and go from there.
There’s a lot more to creating an engaged community than simply throwing some events on the calendar and sending out a welcome email. Member engagement is something that is built with consistent actions, repeated over time. It’s the byproduct of truly listening to your members and trying to create something that speaks to who they are, what they value most, and what they want out of your coworking space. Sometimes, the answer just might surprise you.
If you’re looking for coworking software that can help automate the more tedious parts of the member engagement process, try Optix. It’s the only coworking software platform on the market today that offers end-to-end automation, automation across the entire member journey, from lead to champion.
Want to see if Optix is right for your business with a free 14-day trial? Connect with a member of our team today →
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You can use data (bookings, attendance, payments) to understand member engagement by analyzing booking patterns and number of bookings per member, tracking event attendance and overall attendance, and tracking the volume of payments and payment amounts to infer engagement.
Digital channels like email and in-app messages are best for boosting member engagement. Optix offers white-labeled mobile coworking applications that have been shown to increase member engagement by providing a central place for all communication to take place.
Make your coworking members feel seen and valued by celebrating member milestones, remembering personal details about members, and taking time out of your day to connect them with others in the community.
Signs of disengaged members in a coworking space include rare event attendance, limited referrals, rarely contributing to the digital community, and sporadic attendance.
In-person and digital communication helps engage members in your coworking space by making them feel seen, heard, and valued. You can leverage communication platforms to share events, celebrate anniversaries, distribute important announcements, and highlight member achievements.
