Community Members Spend 2.5× More – Why Brand Communities Drive Growth

Sephora found that members of its online Beauty Insider community were more than twice as valuable in purchase behavior as typical customers. Even more striking, Sephora’s most active “superfans” (those spending ~396 minutes per month in the community) spent 10× more than the average customer. The takeaway is clear: an engaged community member isn’t just a little more valuable; they are exponentially more valuable. This isn’t an isolated case, either. Starbucks reports similar trends, with its Rewards members spending about 2.5× more per year than non-members and driving 40% of U.S. revenue. In short, community engagement isn’t just a feel-good bonus; it directly impacts the bottom line.

Why does this happen? The truth is that belonging drives loyalty. When customers become part of a community, they form an emotional connection that transcends a one-time transaction. In fact, research shows that nearly 75% of what drives customer engagement and loyalty comes down to emotional factors like happiness, trust, anticipation, and a sense of pride. A community naturally taps into these emotions by fostering a sense of belonging and connection among members. The brand stops being just a seller of products and instead becomes a facilitator of relationships and experiences. This emotional loyalty dramatically raises the switching costs for customers; leaving the brand would also mean leaving the supportive network and identity they’ve built around it.

Why Community Members Spend More

There are several powerful dynamics at play that explain why community-engaged customers tend to spend so much more:

• Trust and Authenticity: Communities leverage user-generated content and peer recommendations, which build trust in a way traditional marketing cannot. Sephora’s community, for example, enables members to read real product reviews, ask questions, and get advice from fellow customers. This social proof makes purchase decisions feel safer and more informed. As a result, community members are more confident buying additional products (and often higher-value products) because they’ve seen others vouch for them. As one analysis put it, people inherently trust what other users say about a product more than what the brand says, and a community “surfaces this trust at scale.” When customers trust the recommendations they find in the community, they’re willing to spend more and try new offerings.
• Increased Engagement & Touchpoints: An active community creates frequent touchpoints that keep the brand top-of-mind. Community members tend to spend more time interacting with the brand’s ecosystem – Sephora’s Beauty Talk members once logged an average of 33 hours per month in the forums! All that time translates into more opportunities to discover products and deepen usage. In-app communities and forums essentially embed the brand into customers’ daily routines. The more often a customer drops into your app or site to check the community, the more likely they are to make repeat purchases. This habitual engagement is gold for customer lifetime value. In contrast, a non-community customer might only visit when they need to buy something specific. Community members are browsing, conversing, and getting inspired even when they’re not explicitly shopping.
• Emotional Loyalty & Belonging: As mentioned, community drives emotional loyalty by making customers feel part of something bigger. That sense of belonging dramatically boosts retention and spend. Members who identify with the community feel a personal stake in the brand’s success. They aren’t just buyers; they see themselves as contributors and insiders. Sephora deliberately tied its community to its loyalty program, ensuring that engagement and rewards go hand-in-hand. The result is extremely loyal customers: over 80% of Sephora’s sales now come from members of its Beauty Insider loyalty program. These community-minded customers stick around, explore more categories, and increase their annual spend to reach status tiers or unlock rewards. The community provides the emotional “glue” that keeps them loyal, which in turn yields higher average spend per member.
• Education and Value-Added Content: Great brand communities double as learning hubs. By providing how-tos, expert Q&As, and peer advice, a community educates customers to get more value from products. Sephora’s community emphasizes product education like tutorials to ingredient deep-dives to help shoppers make better choices. When customers are well-informed and confident, they are less likely to make bad purchases, and more likely to find products that truly meet their needs. That means fewer returns and more satisfaction, which correlates with higher spending. Community content essentially empowers customers to buy the right product the first time and discover complementary products they might love. The more problems or needs your community content can solve, the more lifetime value you unlock from each member.

Community as a Growth Engine (Beyond Just Spending)

Fostering a community doesn’t just increase individual customer spend, but it also creates a flywheel for growth that benefits your entire business. Community members often evolve into brand advocates and content creators themselves, further amplifying your reach:

• Word-of-Mouth and Advocacy: Satisfied, engaged community members naturally spread the word. They recommend the brand to friends, share their positive experiences on social media, and even create content (reviews, blog posts, tutorials) that attracts new customers. In essence, your community turns loyal customers into a volunteer marketing force. This peer-driven advocacy is incredibly credible to outsiders. A prospective buyer who hears about your product from a passionate community member or stumbles upon a community-generated how-to video is far more likely to convert than one who only sees a paid ad. The organic growth stemming from community advocacy can significantly lower your customer acquisition costs over time. Some products, like Notion’s productivity software, grew explosively thanks in large part to community-shared templates and user guides that drew in the next wave of users without the company spending a dime on advertising. In short, an active community breeds its own network effects – each engaged member helps pull in new members.
• Feedback and Innovation: Your community is also a direct line to your best customers’ needs and ideas. Engaged users love to give feedback, request features, and even help test new offerings. Tapping into this dialogue can guide product improvements and innovation. Brands like Sephora treat their community as an invaluable listening platform  before rolling out changes, they seek input from community members and adjust based on that feedback. This not only avoids missteps but also makes customers feel heard, strengthening their bond with the brand. Moreover, by crowdsourcing ideas or content from superusers, companies can enhance their products and marketing in ways that resonate more authentically with the target audience. A community can thus drive growth by ensuring the brand continually evolves in tune with its most passionate customers.
• Retention and Self-Support: Communities serve as a built-in support network where customers can get quick help and advice from peers. This peer-to-peer support both lowers support costs (fewer help tickets!) and increases customer satisfaction. When users solve problems together or share tips on maximizing value from the product, they are less likely to churn. They feel empowered and “in it together.” Higher retention means higher lifetime value and more opportunities for upsells or cross-sells down the line. Community-engaged customers also tend to be more forgiving of hiccups – if an issue arises, they often turn to the community for solutions rather than abandoning the product. All of these factors contribute to a stronger growth foundation fueled by existing customers, as opposed to constantly paying to acquire fresh ones. In fact, companies leveraging community as part of their strategy see meaningfully higher retention and customer lifetime value on average.

Rethinking Your Strategy: From Social Media to Owned Community

It’s worth noting that 60% of brands now have an online community of some form, a testament to how critical this channel has become. Yet, not all “communities” are created equal. Many companies purely rely on third-party social media and assume that counts as their community. The problem is that those platforms ultimately own the audience and the data, not you. Your reach to members can be throttled by algorithms. 

Teams are bringing communities in-house, often inside their own apps. By doing so, you ensure that 100% of your community members get to engage with your content and with each other, free of algorithmic interference. You also gain rich first-party data and direct lines of communication with your users. In short, an owned community becomes a channel you control: you can launch new features or campaigns to the community and get immediate engagement, without fighting platform rules or distractions.

Here are a few strategic shifts and tips for brands looking to capitalize on community-led growth:

• Prioritize Owned Platforms: If your community currently lives on a third-party platform, evaluate ways to migrate or build a dedicated community site or in-app community. Owning the platform means you own the relationship. 
• Foster Engagement, Not Just Follower Counts: Success in community building isn’t measured by how many people hit “Like” on a post; it’s measured by meaningful engagement. Encourage activities that get members interacting with each other – discussions, Q&A threads, challenges, user-generated content contests, etc. These interactions build the peer bonds that lead to the loyalty and spend increases we discussed. Also, identify and nurture your superusers. They are the ones creating content, welcoming newbies, and answering questions. Recognize them publicly, maybe give them special status or perks. These champions will gladly amplify your brand and keep the community vibrant.
• Integrate Community with Loyalty Programs: Community and loyalty go hand-in-hand. Consider linking community milestones to rewards (e.g. badges, points, or exclusive benefits for contributions). When done right, this creates a virtuous cycle: the community drives more purchases (to earn rewards), and the loyalty program drives deeper community participation. Both reinforce a customer’s bond with the brand.
• Measure What Matters: Traditional social media might tempt teams to focus on vanity metrics like follower counts or impressions. With brand communities, shift your KPIs to metrics that reflect depth of engagement and customer value. Track things like active participation rate, time spent in community, content contributions, helpful answers provided, and of course the lifetime value (LTV) or average spend of community members versus non-members. These will give you a far better read on community ROI. For instance, if community members are spending 2.5× more (or their retention rate is significantly higher), those are concrete indicators that should inform your budgeting and strategy (perhaps justify more investment into community programs). 

Beyond the 2.5×: A Community-Centric Growth Mindset

The collapse of organic reach on traditional social platforms and the rising costs of paid acquisition have pushed brands to seek more sustainable growth channels. Community is proving to be exactly that. It’s a channel where engagement creates more engagement, where your best customers not only spend more but actively help you acquire and retain others. The data points we started with underscore a bigger paradigm shift. Growth is no longer just about how many new customers you can acquire; it’s about how deeply you can engage and retain the customers you have. A thriving community is the engine to do this. It gives users a reason to stick around beyond the product itself, turning usage into habit, and customers into true believers.

Crucially, building community is a long-term play and requires a mindset change. It’s about investing in relationships over immediate conversions. The payoff, however, is a more resilient business. When you have a loyal community, you’re less vulnerable to algorithm changes, less dependent on ad spend, and less at risk from competitors offering a minor discount. 

Your next customer might still discover you through an Instagram ad or a Google search. But whether that customer turns into a high-value, repeat buyer will depend on what you have waiting for them beyond the transaction. By providing a community – a place to belong, learn, and connect – you greatly increase the odds they’ll stick around and multiply in value. In a world where only a small fraction of your audience sees a given social post, you need to ask a bigger question: How can we bring more of our audience into a space where nearly 100% of them will see value and engage?