Slack community?
Slack communities can fuel growth, but only if you avoid this trap
👋 Hey, I’m George Chasiotis. Welcome to GrowthWaves, your weekly dose of B2B growth insights—featuring powerful case studies, emerging trends, and unconventional strategies you won’t find anywhere else.
This GrowthWaves note is brought to you by RankBee
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The tech stack is changing.
New tools are popping up here and there.
Some of them survive and live up to their potential.
(And their founders’ and investors’ expectations.)
Others (usually) fade away silently.
The ones that survive and thrive introduce new ways of doing things.
We should pay attention to these things, even if they seem mundane.
Context
Several SaaS companies use Slack communities to engage with their audience and customers.
There are several benefits to that:
Create a sense of belonging and cultivate a community feeling
Allow the customer support team to provide help in real time
Give the product team visibility into what interests users
Get product feedback and refine the product strategy
Create a sense of exclusivity for outsiders
And it makes sense why you’d want to run your community on Slack, especially if you’re a martech tool.
Most of your customers already use it as their chat-based collaboration tool.
Plus, it’s free up to a certain point.
Similarly, if you’re a tool that targets tech folks, building (or hosting) your community on Discord would make more sense.
Tools aside, the value of these communities lies in how they’re used for growth.
Certain companies get it and use their Slack communities as a growth vehicle.
Examples
You’re probably already part of at least one Slack community tied to a product you use.
And I do not doubt that you can find more examples if you search for them.
So, what I’ll share is two (personal favorite) examples.
Clay
I guess you saw that coming.
Clay’s Slack community is among the most popular ones for GTM professionals.
The community currently counts close to 22K members.
Not bad for a GTM tool, right?
What I like about this one is that there’s a “public” version, where users who are not part of the community (like me) can see the conversations that happen there.
You can see all the channels included in the Slack community and previews of the posts.
If you want to join a discussion, a ‘View in Slack’ CTA prompts you to request access to the community.
This “mirror” of Clay’s Slack community makes requesting access easy.
The logic is simple: you get a small taste of what’s been discussed, and want a piece of the action.
That’s why the next step is to request access through a Typeform—likely for qualification purposes.
Even though I don’t have data on how the community impacts Clay’s business, I’m pretty sure there’s a correlation, mainly regarding Clay’s activation and retention growth loops.
Common Room
Another SaaS company that’s using a Slack community as part of its GTM and product growth strategy is Common Room.
They call their community Uncommon, and unlike Clay, you can join just by entering your email.
The community has 3.8K members, and some channels seem somewhat active.
It’s nowhere near Clay’s community in terms of member count and activity, but it’s up and running.
There’s just one problem
In general, Slack communities can drive revenue and product growth for a company.
There’s just one problem with them.
As my friend Tamara Ceman shared with me a while back, based on her experience building a community for MarkUp:
Communities have a hidden danger because there is this thing called “empty room syndrome.”
Tamara hit the nail on the head there.
Communities always start with excitement and high expectations.
Very often, they end up in empty rooms with no action or activity and fail to live up to their expectations.
There are several reasons for that.
Using Slack may be convenient since your audience and customers are (most likely) using it, too.
But people are fighting for their focus and attention—they simply don’t need or want more notifications or one more place to check during or after work.
And that’s the trap of Slack communities.
Because most companies think they are—or will become—the next Clay.
We all understand that that’s rarely the case.
So, if you use a Slack community to go-to-market or get closer to your customers, put in the time and effort it demands.
Results are not guaranteed, even if you do, but you’ll know you did your best.
Final thoughts
This might not be one of my sharpest notes.
Two reasons for that:
I wrote it because it’s connected to an important launch in a few days here at GrowthWaves. (Stay tuned!)
I’m heads down working on a new business we plan to launch in May; I’ll share more by the end of the month.
So I hope you’ll cut me some Slack (pun fully intended), and regardless of my thoughts on the note, I hope you found it helpful.