From Gartner 2024 to CMX 2025: What Enterprises Need to Know About Community Management

In 2024, Gartner signaled that communities were moving from support channels to enterprise growth engines.

In the same year, the Higher Logic 2024 Community Benchmark Report gave us hard numbers on what works—and what doesn’t—in driving engagement.

One year later, the 2025 CMX Community Industry Report paints the reality of what this shift looks like on the ground. And complementing both perspectives,

Together, these three sources form a roadmap for enterprises: communities are a strategic imperative, but success depends on measurable ROI, scalable technology, and clear alignment with business outcomes.

Gartner 2024 – The Enterprise Signal

Gartner’s 2024 insights set the tone for how leaders should approach communities:

• Growth Engines: Communities now directly influence acquisition, retention, and lifetime value.

• ROI Visibility: Executives want more than anecdotes; they want quantifiable business outcomes tied to revenue, support deflection, and product adoption.

• Tech Convergence: Communities must integrate with CRM, marketing automation, and customer success platforms to deliver holistic value.

• AI & Automation: Leaner teams mean enterprises must rely on AI for personalization, reporting, and content curation at scale.

The message: communities belong at the center of the enterprise digital ecosystem, not at its margins.

CMX 2025 – The Industry Reality

One year later, CMX shows how community professionals are living Gartner’s predictions:

• Lean Teams: 17% of organizations have no full-time staff; most run with just 2–5 people.

• Budget Pressure: Only 26% of teams saw increases, while 18% faced cuts.

• ROI Struggles: Proving impact remains the #1 challenge, even as 85% say community is core to their mission.

• AI Uptake: 81% of teams already use AI for content, reporting, and moderation—92% want to expand.

• Engagement Recovery: In-person events are resurging (65% in 2025 vs. 29% in 2022) and member engagement frustrations are easing.

In short: the vision is strong, but execution is still under-resourced. Community professionals are proving value under pressure—exactly the tension Gartner predicted.

Higher Logic 2024 – The Data Story

Higher Logic’s 2024 Association Community Benchmark Report provides numbers that enterprises can’t ignore:

• Engagement Rates: About 15% of users are active in a 120-day period, with engaged communities average 506 unique logins per month, and 14% contributing to discussions, which means higher engagement and contributions using community platforms.

• Email Power: Community digest emails outperform standard marketing. Daily digests hit 43% open rates, consolidated versions 59%, compared to an industry average of 38%.

• Holistic Communities Work: Communities with mentoring, volunteering, job boards, or local groups see 49%–250% more engagement.

• Platform Matters: Customers using Higher Logic Thrive report 73% more logins, 88% more discussion activity, and 77% more contributors than those on existing legacy platforms .

What Enterprises Should Take Away

By layering Gartner, CMX, and Higher Logic together, the roadmap becomes clear:

The evidence is overwhelming: communities are strategic growth assets. But success requires measurable ROI, scalable AI-driven tools, and strategic alignment with business goals.

At Innovunity, we help enterprises bring this vision to life—designing strategies, implementing, and proving impact where it matters most.