The coworking space market is expected to reach $30.36 billion in 2026, according to the Business Research Company. 

And while there’s ample opportunity to capitalize on this massive growth, a lot goes into launching and maintaining a profitable coworking space. 

That’s why it’s never been more important for coworking space owners to carefully monitor and track the right data to ensure they’re well-positioned for the year ahead and beyond. 

If you’re not already tracking key performance indicators, or KPIs, now’s the time to start. KPIs refer to a set of quantifiable measurements used to gauge a company’s overall long-term performance. They’re essentially your business’s compass. In other words, if you’re eclipsing your monthly or quarterly KPIs, there’s an excellent chance your coworking space is thriving.

Knowing and understanding your coworking KPIs is important. But ultimately, it’s what you do with them that really matters. It’s critical to extract value from these data points and convert them into action. That way, you’ll better inform your business strategy and maximize growth.

For starters, here are nine KPIs you should be tracking for your coworking business:

Coworking KPIs You Should Be Tracking

1. Customer Acquisition Cost

In its simplest form, your Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC, is the total cost of your sales and marketing activities divided by the number of customers you acquire during a specified period.

It’s important to know how much you’re spending per person that actually joins your coworking community. It will force you to pivot your marketing efforts toward the most effective channels and strategies to maximize ROI. If you need a refresher on how to calculate CAC, see below:

Calculate CAC

(Sales costs + Marketing costs) / Number of new customers

For example, if your business spends $100,000 per year to support your sales efforts and $50,000 on marketing, and you gain 50 new clients per year, your CAC is $3,000 = ($100,000 + $50,000)/50.

2. Monthly Pageviews

Google Analytics is your best friend. It’s one of the best ways to see not only how many people are interacting with your business online, but which content on your website they’re interacting with, and for how long. These metrics are invaluable, as they give you a sense of what’s connecting with your target customer and what isn’t.

If you’re a marketing novice, consider hiring a digital marketing agency to help you cull valuable insights from this data and formulate a strategy that’ll convert more leads than ever before.

3. Email Open Rate

Open rate isn’t the only email metric that matters but it does provide a solid measure of engagement over time. If this number starts to crater, that’s a sturdy indication that maybe it’s time to adjust the frequency of your emails or perhaps even the content itself. Test various subject lines with every email to see what type of verbiage your audience connects with most. 

Just remember: once your followers unsubscribe, you’re not getting them back. So make sure all of your content is carefully crafted and addresses their unique pain points.

4. New Members Per Month

New members represent a key portion of your overall subscription revenue. That’s why this represents one of the most important coworking KPIs. If you’re not already, make sure you’re tracking not only the total number of new members who join each month but also the total amount of new revenue for which each new member accounts. 

Make note of how they found you. Was it Google, Yelp, Facebook, or word of mouth? Also, did they take a tour before signing up for a membership? These are all important pieces of data that can inform your evolving marketing strategy and area of focus going forward. 

Taking stock of which channels are the most effective for attracting new members allows you to double down on what’s working and move away from what’s not. That way, you increase your monthly subscription revenue and control your monthly marketing spend.

5. Member Churn

As far as coworking KPIs go, member churn isn’t the most fun metric to track. However, that doesn’t mean you should avoid it altogether. Member church is the percentage of members who left your business during a given period.

The unfortunate truth is not all of the new members who join your coworking community are going to stay forever. But it’s important to diligently track the number of people that bolt each month. 

Member churn directly impacts your bottom line, and for that reason, you should make every attempt to curb it. Coworking spaces can lend themselves to professionals who are more nomadic in nature than the average customer base, but that doesn’t mean your business should be a revolving door. Make sure you make note of why, specifically, they left. Some are going to relocate. Some are going to go back to work in a brick-and-mortar office. Some are going to work from home full-time. Some are going to go to a competitor. But if the reason cited are consistently noise or parking, for instance, that may tip you off to what needs to change moving forward.

The churn rate formula is: (Lost Customers ÷ Total Customers at the Start of Time Period) x 100. 

6. Occupancy Rate

The occupancy rate refers to how much space in square feet is occupied by your coworking space members every month. Occupancy rate is typically expressed as a percentage.

For instance, if only 20% of your common coworking area is actually occupied, but all of your private offices are full, perhaps there’s a way for you to convert some of your unuitilized space into more offices. This will help you make a higher percentage of your space profitable and offset more of your operational costs.

Events are another excellent way to make use of some of that unused space. 

7. Retention Rate

If you watch “The Office,” you should know the facts about customer retention.

Ryan: Is it cheaper to sign a new customer? Or to keep an existing customer?
Dwight: Keep an existing…
Michael: [to Dwight] Shut, it. Can I… can I just do it please? [to Ryan] Uh, it’s equal.
Ryan: It is ten times more expensive to sign a new customer.
Michael: Okay. Yes! It was a trick question.

But it’s not a trick question. Keeping your existing customers is always easier and cheaper than acquiring new ones. 

The retention rate reflects the number of members who leave your space every month. This is not to be confused with churn, which represents the percentage of members who left during a given period. 

If you need a refresher on how to measure member retention, see below:

Calculate Member Retention

(ME – NM) / MB x 100

ME – Members at the end of the period

NM – New members acquired during a time period

MB – Members at the beginning of the time period

8. Member Lifespan

You can’t finalize a list of the most important coworking KPIs without mention of the average member’s lifespan. The member lifespan can help you evaluate the lifetime value of your customers so you can better understand where your revenue’s coming from. 

To calculate the average member’s lifespan, you should consider the number of years all of your members (past and present) have used your coworking space. Now, divide this number by the total number of customers in your coworking space. 

9. Net Promoter Score

This one’s quite possibly the single most important piece of data you can collect from your membership base. The Net Promoter Score, or NPS, measures the customer experience of your brand and provides the best metric to anchor your customer experience management program. Make sure you include this coworking KPI in your quarterly metrics report. 

The NPS is typically issued as a single survey question asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product, or a service to a friend or colleague.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend (business) to a friend?”

If you want to scale your coworking business, you won’t be able to do so unless you carefully comb through your customers’ feedback. For example, if your customers are giving you 10s on your NPS, they’re prime candidates to upgrade their membership plans — not to mention, serve as ambassadors for your brand. 

Your members’ feedback is the lifeblood of your coworking space. What you do with it is entirely up to you. Understanding your customers’ experience will help you not only rectify the issues that demand attention at your coworking space. They’ll also help you better tailor your space to the needs and preferences of your customer.

Looking for coworking software that’s easy to use for both operators and members? Get the software that’s purpose-built for coworking by coworking space operators.