To fully benefit from online marketing, you have to measure several marketing metrics that inform you on the effectiveness of your campaigns. If the results that you get are not satisfying, you have to implement some tweaks or even bigger changes. On the other hand, when everything goes well, you can focus on optimizing results and testing new marketing channels. Whatever you do marketing-wise, it all starts with analytics.
Marketing analytics is, in fact, a broad discipline. There are hundreds of measures you can use to track your results. Many of them depend on the sector that you operate in, your business model, and the channels that you use. For example, AOV (average order value) is a metric used almost exclusively by companies selling their products online. And the number of views and watch time is interesting for companies running YouTube campaigns. However, some metrics are quite universal and can be used in various sectors and companies. We will show you ten of them in this article. Before we get to that, though, we need to explain the difference between a metric and a KPI.
Metrics vs. KPIs – what’s the difference?
Granted, it can be confusing because these two terms are actually quite similar. A metric is just a statistical measurement, nothing more. Metrics show you where you are right now and how well your campaigns are performing. To some extent, running a marketing campaign with no metrics is like walking in the dark. You walk, but you have no idea where and how fast.
And what about KPIs? This acronym stands for key performance indicators. KPIs show you where you need to be to achieve your goals. So, while metrics show you presence, KPIs show you the desired future. Usually, KPIs comprise different metrics so that you can see the big picture of your efforts.
How to track marketing metrics
The vast majority of marketing metrics can be tracked automatically using analytics tools. One of the must-have tools is Google Analytics. It’s a free analytics platform provided by Google in order to track metrics related to your website and customers/users visiting it. With Google Analytics, you know:
- Who visits your website
- Which subpages they are most interested in
- How much time they spend on your website
- What actions they take, etc.
In a moment, we will show you all the crucial website-related metrics you ought to measure.
Google Analytics (GA) is an extremely useful tool. Every decent marketer uses GA on a daily basis. And what about other marketing activities? In general, every advanced marketing and sales tool comes with analytics features so that you don’t have to calculate them manually. That’s true for iPresso as well! Our analytics engine can measure every campaign you conduct and every channel you use. What’s crucial, our platform integrates data from various sources, thus enabling reporting in a uniform manner within one intuitive dashboard.
What measures to track
WEBSITE-RELATED METRICS
There are many things to track on each website. You should know how many people visit your website, how many interact with it (browse subpages, download files, send inquiries, etc.), and how many leave it before they perform any action. Major website-related metrics are:
- Sessions: They occur every time a user is active on your website. The more sessions you get and the longer they are, the better.
- Users: How many people visit your website. Many marketers are most interested in unique visitors – users counted only once in a specific period.
- Page views: How many pages your users display. If they browse many subpages, the number of page views goes up. Here, you can also measure page per session – how many subpages, on average, are displayed during one session.
- Bounce Rate: It’s the percentage of users leaving your website without taking action.
CTR
That’s one of the most important marketing metrics. This acronym stands for click-through rate, and it informs you about the number of people who clicked the link that they saw. Such a link can be an ad on Facebook, a link to a blog post on social media, or even a link to your new offer distributed via push notifications. To calculate CTR, you have to divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions (views).
OR
This measure is used primarily in email marketing. OR stands for open rate, and it informs how many people opened your message. Other valid measures related to email marketing are delivery rate and unsubscribe rate. To calculate OR, you have to divide the number of opened messages by the number of sent messages.
CAC
Customer acquisition cost informs you how much you pay to get a new customer or user. In other words, it’s the cost necessary to convert a potential customer into a customer. Thanks to knowing what your CAC is, you can assess how much money you make on each new customer. This knowledge can help you plan a marketing budget. There is no one fixed way to calculate CAC. You simply have to sum up all the marketing costs and divide them by the number of customers acquired in a specific month/year.
ROAS
This abbreviation means a return on ad spend. This marketing metric informs you how much money you made in comparison to the amount of money you hand to spend on marketing. Typically, ROAS is presented in the form of a ratio. If you make 5 dollars on each dollar spent on marketing, your ROAS is 5:1.
CR
Conversion rate is also incredibly important. It shows you how many people complete the desired action. Again, there is no one-fits-all way to calculate conversions as they depend on the channel and the action. For instance, if you display a pop-up encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter and 15% of those who see the ad decide to sign up for it – that’s your conversion rate.
NPS
It’s a non-standard marketing metric because it cannot be measured automatically. You have to conduct an actual survey among your customers/users to calculate NPS (net promoter score). NPS shows you how loyal and satisfied with your services are your customers. NPS surveys are composed of one main question: “How likely are you to recommend our company to your friends or colleagues?” Read more about NPS on our blog.
The benefits of measuring marketing campaigns
The more thorough you are concerning your marketing campaigns, the more effective they can be. Thanks to marketing metrics, you can assess whether the actions you take bear sufficient fruit. An in-depth analysis of your marketing metrics can help you discern which elements of your marketing strategy work well and which need some improvement. This way, you can optimize your work and get better and better results every month.
See how measuring marketing results works in iPresso.
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