Marketing Metrics: Which Ones to Track

In ye olde days of marketing (a few years ago), marketers had limited tools for tracking metrics. They could monitor simple things such as open and click rates for email campaigns, but they didn’t have much visibility beyond that. With modern technology and tools, such as marketing automation software, marketers have access to actionable marketing analytics that give them visibility into how marketing campaigns are performing and directly affection ROI. Lisa Cramer of LeadLife Solutions contributed a post to MASG outlining the most important metrics to measure and how marketers can use that data to improve performance and better understand their impact on revenue.

In the past, organizations had a very limited view of the funnel: qualified opportunities to sales. However, this view omits important steps in the lead lifecycle. In order to send the most highly qualified leads to sales, marketing needs a complete view of the lead lifecycle, tracking lead origin and intent based on area or level of interest. Finally, they need to see what percentage of leads generated turned into closed deals so that they can measure the effectiveness of their efforts.

This seems like a lot of data to track, but new systems and processes make it possible. Let’s say, for example, that a marketer sends out an email campaign that links to a landing page. That landing page is linked to similar pages of interest. Here are some metrics that marketing should be tracking:

– Clicks and opens (old school, but still important)
– Most popular links, if there were multiple
– How many clicks turned into conversions
– What other pages did visitors navigate to?
– Time spent on other pages.

The next step depends on your lead management process. Leads need to be scored based on behavior/demographic information so that you can determine if they are “sales ready” or not. Let’s say that your system scores leads automatically. With this next set of metrics, you can gain insight into how well-targeted your email campaign was overall, as well as drill down into individual aspects such as engagement, timing, content, etc.

– How many leads were considered “sales ready”?
– How many leads never converted?
– How many leads were passed to sales and over what period of time?
– How many “sales ready” leads moved on to become opportunities?
– How many opportunities became closed deals and what revenue came from each?
– What was the total amount of revenue attributed to the campaign?

Tracking these metrics helps marketing understand how well they are performing. Why is this important? Because more and more, companies are realizing marketing’s impact on the company’s bottom line. With access to these new systems and metrics, marketing can better track their performance, improve their method and help drive company growth.

You can read the article in full on the Marketing Automation Software Guide blog.