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Golden measure: marketing metrics to boost your project
6 min read
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by Alena Parfisenko
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In marketing, everything has its measure. Retention, conversion, campaign success, lead generation, email marketing, and even overall product success — there are metrics for all those things and much more. While an experienced marketer feels right at home with all the numbers and percentages, it can still be overwhelming when it comes to a completely new project.
In this article, we’ll go through all the main marketing metrics. Some are more common, and some are more niche, but all of them are much needed to properly evaluate your marketing strategies, campaigns, and scenarios. Keep an eye out for the metrics that are suffering in your new project: you will be working on improving them, first of all.
Emails
Email metrics allow you to assess the effectiveness of your email marketing by providing info on its various technical aspects. Any campaign should be analyzed with these metrics, and some of them help you find incorrect and broken email addresses even through triggered emails.
There are multiple types of web forms for you to keep visitors on the website and entice them to go for a purchase. To be clear, we are not describing how to create and manage web forms: we did it in this article, and then in this one — more in-depth. Here, we’ll go over some of the more fitting forms for the goal at hand: preventing abandoned carts.
DR — Delivery Rate
Delivery Rate = (Number of sent emails - Number of bounced emails) ÷ Number of sent emails × 100%
Delivery Rate is also known as Deliverability, and it shows the percentage of recipients who actually got your emails. Any email that was accepted by a subscriber’s ESP is considered delivered, including those that ended up in the Spam folder, so keep that in mind.
With this metric, you can judge the quality of your mailing list and the quality of your email solution — if either is low, the DR will suffer significantly. Some addresses in your base may be incorrect, fake, or deleted, and the emails won’t be delivered to them; or your solution may fail to send out emails to all the people on the list.
OR — Open Rate
Open Rate = Number of sent emails ÷ Number of delivered emails × 100%
Open Rate shows the percentage of recipients who opened your emails, just as the name suggests. A high Open Rate means your subscribers trust your brand and you do a great job at writing subject lines and timing your campaigns. On the other hand, if your OR is low, you have to reconsider your approach to these aspects.
CTR — Click-Through Rate
Click Click-Through Rate = Number of link clicks ÷ Number of opened emails × 100%
To learn how good the contents of your emails are, pay attention to the Click-Through Rate also known as Click to Open Rate (CTOR). It allows you to see the percentage of people who were curious enough to open your email — and then were hooked again by the content. Average and optimal CTR scores vary from industry to industry but you generally want to have yours as high as possible.
BR, CR & UR — Bounce, Complaint, and Unsubscribe Rates
Bounce Rate = Number of bounced emails ÷ Number of sent emails × 100%
Complaint Rate = Number of spam complaints ÷ Number of delivered emails × 100%
Unsubscribe Rate = Number of unsubscriptions ÷ Number of delivered emails × 100%
Complaint Rate = Number of spam complaints ÷ Number of delivered emails × 100%
Unsubscribe Rate = Number of unsubscriptions ÷ Number of delivered emails × 100%
These three metrics are fairly similar to each other: they give you the percentages of emails that went wrong. BR shows you how many emails failed to reach the recipients. CR tells you how many people flagged the emails as spam. UR indicates how many people unsubscribed using the link in the email or after it.
While a high Bounce Rate means that the contacts in your mailing list require cleaning up, high Complaint and Unsubscribe Rates mean that your content appears irrelevant to the recipients.
Online store
You need to also keep an eye out for some of your website’s metrics. While some will tell you how good and engaging the content is, others are related more directly to marketing and you need to take care of keeping those metrics at decent levels.
RUR — Returning User Rate
Returning User Rate = Number of new users ÷ Total number of users × 100%
Returning User Rate shows the percentage of users that come back to the website out of the total number of visitors. By comparing new and returning users, you can see at which stage users are more likely to convert into leads and customers.
BR — Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate = Number of bounces ÷ Total pages viewed × 100%
Bounce Rate for websites is a different metric from the email bounce rate: it reveals how many people leave the store after only seeing one page and not taking any action. A high BR indicates that the offer, content, or page itself is off; or that the traffic doesn’t consist of the target audience; or even some deeper issues, like a faulty price system, etc.
CAR — Cart Abandonment Rate
Cart Abandonment Rate = Number of abandoned carts ÷ Number of carts with items × 100%
One of the most important metrics for online stores, CAR shows the percentage of people who add some items to the carts and then leave without completing the order. Since these are the people who are the closest to buying, you need to convince them to come back, even though some of them may return on their own.
CR — Conversion Rate
Conversion Rate = Number of conversions ÷ Number of users × 100%
Conversion Rate allows you to track the percentage of people who completed any type of converting action: for instance, subscribed to a newsletter, registered on the website, contacted support, or completed an order. CR tends to vary significantly between different traffic channels, audience segments, and campaigns.
Costs
Cost per Something metrics show you how much you spend to achieve a certain result. Most metrics here are variations of CPA (it’s first on the list, you won’t miss it), but you still need to keep an eye on them — the fact that they’re variations doesn’t undermine their importance.
CPA — Cost per Action
Cost per Action = Expenses ÷ Number of actions
One of the most important metrics for any marketing activity, CPA defines the price of any target action you want your target audience to take. For an online store, it could be adding an item to the cart, going to the checkout page, etc. In simple terms, CPA is how much you spend for one person to perform the target action.
CPL — Cost per Lead
Cost per Lead = Expenses ÷ Number of leads × 100%
CPL determines how much one lead costs you. When you launch a campaign or set up a scenario to gather email addresses and personal information, the target action is filling out the special fields — and consequently being added to a mailing list. So, long story short, CPL is the price you pay for one person to give you their contact data.
A lead has to always make you more money than it takes to attract them — and if it doesn’t, it’s a Big Red Flag telling you that you must change the strategy.
CPO — Cost per Order
Cost per Sale = Expenses ÷ Number of confirmed orders
Also known as Cost per Sale or Cost of Sale, CPO is a metric that shows the amount of money spent to convert a person to make a purchase. Using it, you can calculate how much profit a lead actually produces by taking the CPO from the order value.
CPC & CPV — Cost per Click & Visitor
Cost per Click = Expenses ÷ Number of clicks
Cost per Visitor = Expenses ÷ Number of unique website visitors
Cost per Visitor = Expenses ÷ Number of unique website visitors
While seemingly similar, these metrics have a big difference: CPC shows you the price of any click on your ad, and CPV shows you the price of an actually confirmed visitor. By taking CPV from CPC, you can learn the number of misclicks on your ad. You’ll still likely pay for your ad based on clicks, though, but at least you’ll know the truth.
To sum it up, CPC is usually used for determining how much you pay for your ad, and CPV is for internal use, letting you know the real cost of one visitor from the said ad.
Other financial metrics
There are a few more financial metrics that are relevant to marketers. Some of them depend on your work, so they partially tell the story of your success or failure. And you can definitely win the gratitude of your brand if you help enhance their numbers.
AOV — Average Order Value
Average Order Value = Total order revenue ÷ Number of orders
AOV is also known as the average cheque, and it estimates the amount of money your customers spend per order. While it’s not exactly a marketing metric, you can still influence it with personalized recommendations, special and bundle offers, etc. Upselling is also a great way to increase the average cheque.
CAC — Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer Acquisition Cost = Expenses on customer acquisition ÷ Number of customers
Remember Cost per Sale and Cost per Order? These metrics are included in CAC, but the main difference is that Customer Acquisition Cost also takes into consideration other spendings on attracting new customers apart from marketing. Therefore, you can influence it by lowering its marketing components.
LTV — Lifetime Value
Lifetime Value = Total revenue from a client ÷ Total expenses on acquiring and keeping a client
Lifetime Value shows the total revenue a customer will bring in over the entire period of your interaction. By calculating it for several customers or audience segments, you will find the ones that bring in more profit and remain loyal to your brand and can then focus on them. Needless to say, LTV should be higher than CAC — otherwise, you’re just losing money.
ROI & ROMI — Return on Investment/Marketing Investment
Return on Investment = (Total revenue - Total expenses) × 100% ÷ Total expenses
Return on Marketing Investment = (Revenue from marketing - Marketing expenses) ÷ Marketing expenses × 100%
Return on Marketing Investment = (Revenue from marketing - Marketing expenses) ÷ Marketing expenses × 100%
ROI is borderline the most crucial metric for any business: if Return on Investment is lower than 100%, the company’s losing money instead of making it. And even though marketing expenses are included in the overall ROI, there’s also a metric called ROMI that calculates Return on Marketing Investment separately.
Other financial metrics
Marketing metrics help you evaluate the marketing and business success of the brand. By properly analyzing and using this data, you will be able to find ways to increase the company's profits. The importance of metrics can not be underestimated, and you should monitor them closely from the first days of work — and the first days of the brand’s existence, at that.
This list doesn’t include all the metrics since there are hundreds of them. However, using the ones we provided, you can track most aspects of your marketing strategy and adjust it if needed. And they will definitely be needed in your reports.
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