40 marketing KPIs, the indicators to watch out for
A marketing KPI is an indicator used to analyse the performance of an action with the ultimate aim of increasing lead generation to enable the company to reach new customers. The acronym KPI comes from the English term key performance indicator.
Specific indicators are used to measure and analyse the effectiveness of a digital marketing strategy at each of its stages, here are some examples:
- acquisition: attracting traffic to your site;
- engagement: generating interest through social networks
- conversion: convince visitors with quality content;
- retention: after sales initiate a customer loyalty process.
To complete this definition of marketing KPIs, we will give you 40 examples of KPIs and present you with some interesting software.
Identifying your website's traffic sources
Your website is not only the online shop window of your business, but also a powerful acquisition tool. This is one of the pillars of a good digital strategy.
Identifying the sources that send visitors to your site allows you to determine the most profitable source of traffic for you.
Here are the main marketing KPIs to follow in order to precisely know the sources of traffic to your website.
via GIPHY
1. Direct traffic
This indicator measures access to the site by searching directly via the URL
This includes:
- clicks on URLs classified in the favourites of a browser
- copy and paste URLS addresses into a browser
Why is this indicator important?
It allows you to know the most popular pages of your website, those that generate the most interest, and to draw conclusions about your popularity.
2. Referral Traffic
This is a type of traffic that is generated through clicks on links to your site. A Referral, in fact, is nothing more than a source that, through a link, directs traffic to one of your pages. This may be another site where you are mentioned (e.g. as a source or page on a given subject), a link in an email or document or even an advertising banner.
Attention: sometimes links with errors in the parameters can lead Google Analytics to identify Referrals from emails as direct traffic.
This indicator is used to find out which third-party sites link to a specific page on your website.
Why is this indicator important?
It allows you to monitor:
- Relevance and topics covered by the site hosting the link: if there is no consistency between your page and theirs, this link will probably be penalised
- The popularity of your site: the more links there are, the more popular your site is (if the links are of high quality).
3. The organic traffic generated by SEO actions
We define SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) actions very simply as all actions that contribute to optimising your site for search engines.
These actions aim to improve the natural referencing of your site.
One of the marketing KPIs to be analysed is the number of visitors generated by searching for a keyword (organic search) on a search engine.
Why is this indicator important?
An SEO manager or webmarketing manager monitors the positions of a website's pages on keywords: the must is naturally always to be in the top 10 results to attract as many visitors as possible.
4. Paid traffic
Thanks to URL tracking, you can measure the effectiveness of your paid advertisements, such as
- the purchase of Adwords keywords (Google),
- the same principle with Bing Ads,
- Facebook Ads,
- banner ads displayed on third-party sites,
- etc.
Why is this indicator important?
- To assess which paid channels bring you the most traffic, and which generate the most conversions.
- To allocate your advertising budget to the paid keywords that generate the best results.
5. Traffic from social networks
These are clicks on links shared on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, which link back to your website.
Why is this indicator important?
It allows you to identify, for example
- the social network that brings the most traffic
- the social network that generates the most conversion,
- the type of topic or publication that brings in the most traffic.
6. Emailing traffic
This is the number of Internet users who clicked on a link in your email or newsletter.
Why is this indicator important?
This marketing KPI allows you to:
- study the relevance of the messages sent,
- improve the targeting of email campaigns,
- optimise communication and email marketing.
Assess visitor engagement on your website
- Do you use a content strategy by publishing articles on your blog to attract traffic?
- Do you offer white papers for download (case studies, guides, etc.) and create forms on each landing page to retrieve contact information?
- Do you have product sheets if you run an e-commerce site?
Here are some examples of marketing KPIs that will allow you to assess the quality of your site's content.
7. The total number of visits
This is the number of times your website has been visited by Internet users in a given period of time.
Why is this indicator important?
- You can compare this indicator every month to see whether you are gaining or losing traffic.
- It can determine your actions to increase the quantity and quality of visitors.
8. The number of unique visitors
This is to identify how many different people have visited your website.
Why is this indicator important?
It allows you to study the evolution of your readers' behaviour. If they return to your site regularly, it is because your content is interesting and represents a certain value in the eyes of your readers.
9. The number of regular vs. new readers
The objective is to distinguish between regular and new visitors.
Why is this indicator important?
If your main customer acquisition channel is your website, you must regularly increase the rate of new readers. A new blog article optimised for search engines should generate new users. Of course, it is always important to retain old readers through other actions.
10. Time spent on the site
It is in your interest to analyse the time spent on your site, and more particularly on some of your pages.
Why is this indicator important?
This marketing KPI is essential for more than one reason, because:
- it reflects the quality of your content: the longer the time spent on a page, the more relevant the content is;
- it participates in the referencing of your site: if the time spent on your site is long, Google will give it credibility and improve its ranking;
- it allows you to see if your site has the capacity to retain the reader by offering him more content.
11. Most viewed, least viewed and 'ghost' pages
Beyond the number of page views, it is a question of determining which pages are the most visited, which are the least visited and which pages have never been visited.
Why are these KPIs important?
- you identify which pages are performing well and which pages need to be improved,
- you can compare high-performing pages to identify strengths (content, SEO, etc.),
- you can correct internal links on your site to improve the user experience,
- is to identify ghost pages that do not appear in the site's tree structure and correct the ranking.
12. Bounce rate
These are Internet users who visit a page on your site and then leave it without taking any further action: they do not click on any links, they do not visit other pages. They 'bounce back'.
Why is this marketing KPI expressed as an important percentage?
- if the bounce rate is high, it is very likely that the content is not interesting enough, that the calls to action (CTAs) are not relevant;
- if the bounce rate is low, your content is qualitative, visitors are captured by your site, CTAs are effective.
13. The conversion rate
Also known as conversion rate, it is the percentage of people who have performed the desired action according to a goal to be achieved.
If your goal is to generate qualified B2B contacts, only people who have entered their contact information in a landing page form will be counted.
This percentage is also referred to as the transformation rate.
Why is this indicator important?
This marketing KPI is used to evaluate the effectiveness of a communication tool in relation to the target set.
- If the conversion rate is high, the mechanics are well oiled.
- If your rate is low, your mechanics need to be revised.
Beware, however, of web pages that generate a lot of contacts, but of poor quality. You will waste time retraining relevant contacts from uninteresting prospects. If your contacts are of poor quality, your sales representatives will waste too much time unnecessarily.
Performance indicators for social networks
Here are some examples of relevant KPIs to evaluate your communication strategy and your social media presence.
This communication channel is a tool for the development of the company's reputation and a powerful vector of positive or negative e-reputation that needs to be carefully monitored.
14. The number of subscribers
Depending on the social network, e.g:
- the number of fans on your Facebook page,
- the number of users who have subscribed to your Twitter or Linkedin profile,
- the number of Internet users who have subscribed to your Linkedin profile or page,
- etc.
Why is this indicator important?
While the quality of exchanges takes precedence over the quantity of fans, it is still important to recruit subscribers to work on the company's reputation on social networks.
The more subscribers you have, the more likely your publications are to be seen. You can compare the number of subscribers to that of a competitor to give you an idea of the range of possibilities.....
15. Reach
A community manager also talks about reach when evaluating his publications on social networks.
As with SEO, you have two types of reach: organic and paid (advertising).
Concrete examples:
- Organic Reach is expressed by the number of users who have seen the publication of organic content
- Paid Reach is expressed by the number of users who have seen the publication of paid content.
Why is this indicator important?
- Reach is a marketing KPI that allows you to assess the visibility potential based on a given audience.
- This estimates the maximum number of users that can be exposed to your message.
16. The number of impressions of a publication
This is the number of times a publication has been viewed, it does not take into account the user so if potentially the same person has viewed the same content from 3 different devices, we will have 3 impressions and 1 reach.
Impression = number of total views.
Why is this indicator important?
As with a web page, the number of impressions of a publication allows us to appreciate its visibility, popularity, whether or not it has been appreciated by Internet users. The number of impressions reflects the quality of the publication.
17. Interaction generated by the type of publication
Engagement is seen by interactions with content:
- shares
- "likes
- comments
- clicks on links
- emoticon reactions on Facebook
Why is this indicator important?
This indicator allows you to define whether the reaction was positive or negative
You can also monitor interactions:
- to see which type of post is most successful
- to understand what subscribers are really interested in
- to improve relations with your community by responding to each comment
It is also interesting to analyse the results provided by social networks, especially on the number of clicks: you can correlate these statistics with those of your own site.
18. The number of influencers in relation to the brand
The influencers following your profiles are a gold mine! They are followed by thousands, if not millions of followers. So many contacts and potential contacts for you.
- Why is this indicator important?
- When an influencer shares one of your publications, you increase their visibility and awareness of your brand, product or service.
- Provided the influencer speaks positively about you..... and becomes an ambassador.
Forming collaborations with influencers is part of successful social media strategies.
Measuring the effectiveness of your email campaigns
Let's start by measuring the performance of your email marketing efforts. Emailing is an essential communication, acquisition and engagement tool.
However, many criteria, standards and laws must be met to be effective. Here are the marketing KPIs to be analysed scrupulously and regularly.
19. The deliverability rate
This rate expresses the number of emails that arrive in recipients' inboxes, not in the spam folder.
Why is this indicator important?
- you must monitor this indicator very carefully, every time you send, because your reputation as a sender is constantly at risk
- Internet service providers have implemented filters to prevent unwanted e-mails from reaching your inbox;
- in addition, the RGPD (General Data Protection Regulations) prohibits the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mails (especially in B2C) as of 25 May 2018.
Among the problems to be solved, deliverability must be one of your priorities. You must maintain a high email deliverability rate and reduce the bounce rate.
20. The open rate
This rate reflects the amount of e-mails opened by recipients.
Why is this indicator important?
- Poorly targeted e-mail marketing leads to a very low open rate,
- an emailing subject line that does not interest your target audience, ditto,
- it is advisable to segment your contact lists, tailor your messages to your targets and practise A/B testing to optimise your open rate.
21. The click-through rate
This refers to opened e-mails containing at least one link. The click rate refers in percentage to the number of clicks made on this (these) link(s).
Why is this indicator important?
- Did no recipients click? Your content is not interesting enough or the CTA is not very engaging.
- 80% of the recipients clicked? Don't change anything, you know the secrets of successful email marketing, congratulations!
via GIPHY
22. The rate at which an e-mail is placed in a folder
Like a preferred URL address in a web browser, the e-mail recipient can place your message in a specific folder.
Why is this indicator important?
- This data is interesting: a message placed in a folder means that the recipient attaches importance to your email;
- it is thus possible to detect which emailing campaigns or newsletters have generated the most interest;
Furthermore, a user who has classified one of your e-mails in a folder means that this lead matures in the conversion funnel: be carefully monitored!
23. Forwarding rate
This metric specifies how many times your email has been forwarded.
Why is this indicator important?
- if the forwarding rate is high, it is because your email has generated a lot of interest, so much so that it provoked word of mouth!
- if not, ask yourself why recipients would want to share your message.
24. The suppression rate
This KPI expresses the number of recipients who deleted your message without opening it. This is a blow to your marketing campaign.
Why is this indicator important?
- if the deletion rate is high or steadily increasing, it is likely that you are delivering meaningless messages to your contacts.
- or perhaps you send messages too often?
25. The abandonment rate
This rate expresses the percentage of contacts who unsubscribe from your mailing list. These contacts no longer wish to receive your e-mails.
Why is this indicator important?
- Don't panic: it is possible that the contacts are simply not part of the interested potential buyers. In this case, it is a positive sign, because you improve the quality of your list, and thus the delivery of emails sent to this segmented database.
- In the case of mass unsubscription, it is urgent to question the segmentation of your contact list, the form and content of your messages, everything that may encourage your visitor to subscribe to your newsletter.
Determining the profitability of an advertising campaign
Let us now look at the KPIs that allow you to measure the effectiveness of your online advertising campaigns, bearing in mind that they must generate a certain return on investment.....
26. CPC or cost per click
Let's say you bought a paid ad, a sponsored link based on a keyword on Google or Facebook, for example. Every time a user clicks on the link, you pay.
Why is this indicator important?
The CPC calculation lets you know
- which keyword generates the most clicks,
- which keyword generates the highest conversion on your site,
- which keyword is the most profitable.
The objective is to generate as many qualified contacts as possible at the lowest possible cost. Depending on your goals and ambitions, you can position yourself on buying less competitive keywords, or allocate more budget to your advertising investments.
27. The CPM or cost per thousand
In a paid campaign, you pay for advertising to appear on third-party sites. You spend a budget per thousand views of your ad.
Why is this indicator important?
- Depending on the objective of your advertising, the CPM calculation allows you to determine the investment required to achieve this objective.
Example: if your objective is to generate 200 contacts by offering a white paper for download, the CPM allows you to study how many times you will have to invest per thousand displays to capture 200 contacts.
28. The CPL or cost per lead
Divide the number of leads you have generated by the advertising expenditure: you get the cost per lead.
Why is this indicator important?
- This marketing KPI is essential to determine the return on investment over a given period of time.
- While the ideal goal is always to spend less to get more leads, this generality is not always verifiable.
In fact, depending on the quality of the leads requested, the actions and results obtained, or the potential purchase amount of a lead, it may be relevant to increase the amount of your advertising investment, especially if the content of your site does not yet generate leads.
29. Income received per conversion
Income means: the profit gained from a conversion.
To calculate the income generated by a conversion
- multiply the value of conversions by the gross profit in %,
- divide the amount obtained by the total number of conversions.
Why is this indicator important?
This marketing KPI allows you to assess the R.O.I. (return on investment) of your advertising campaigns in terms of revenue generated. The more revenue you generate, the more successful your campaigns will be.
Inbound marketing and key indicators
Here are some complementary B2B marketing KPIs, specific to inbound marketing and rich in information.
In B2B, the prospect goes through several buying stages. The sales funnel is longer than in B2C.
With inbound marketing methods, the contact is guided and goes through several stages during which it is fed with information, so that it matures to the point of purchase.
30. The number of qualified marketing contacts
A qualified lead is a contact that shows interest. This contact is identified in the conversion funnel: it corresponds to the desired customer profile.
Why is this indicator important?
According to a precise score (a note), the degree of interest of the contact must be detected in order to be able to send him or her adapted messages, which will guide him or her step by step through the sales funnel. This is called lead nurturing.
31. The Number of Qualified Sales Contacts
A qualified sales lead is a contact ready to buy. This is an advantage: he/she has reached the end of the sales funnel.
Why is this indicator important?
Again, a precise score allows you to detect this type of contact. Based on the behaviour criteria you have previously established (request for demonstration, etc.), you have to send these hot leads back to your sales force so that it can prepare and conclude the sales phase.
32. The value of opportunities generated by marketing
The actions of the marketing department generate revenue opportunities at every stage of the sales funnel.
It is a matter of determining all the sales potential to be concluded that marketing brings to the sales department and quantifying it by an amount.
Why is this indicator important?
- the marketing manager has a marketing KPI that reveals the validity and importance of his actions;
- with this data, he demonstrates marketing's ability to generate opportunities;
- in general, measuring this indicator also helps to better align sales and marketing functions with the company's development goals;
- sales representatives should regularly enter the data into their CRM, so that marketing can exploit this knowledge of the customer.
33. The reaction time of sales representatives
This is the time between a potential customer's request and the sales representative's response.
Why is this indicator important?
- You have to strike while the iron is hot. A customer who shows strong interest, and whose business potential is high, should not encounter 'latency time' when requesting a quote!
- The risk of keeping this type of contact on hold is that they go to see the competition.
- It is crucial to regularly assess this indicator so that sales representatives are as responsive as possible..... and do not waste opportunities triggered by marketing efforts.
Tips: Use automated marketing methods, particularly suitable for BtoB marketing, e.g. by scheduling automatic messages after a registration on your site. In this way, you can offer a better customer experience.
34. The conversion rate from potential customers to customers
To obtain this rate, divide the number of leads by the number of closed transactions in a month, for instance.
Why is this indicator important?
This marketing KPI indicates the number of contacts needed to obtain a signed contract. Based on this data, your goal will be to readjust your efforts to generate more leads that turn into customers.
Other marketing KPIs to know
Certain indicators will help you gain the perspective you need to compare the investments you have made in all your actions with the results you have achieved.
Here are the main marketing KPIs to implement.
35. The number of marketing leads per acquisition channel
This is the number of contacts corresponding to the targeted profiles generated by a specific channel: e-mail, website or other.
Why is this indicator important?
- this KPI allows you to see which channels are the most efficient in terms of acquisition,
- you can also see which other channels are more effective in terms of sales,
- you can then rebalance your budget allocation on the channels that offer you the greatest opportunities.
36. The number of prospects generated per offer
This is simply the number of contacts interested in an offer.
Why is this indicator important?
- you identify the offers that are most in demand and the offers that generate the fewest contacts,
- you can concentrate your communication efforts on the most efficient and attractive offers.
37. The CAC or customer acquisition cost
This is a measure of the actual cost of converting a potential customer.
Why is this indicator important?
Customer acquisition marketing strategies are always aimed at maximising the profitability of actions taken to generate leads.
On the basis of this indicator, it is possible to assess the value of a lead by comparing the investments required for the effectiveness of the actions performed.
38. The churn rate
The churn rate is a rate representing the percentage of lost customers or subscribers.
Depending on the business model and growth objectives, it can be measured monthly, quarterly or annually.
Why is this indicator important?
This marketing KPI is very important, especially for service activities that are sold on a subscription basis, such as SaaS software.
Moreover, the prospect of winning costs more than a customer buying again. Take the initiative: set up a relationship programme that creates loyalty among your existing customers.
39. Repurchase rate of a customer
This is to identify the number of customers who have made at least two purchases during the year.
Why is this indicator important?
A customer who repurchases is a satisfied customer. If most of your customers make several purchases during the year, it is a good indicator of customer satisfaction.
40. Customer Lifetime Value or Customer Lifetime Value
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) expresses all profits earned by the company through a customer.
This value is measured during the time the person was a customer of the company.
This measure should be segmented according to the profile of the customer.
Why is this indicator important?
- By comparing your segments, you can determine which customer profile generates the most revenue,
- you can focus your investments on the shares that pay the most,
- By comparing the cost of customer acquisition and CLV, you obtain an indicator that allows you to assess the effectiveness of your actions in relation to the results obtained.
Small Bonus, the use of marketing KPI software
Tired of managing your marketing KPIs with Excel? It's about time!
To get a readable and consistent reading of your indicators, you need software tools that are up to the job.
Do you have Google Analytics in mind? And you are right!
However, some cloud technologies can be interesting because they offer you complete management of all your marketing activities.
Builderall: the toolbox for marketers
If you are looking for a complete, useful and ultra-intuitive digital marketing tool, well today we are talking about Builderall. It is an American software that is rapidly expanding globally and has already been translated into 6 languages. It is entirely cloud-based and available at a competitive price:
Let's take a look at some of the functionalities:
- App creation, sites, e-commerce platforms
- Creation of affiliate systems
- A/B testing
- KPI
Ready to get the best out of your results?
We have shown you 40 KPIs to show you the immense amount of information you can derive from the data you have at your fingertips every day.
You just have to discover the whole universe of information that revolves around your business. Remember that knowledge is power!
Article translated from Italian