Digital Marketing Metrics & KPIs You Should Be Tracking

When you’re budgeting your marketing spend and asking key decision-makers to invest in marketing campaigns, you must be prepared to demonstrate value. The need to prove the effectiveness of your proposed marketing tactics makes it critical to track, analyze and report digital marketing metrics. But when it comes to choosing the best marketing metrics to track, do you truly know what those metrics correspond to and which are most important for your specific priorities?

What Are Marketing Metrics?

Let’s start at the top! Marketing metrics are the data behind your brand. As you launch campaigns on various outlets, keeping your eye on key performance indicators, or KPIs, lets you know how well your efforts are paying off. Measuring, tracking and comparing KPI metrics across your channels and campaigns lets you prove marketing ROI and adjust tactics to optimize performance.

Key Marketing Metrics

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you start looking at marketing metrics — the sheer volume of digital marketing data that’s available is staggering. To keep yourself focused on what matters most, these are the best marketing metrics to track:

#1 Traffic

Whether it’s visitors to your website, social media page views or landing page traffic, this is the simplest metric to see how many eyes are on your content. Keep in mind, however, that this metric makes most sense when observed in the context of other metrics. You don’t just want people to view your page — you want to know they’re absorbing your message and taking the intended action.

#2 Open Rate

While this marketing KPI is specific to email marketing, this channel is essential to keeping your brand top of mind. Email is a universal marketing channel with a high ROI. Seeing how many people actually open your emails is critical to ensuring you’re taking full advantage of this key channel. Raising your open rate is the first step toward email marketing success.

#3 Click-Through Rate

Whenever you share a link — in email, on your website, on a landing page or on social media — the intent is for users to click it. Click-through rate, also called CTR, therefore becomes one of the most critical marketing metrics you can look at. CTR is the percentage of users who clicked a link after viewing a page or opening an email. The higher the CTR, the better indication that your message is received and that users are taking the action you want them to take.

#4 Engagement Rate

Whether it’s on social media, your blog or via email, receiving a response indicates that your target audience is interested in your brand. When it comes to digital marketing metrics, few are better performance indicators than engagement rates, sometimes called response rates. Social media offers particularly good opportunities for audiences to engage with a variety of content types, be it through reactions (such as “likes”), comments or shares. Engagement is one of the best ways to prove that your marketing message is reaching the intended audience.

#5 Conversion Rate

Like click-through rate, conversion rate refers to the percentage of users that take the desired action from one of your marketing communications. Unlike CTR, conversion rates include not only link clicks but also form fills, sign-ups and purchases. As your marketing funnel narrows, your conversion rates will theoretically improve as you serve more specific content to a smaller pool of qualified leads.

How to Track Marketing Metrics

Keeping track of digital marketing KPIs can be difficult if you don’t have the right tools in place. If you leverage a marketing automation platform, you will likely not only be able to publish and syndicate content but also keep track of how well your marketing is performing. Using a powerful marketing automation suite with built-in analytics helps you work more efficiently.

SharpSpring offers a range of features to keep an eye on marketing metrics while you collaborate with your team, serve content to your audiences and deliver results for your company.

To track marketing metrics and to learn more about how a marketing automation platform can help your business grow, talk to us or get a demo.