Whether a recent marketing campaign resulted in great sales numbers, or you are only beginning your marketing journey, it can be hard to understand which metrics are important for success in marketing. While actual sales results are an obvious indicator, they can also be harder to measure for repeated success. 

These different metrics help you understand what kind of engagement you are getting, whether engagement has any follow-through, and even what might cause you to lose business. Understanding these metrics will help you create content and campaigns that truly work for you.

What Metrics to Measure for Marketing?

Depending on what sort of marketing you’re doing, there will be different metrics to measure. Below we break them down into a few important areas of marketing:

Emails

• Open Rate: If you are sending emails as part of your marketing, it’s essential to know whether these emails are getting through to readers. Open rate will let you know how many recipients opened the email itself. While this metric cannot tell you if someone enjoyed the content, it does allow you to know if people believe your content is worthwhile enough to consider reading. If you notice a continuous drop-off in the open rate, it may mean that you need to focus on more engaging subject lines or other tactics to encourage readers to open the emails.
• Clickthrough Rate: While the open rate tells you how many people open the initial email, the clickthrough rate goes a step further by telling you how many people interact with what they’ve read. Clickthrough rate takes the number of clicks and divides it by the number of opened emails. If there are 100 clickthroughs and 200 opens, then about half of your readers interact with your content by clicking links inside. 
• Unsubscribe Rate: Unfortunately, sometimes people just want less email in their inbox. When they do, it means that they usually scroll through emails trying to find places where they feel less engaged. The unsubscribe rate can tell you if your content has become too monotonous, less engaging, or feels less positive to your readers. If you notice dwindling open and clickthrough rates, you may begin seeing an increase in your unsubscribe rate.

Website Content

• Visits: If you have a website, you want people to visit it. The number of visits you receive will help you know which pages are successful on your site. Additionally, there may be more niche metrics within visits such as the number of unique visitors. Using this metric will allow you to see which pages or posts get the most unique traffic, which can help you cultivate more content like it.
• Leads: Leads can mean aspects such as direct sales or other important aspects such as directing someone to certain posts or contacting your business. Understanding where leads are coming from will help you narrow in on successful tactics to create those leads. For example, if you primarily get leads through direct referrals or reviews, you should find ways to encourage customers to post reviews.
• Subscribers: Subscribers, in many ways, are guaranteed traffic to your website. A subscriber will always be alerted when you put out new content and, because they’ve subscribed, you know that they are interested in reading it. Subscribers can be an especially important metric when you are beginning to put out a blog or content posts, as they can also lead to word-of-mouth referrals.

11outof11 Knows How to Improve Marketing Metrics

Marketing is complex and much of it comes down to the quality of your content. Whether you need some new ideas for content, want to explore ways to raise your readership metrics, or are thinking about a total overhaul of your content and website, connect with 11outof11 about our audit services. Request a complimentary call with an 11outof11 expert. Contact us to learn more.