The key metrics you should be measuring
As marketers, we know that data is essential. Data tracks progress, highlights areas for improvement, and helps us make informed decisions about marketing strategy. In today's age where consumers award loyalty to brands that provide an exceptional omnichannel experience, it's more important than ever to track both offline and online metrics and tie them together. Offline metrics can tell you how people are interacting with your brand in the real world, while online metrics can tell you how they're interacting with you online. Together, they’ll give you a complete picture of how your customers are interacting with your brand across all channels. This information can help you improve your marketing strategy and deliver a more personalized and seamless customer experience.
To get started, use a single customer identifier. Robust loyalty programs will facilitate tracking offline activity such as foot traffic to physical locations and offline sales, along with other digital metrics such as:
- Website traffic: Tracking the number of visitors to your website, the sources of traffic and the amount of time visitors spend on your site can reveal which marketing channels drive the most traffic. You can also uncover areas for improvement and optimize your site’s performance.
- Conversion rate: How often are your website and online campaigns converting visitors into leads or customers? Tracking conversion rates can tell you how many people who visit your website actually take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for your email list.
- Social media engagement: This metric can tell you how much people are interacting with your brand on social media through likes, shares and comments. Measuring engagement helps you identify the platforms that perform the best and tailor content to resonate with your audience.
While omnichannel metrics vary by industry, most brands can benefit from measuring these:
- Customer lifetime value (CLV): The total amount of money a customer is expected to spend with your brand over their lifetime. It can help you identify your most valuable customers and focus your marketing efforts on them. There are different ways to approach the lifetime value calculation and your strategy should be based on your business needs. HubSpot offers an overview and a free template to calculate CLV.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The amount of money you spend to acquire a new customer. It can help you determine if your marketing campaigns are cost-effective. You can calculate the CAC with a simple formula: CAC = Cost of sales and marketing divided by the number of new customers acquired.
- Churn rate: The percentage of customers who stop doing business with you over a period of time. This data point is typically calculated by dividing the number of customers lost in a specific time period by the number of customers you started the time period with. It can help you identify areas to improve customer retention.
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT): How satisfied your customers are with your products or services, measured through customer feedback. This data point can help you identify areas to improve your customer experience. When and how you measure CSAT depends on your business and the product or service you provide. Qualtrics has a great guide for measuring CSAT.
- Net promoter score (NPS): How likely your customers are to recommend your brand to others. NPS helps gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction and enthusiasm for a brand and is a leading indicator of future sales and growth. While NPS offers value on a strategic level, the score by itself isn’t enough to be useful or paint a complete picture so should be evaluated in conjunction with other metrics.
Regularly review your metrics to track your progress and identify areas for improvement. By tracking both offline and online metrics, your reporting is more meaningful, and you can get a complete picture of how your brand is performing. This information can help you make better decisions about your marketing strategy and ensure that you're reaching your target audience and achieving your business goals.
We're here to help.
At R+K, we're experts in helping brands track and measure their marketing performance. We can help you choose the right metrics, set clear goals, and make the data actionable. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you elevate your marketing.