To be a successful data-driven marketer, you need to be tracking the right metrics. All the data you collect is meaningless unless you can turn your insight into action.
With the right metrics, you can identify gaps in your marketing strategy, meet customer expectations, and drive sales for your online store. In a vast sea of data, sometimes it’s tricky to know which metrics carry the most value.
Metrics will vary based upon your goals, but there are some that are universally tracked by all data-driven marketers. Here are four essential metrics you should be monitoring.
1. Traffic Sources
If your website suddenly received a huge spike in traffic, wouldn’t you like to know why? Analyzing your Traffic Sources report in Google Analytics can tell you everything you need to know.
Marketers need to know where their site visitors are coming from for multiple reasons. First, it can give you an indication of which traffic mediums are worth the investment. If your AdWords campaign is responsible for driving web traffic to your site, you can then leverage this data and invest more into your AdWords campaigns.
In the case of organic campaigns, you can potentially reach out to those who are linking to you and form a partnership to expand your online store’s potential. Getting high amounts of traffic from organic searches also indicates that your SEO strategies are working properly.
To learn even more about your traffic, you can set up Urchin Tracking Modules (UTM). This is a more advanced tracking option that you can easily set up in Google Analytics, which can help you identify which URLs are generating the most traffic to your site.
2. Conversion Rate
All that web traffic is nice, but the real question is this: Does it convert? Getting big surges in web traffic is useless if it isn’t the right traffic.
This is why the conversion rate is a carefully tracked metric for all data-driven marketers. It’s important to note that a conversion doesn’t necessarily mean a purchase. It could be visitors who downloaded your eBook or signed up for your newsletter.
Conversion rates are a key indicator of your marketing performance and allow us to identify where in our campaigns we may have gone wrong. For example, let’s say an email subscriber clicked on the link in your email that sent them to a landing page. If the subscriber didn’t convert, it may be an indicator that your email message over promised or that something is off with your landing page. You can then run A/B tests to improve your strategy.
In a similar vein, track abandoned shopping cart rates to see if users aren’t converting during the checkout process. If this rate is high, we can set up triggered email campaigns to bring them back to complete the sale.
3. Customer Lifetime Value
Marketers can become so caught up in sales and revenue that they often forget to track one of the main drivers of their business—their customers.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the total amount a customer spends with a business. Why is this important, exactly?
Well, consider that it costs five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to keep a current customer. By calculating a customer’s CLV, you can pinpoint the most valuable customers and invest your limited budget on them to get a better ROI.
4. Return-On-Investment (ROI)
Speaking of ROI, this is another essential metric that data-driven marketers can’t forget to track. Whether you’re investing in content marketing, paid advertising, social media advertising, or all of the above, it’s essential that you know how these are impacting your bottom line.
Tracking and analyzing your ROI may sound difficult, but it’s insanely easy with the right marketing automation technology. Springbot’s advanced marketing automation platform integrates seamlessly with your existing marketing tools so that all your data is on one platform. Once you’ve launched your campaigns with Springbot, you will receive a personalized report that tells you exactly how your campaigns are performing.
Final Thoughts
The secret to keeping revenue high and marketing spending low lies within your data. To unlock this valuable information, you need to track the right metrics. By keeping a close watch on the metrics listed above, you can enhance the performance of your marketing campaigns and achieve the ROI of your dreams.
Need help determining the right metrics to measure? Schedule a demo with one of our eCommerce specialists and see how Springbot can improve your marketing with data-driven insights.