Recently, our digital marketing team sat down and talked about our annual plan. Marketing departments
I thought I would share just a few digital marketing KPI examples from our session. In addition to using to our own free comprehensive KPI guide and template for help, we did source some of our KPIs from HubSpot and Impact Branding. The two areas I will focus on are email performance and Social Media.
This article from HubSpot helped us beef up our email performance KPIs.
1. Email Clickthrough Rate
How many people clicked on the links in the email we sent? What did they click on?
From HubSpot:
What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in a given email.
How to Calculate It: (Total clicks OR unique clicks ÷ Number of delivered emails) * 100
Example: 500 total clicks ÷ 10,000 delivered emails * 100 = 5% clickthrough rate
2. Email Conversion Rate
How many people filled out a form, downloaded a tool, asked for a meeting? How many signed up to our blog? In other words how many people took the desired action on your email?
From HubSpot:
What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed of desired action, such as filling out a lead generation form or purchasing a product.
How to Calculate It: (Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) * 100
Example: 400 people who completed the desired action ÷ 10,000 total email delivered * 100 = 4% conversion rate
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3. Marketing Email Bounce Rate
How many bounces did we receive? What kind of bounces did we receive?
From HubSpot:
What It Is: The percentage of your total emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient's inbox.
How to Calculate It: (Total number of bounced emails ÷ Number of emails sent) * 100
Example: 75 bounced emails ÷ 10,000 total emails sent * 100 = 0.75% bounce rate
4. Marketing Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate
How many people shared our email or forwarded it?
From HubSpot:
What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a “share this” button to post email content to a social network, and/or who clicked on a “forward to a friend” button.
How to Calculate It: (Number of clicks on a share and/or forward button ÷ Number of total delivered emails) * 100
Example: 100 clicks on a share/forward button ÷ 10,000 total delivered emails * 100 = 1% email sharing/forwarding rate
The importance of Social Media grows every year. In 2016, our marketing team worked hard at it but without a focused plan. In 2017 our plan is much more strategic, so we needed KPIs to reflect this change. For Social Media, we used Impact Branding as a source for our KPIs.
1. Number of Clicks
How many people clicked on our links? Did we get clicks from new followers or non followers? Links reflect the quality of the post.
From Impact Branding:
A large number of clicks with very few likes and shares shows that your post got their attention but didn't deliver the exceptional quality needed for the viewer to engage.
2. Number of Likes on Social Media
How many likes are we receiving? On which platform do we have the most likes? People liking or following our page increases our popularity. It also alerts Google that we are popular and trending. Popularity leads to more exposure.
From Impact Branding:
Likes lead to more attention because people naturally gravitate towards things that are popular. More likes also signal to most platform algorithms that this particular content deserves a higher spot in search results.
3. Number of Shares
How many people shared our post? Are people engaging with the shared posts? This gives you insight into how engaging your content is while helping you increase exposure.
From Impact Branding:
These days hitting "like" on a post is a passive, mindless action. Likes are good and you definitely want them, but sharing is a conscious decision. When someone shares your post (or retweets, re-vines, etc.) they are giving a personal recommendation to their friends, colleagues, and family. Because of this, shares are a great indication of the quality of your work.
4. Number of Comments
How many comments did our posts receive? Were they negative or positive comments? Did this article provoke deep thinking for your readers?
From Impact Branding:
Interesting, relevant content sparks a conversation. Even if people leave critical comments, you're better off than having no comments at all. Praise, criticism, and general discussion are all helpful for improving your marketing, but silence is not. Getting comments on your comments is a reliable sign that your content is hitting all the right points of interest.
Once we nailed down a solid list, we recorded all of our KPIs for the quarter with Red-Yellow-Green success criteria on our Rhythm dashboard so we can stay accountable to executing our plan and hitting our numbers.
I hope these ideas help your sales and marketing teams, or Smarketing as we like to call it!
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