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KPI Examples

KPI Examples.

Marketing KPIs and Metrics

Online marketing is an integrated effort that requires consolidating all of the moving pieces to get a clear view of your performance. Any marketer worth their salt knows that to be successful, you need to constantly measure, assess, and refine your campaigns. To do that, you need to be equipped with the latest and most relevant marketing KPIs.

Take the guesswork out of your marketing campaigns by monitoring the right KPIs and metrics. To help get you started, here's a list of the top 10 marketing KPIs and metrics our customers use.

Return on Investment (ROI). Make no mistake about it: this KPI is the single most important KPI for your marketing team to monitor. It provides an honest assessment of your performance so you know which campaigns are generating revenue. ROI is the definitive metric that your clients and managers will use when assessing the success of your campaign, so it's imperative that you measure this KPI, too. In fact, every KPI on this list tackles this question (albeit from a different perspective).
Audience: Media/Ad, Managers, Executives
Calculation: (Attributable Revenue - Campaign Investment) / (Campaign Investment) = ROI (over X time period)

Incremental Sales. This KPI is closely related to ROI and measures the contribution your marketing efforts make to sales. This KPI emphasizes the importance of monitoring the effectiveness of each of your campaigns - top marketers meticulously measure each lead, win, and failure that results from their campaign. To formulate this KPI, you need to establish baseline sales and clearly define which channels your marketing efforts are going to affect.
Audience: Media/Ad, Managers, Executives
Calculation: (Revenue generated by marketing initiatives - Baseline sales)

Engagement Score. This metric measures how effective your online initiatives are at generating the response you are aiming for. In the screenshot on the left, you can see the classic example of a monthly email newsletter campaign. Its performance is based on the number of unique opens, clicks, and leads generated. Use these metrics to refine your campaign and develop highly engaging content that will inspire your audience to perform a desired action.
Audience: Product/Brand, Copy, Research, Media/Ad, Communications, Managers
Calculation: Depending on campaign - # of leads generated / # of contacts made

Social Interactions. This metric provides you with a measure of how effective your social media marketing efforts are at engaging your audience. To understand the success and reach of your efforts in the social media world, you need to quantify interactions such as likes, retweets, and +1s. Use this KPI as the basis for creating social media dashboards.
Audience: Communications, Media/Ad, Managers
Calculation: # of valuable social interaction summarized over X period

Traffic Sources. This marketing metric answers a key question about your website's performance, namely, "where is your traffic coming from?" The example on the left provides a high-level overview of traffic sources, but you will want to further break down site visits. For search volume, break down visits according to the keyword and URL visitors land on. Likewise, for referral visits, sort visits based on categories like social visits (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest).
Audience: Communications, Managers, Web Analytics
Calculation: # of visitors for each source

Cost Per Lead. This marketing KPI puts the focus on the effectiveness of your campaign at generating leads for each dollar spent. This KPI is about keeping your marketing activities in perspective. Even if you have a pet project that you are particularly attached to, you need to be able to justify the time and money spent on that campaign with tangible numbers. If a campaign isn't panning out, you need to be prepared to go back to the drawing board.
Audience: Event, Communications, Media/Ad, Managers, Executives
Calculation: Total cost of campaign / # of leads generated

Conversion Metrics. These types of metrics are important because they provide a benchmark for gauging a campaign's success. Although conversion metrics can be applied to any type of marketing campaign, they are most commonly used in web analytics. As important as it is to monitor your ability to convert visits to leads, you should also measure what leads turn into wins (and what channel they came through). This will help tell you which URLs (or campaigns) resonate with people ready to make a purchase.
Audience: Web analytics, Managers, Executives
Calculation: # of visits / # of leads and # of leads per channel / # of wins

Funnel Visualization. This type of visualization helps put all of your marketing activities into perspective and is an essential tool for understanding how your audience moves through a campaign. The funnel will list actual values alongside conversion rates from one step to another. The screenshot on the left provides a simplified example, so it's worth noting you can also incorporate conversion metrics, end action rate, and other metrics from this list.
Audience: Research, Sales, Brand/Product, Managers, Executives
Calculation: For each step of funnel, show relevant metrics (eg: conversion rate)

End Action Rate. This KPI provides insight into what action people complete when they "take the bait" and visit your site because of a campaign. If you are running a banner ad campaign with a specific landing page, you will use this KPI to determine how well the landing page is at getting visitors to perform a desired action. If they are exiting the page, what can you do to prevent this? Are they only completing half of the form? Use insights from this KPI to refine your campaign.
Audience: Product/Brand, Copy, Research, Media/Ad, Communications, Managers
Calculation: # of users that start activity / # of users that complete activity = End Action Rate

SEO Keyword Ranking. This metric measures how successful your SEO campaigns are at generating increased website traffic. When it comes to search marketing, there can be a tendency to fixate on keyword rankings. While it's been proven time and again that being on the first page of search results is key, it shouldn't be the sole focus of your campaign. You should ensure that your content is well-written and engaging.
More information: SEO is such an important part of online marketing that we've given it its own article: find out the top SEO KPIs and metrics

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