“How well is your marketing working?” It’s easy for D2C brands to feel stumped by this simple question — the connection between a company’s success and metrics like video views and website visits can be murky. To find an answer, marketers not only have to comb through an overwhelming amount of data, but they also must understand topsy-turvy customer journeys that warrant different attribution models.
No need to stress: We compiled this cheat sheet of common digital marketing KPIs. All you have to do is select the ones most relevant to your marketing channels and business objectives (you don’t have to measure everything), choose the proper monitoring tools, and regularly review your progress.
In this article:
Website
Social Media Marketing
Email Marketing
SEO
Digital Ads
Lead Generation and Sales Strategy
It’s Time to Achieve Your Goals
The amount of monthly traffic to your website can be a good indicator of your marketing pipeline’s success in encouraging shoppers to click on links, CTAs, and ads.
Measurement tools: Google Analytics, KissMetrics, Matamo, Woopra
How to improve:
Similar digital marketing KPIs:
For more on improving website traffic:
The average cart abandonment rate hovers at 68.8% — but that doesn’t mean abandoned carts are a lost cause! Consider the reasons people may be abandoning their carts: Is your checkout page confusing? Too lengthy? Are your shipping and returns policies not shopper-friendly? Identifying these pain points and easing shoppers’ concerns can easily reduce this number.
How to calculate:
Cart abandonment = 1 - (# of shoppers completing transactions / # of shoppers adding items to carts)
How to improve:
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For more on pushing past cart abandonment:
The percentage of returning vs. new website visitors reveals the engagement level of your target audience. For example, if your content pages have few return visitors, it may be time to review your content strategy.
Measurement tools: Google Analytics, KissMetrics, Matamo, Woopra
Google Analytics makes it easy to see the number of new users. Source: Greet More
How to improve:
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What good is a website if it doesn’t convert? (Spoiler alert: Not much.) Luckily, there are ways to improve your site so that people don’t just window shop but engage with reviews, explore content, and purchase products.
Measurement tools: Google Analytics, KissMetrics, Matamo, Woopra
How to improve:
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For ways to optimize online checkout for conversion:
A successful social media strategy is one that creates buzz. Think of Wendy’s or Denny’s, both of which have distinctive tongue-in-cheek tones and timely content that people love. But snarkiness is not the magical solution to engagement — ultimately, it depends on who your target audience is.
Engagement rates can be calculated in various ways but typically encompass metrics such as post shares, likes, clicks, and comments. Case in point: The higher your engagement rate, the larger your reach.
Measurement tools: Hootsuite, Buzzsumo
How to improve:
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For ways to build an engaging brand on social media:
Social media mentions are another great way to monitor both positive and negative reactions to your brand, product, and customer experience — your whole brand image, if you will.
Measurement tools: Sprout Social, Agorapulse
How to improve:
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Having an engaged community on social media is great, but having them become buying customers is even better. By monitoring the amount of website traffic from social media, you can see if the posts you are painstakingly crafting are actually contributing to sales and revenue.
Measurement tools: Google Analytics, KissMetrics, Matamo, Woopra
How to improve:
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With widespread changes to user privacy and third-party cookies, first-party data is more critical than ever. With that being said, it’s not surprising that emails remain one of the reigning champs of digital marketing — for every $1 you spend on emails, the expected ROI is a whopping $42!
Having a high subscribe rate not only indicates that your website is doing an excellent job encouraging people to subscribe, but it also means you can disseminate your marketing messages more widely.
Measurement tools: AdRoll, MailChimp
How to improve:
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For more ways to collect email addresses:
With more and more brands realizing the potential of emails, marketers now have mere seconds to capture attention via catchy and relevant headlines. If nobody is opening your emails, start by asking yourself why.
How to calculate:
Email open rate = unique opens / (number of emails sent - bounces)
How to improve:
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Emails should serve as an introduction to your brand, products, or a promotional campaign. Therefore, the goal of each email is to encourage people to click on a link and take a desired action, whether it’s to shop a sale, return to their abandoned cart, or sign up for an event.
How to measure:
Email CTR formula. Source: Brainpulse Technologies
How to improve:
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For ways to use data to send smarter emails:
“Just Google it” is one of the most popular modern sayings for a good reason — search engines can deliver you the answer to (almost) anything. Unfortunately, this means that brands must fight for coveted space on search engine result pages (SERP). If you see low traffic from organic search, it’s time to improve your SEO.
Measurement tools: Google Analytics, SEMRush, Moz
How to improve:
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For more on building an SEO strategy:
The more inbound links you have from sites with high page authority, the better your site will perform in search engine results.
Measurement tools: Moz, SEMrush, Ahrefs
How to improve:
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For more on creating content that improves search rankings:
Paid ads (displayed on sidebars, search results, or social media) are an easy way to generate more traffic, leads, and conversions — but only when they work. If your click-through rates are low, it means your ads are being seen but ignored.
Measurement tools: Google Analytics (for Google Ads), AdRoll
How to improve:
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One of the biggest headaches that marketers face happens when shoppers click on paid ads but don’t convert — essentially eating up the marketing budget. Ouch. Luckily, there are quick and easy fixes for low conversion rates.
Measurement tools: Google Analytics (for Google Ads), AdRoll
How to improve:
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Acquiring leads is easy. Acquiring affordable leads is a challenge. To gauge whether your marketing efforts have a positive ROI, you’ll need to calculate the cost per lead.
How to measure:
Average cost per lead = total marketing cost / number of new leads in a set period
In this case, the total marketing costs include:
How to improve:
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Acquiring a new customer is challenging (and expensive!), so why not encourage them to come back for more? In other words, once a customer converts, your work doesn’t end there — you’ll want to continue engaging with them by delivering a new series of marketing messages.
How to calculate:
Customer Retention Rate formula. Source: ProductPlan
How to improve:
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For more on how personalized marketing can boost customer retention:
Whew, that was a lot of digital marketing KPIs! To make it easier for you, we’ve created a super handy checklist — now, you and your team can quickly keep track of all business goals, KPIs, and reporting responsibilities.
And don’t forget to bookmark this cheat sheet for future reference! As your brand grows, your business goals will change, which means you’ll need to update your digital marketing KPIs.
Last updated on June 3rd, 2024.
