From in-house social media specialists to globally dispersed content teams, your marketing department might share come characteristics of a small village. On average, companies with 5,000 employees retain around 45 marketers. While having a large marketing team is great for pure horsepower, it can be tough to keep track of who’s doing what and how well. In this article, we’ll lay out five questions for your marketing team to ensure they’re hitting the right goals, along with 14 key performance indicators (KPIs) to track.
1. Are We Building A Loyal Audience with Content?
Beyond creating brand awareness, your content must engage customers and help you build – and maintain – a loyal audience. 81% of B2C marketers say their organization is concerned with creating content that builds loyalty with existing customers. The following KPIs will track your team’s success in its audience-building efforts:
1. Unsubscribers: Email content plays an important role in engaging customers. Keep track of opt-out numbers to better understand how subscribers see your content. If your unsubscribe rate is over 0.5%, it’s time to review the email content or rethink your segmentation strategy.
2. Bounce Rate: Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who leave your website without viewing a second page. A high bounce rate indicates that users aren’t sticking around to read your content. Keep in mind, however, that a user may find what they’re looking for on page 1 without needing anything further. Therefore, when using this KPI, review your bounce rate for individual content pages and make sure to keep sight of the bigger picture.
3. Return Visitors Rate: Use the Return Visitors Rate (RVR) KPI to gauge how effective your content is at retaining an audience. To calculate RVR, divide the number of return visitors to your website by the number of total unique visitors for a given period of time. Note that infrequent visitors do not indicate a lack of loyalty, and remember to interpret the data based on the nature of your business.
2. Are Our Social Media Efforts Paying Off?
Though spending on social media goes up each year, 45% of marketers are unable to quantify social media’s impact on their business. This is cause for concern among executives, as 36% of CFOs say marketers rely on vanity metrics, which don’t communicate anything of real substance.
Instead of reporting vanity metrics, track these KPIs to show how social media impacts the bottom line.
4. Conversion Rate: Use conversion rates to demonstrate how social media visitors interact with your website after clicking on a given link. Calculate conversion rates by dividing conversions by the total number of visitors. If this reveals minimal conversions, ensure you’re sending visitors to the right landing page and that your landing page is mobile-friendly. Split test your social media posts for broader insight as well.
5. Return on Investment from Social Channels: To understand social media’s impact, track your social media ROI. The most basic social media ROI formula is Profit ÷ Investment x 100. You can also use social media tools like Marketo and Kissmetrics to track customers back to the social media link they clicked and calculate the value of their actions, thereby measuring the impact of social channels and campaigns on your business.
3. Are We Delivering A Pleasant Customer Experience?
77% of consumers choose a product or service due to a positive experience with the brand. It follows that failing to deliver on customer experience could profoundly affect the company’s bottom line. The following three performance KPIs can help you track the quality of your customer experience.
6. Customer Effort Score (CES): CES helps you measure the ease of an experience during your customers’ journey. CES is measured through a post-interaction survey by asking customers a single question and scoring the response on a scale from very difficult to very easy.
To calculate CES, add the total number of respondents who agree with the statement (those who indicated a 5 or above) and then divide by total number of respondents surveyed.
7. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Using a customer survey, CSAT asks customers to rate their satisfaction on a defined scale with descriptors that range from ‘not at all satisfied’ to ‘very satisfied’. Measure customer satisfaction after key customer service interactions such as a ticket, phone call, or live chat. Keep in mind that CSAT questions are meant to be interaction-focused and not indicative of how customers view your business as a whole.
8. Average Resolution Time: Responding to the growing need for speedy resolution times, this KPI measures how much time it takes to resolve a customer inquiry and directly correlates with your team’s efficiency and customer satisfaction. You can measure average resolution time using the following formula: total time to resolve tickets during the selected time period divided by the number of tickets resolved during that same period.
4. What’s Our Email Performance?
Although email is still the go-to marketing channel for many organizations, consumers are kicking brands out of their inbox. Consider tracking your email marketing performance with the KPIs below.
9. Inbox Placement Rate (IPR): IPR measures the percentage of sent emails that actually reach your subscribers’ inbox (as opposed to the spam folder). To efficiently track your IPR, use testing tools that provide actionable intelligence on your overall email campaign performance and identify issues that reduce inbox placement. Use IPR as a complement to your email deliverability evaluation.
10. Return on Investment: If your email marketing team is among the 35% of marketers who rely on ROI calculations to bolster their email marketing budget, you’ll need proof that email marketing drives results. You can start small, by measuring returns such as revenue generated by subscribers who click through and convert. A basic formula to calculate email ROI: sales growth – marketing costs ÷ marketing cost.
11. Read Rate: Read rate is another KPI you can use to track email engagement and monitor your email performance. Read rates reveal the length of time subscribers viewed your email and which subject lines or campaigns engaged them the most. Use third-party analytics to track this KPI and compare read rates by device to identify key areas for optimization.
5. Are We Engaging Consumers With Our Mobile App?
Consumers are engaging with their phones more than ever before. In the US, mobile shopping sessions grew 70% over just two years. On the other hand, 21% of consumers abandon apps after one use.
Understanding how consumers engage with your app is the best strategy for keeping them hooked on your brand. Use the following KPIs to measure mobile app engagement.
12. Session Interval: Session interval is the amount of time between a user’s first session and their next one. This KPI demonstrates your app’s “stickiness” and provides feedback on whether you need to improve the user experience.
13. Session Length: This KPI tracks the time period between the user’s opening and closing of the app. Longer session lengths signal that users are satisfied with their experience and that your marketing efforts are effectively earning engagement.
14. Retention Rate: A critical aspect of your app’s success is its retention, i.e., the percentage of users who returned to your app in the last 30 days. This KPI highlights your most engaged users and enables you to measure how your app optimization impacts user retention.
When tracking mobile app engagement KPIs, use tools with action cohorts for insight on how often your users return to the app and perform certain actions in a given timeframe. Look out for tools with real-time in-app analytics features to pinpoint users’ behavior patterns.
Time for A Sit Down
In a world of competitive pricing strategies and disruptive brand splashes, sit your marketing team down and ask the hard questions. Aside from the above, ask your creative team about the campaign performance. For each departmental goal, choose the three KPIs best aligned to your overarching business goals and refine them on an ongoing basis. Do your best to break down any silos to allow your team to work smarter and faster.