30+ Marketing Metrics and Where to Find Them
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Analyzing marketing metrics is vital for ensuring that your marketing campaigns are effectively reaching your audience and converting customers–and making sure your business is getting the best value out of your marketing investment. This guide will outline the most valuable marketing metrics used in digital marketing, quickly explaining what each one is and how it can be measured.
There is a lot of jargon to cut through before you can identify the metrics that are appropriate to measure for your business. Mighty Digital has put this guide together to help you as you begin your journey into digital marketing. We’ll keep it up to date with new measures and tools, so feel free to bookmark this page so you can revisit it next time you are evaluating your marketing channels.
What are marketing metrics and why are they a valuable business asset?
Marketing metrics are the data points you collect from your marketing channels—and the customers who respond to them—to measure their success. Up-to-date and historic marketing metrics are a valuable asset to your business. They can be used to focus your marketing campaigns on the most responsive audiences through the most responsive channels.
Marketing metrics are also valuable to the improvement of your product. By identifying which advertised features your users are responding to, you can focus on improving those features to ensure that they continue to attract new users while also building the loyalty of your existing users.
There are many defined metrics that can be used to understand your marketing campaigns. The table below lists metrics used by internet marketing experts, and tells you what they mean and how they are measured.
Glossary of marketing metrics and how to measure them
Key marketing metric
| Metric | Meaning | How is it measured? |
|---|---|---|
| ROI (return on investment) | A measure of the growth gained from marketing activity | ROI = (Sales growth − Marketing cost) ÷ Marketing cost |
| ROAS (return on ad spend) | The revenue earned for each advertising dollar spent | ROAS = Revenue attributable to ad ÷ Cost of ad |
Web analytics metrics
| Metric | Meaning | How is it measured? |
|---|---|---|
| Total visits | The total number of visits to a web page | Web analytics are collected from analytics platforms |
| Unique visits | Similar to the above, but only visits from unique visitors | |
| Sessions | How many unique sessions visitors had on a website | For example in GA4 it’s 30 minutes window to count users actions as a one session |
| Page views per session | How many pages a unique visitor views on a website per visit | |
| Average session duration | The amount of time a visitor spends visiting your website | |
| Time on page | As above, but the amount of time spent on a single page | |
| Bounce rate | The proportion of visitors who leave your site after viewing only a single page | Bounce rate = Single page visitors ÷ Total visitors |
Internet marketing metrics
| Metric | Meaning | How is it measured? |
|---|---|---|
| CPM (cost per mille) | The cost per thousand ad impressions | Advertising platforms will provide you with the cost of each of these interactions, as well as how many interactions there were, to accurately bill you |
| CPV (cost per view) | The cost per view of a video advertisement | |
| CPС (cost per click) | The cost per click on an online advertisement | |
| CPA (cost per action) | The cost per positive action, such as signups or purchases, rather than visits or clicks | |
| CTR (click-through rate) | Click-through rate is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. | CTR = Visitors who click link ÷ Total visitors |
Email marketing metrics
| Metric | Meaning | How is it measured? |
|---|---|---|
| Email open rate | The proportion of marketing emails that were opened | Open rate = Opened emails ÷ Total emails delivered |
| Email bounce rate | The proportion of emails which did not reach the recipient | Bounce rate = Bounced emails ÷ Total emails sent |
| Email click-through rate | The proportion of people who clicked on a link in an email | Email CTR = Links clicked ÷ Total emails delivered |
Social media marketing metrics
| Metric | Meaning | How is it measured? |
|---|---|---|
| CPL (cost per like) | Similar to CPC, but the number of likes on social media | Like other online advertisers, social media platforms will track these interactions and provide you with these metrics to accurately bill you |
| CPE (cost per engagement) | Social media sites track additional types of engagements such as likes, shares, and reactions |
SaaS marketing metrics
| Metric | Meaning | How is it measured? |
|---|---|---|
| ARR (annual recurring revenue) | The predictable recurring revenue from your product—the baseline of what you expect it to earn excluding things like one-off charges to customers | This information can be calculated from your internal invoicing or payments systems |
| MRR (monthly recurring revenue) | The revenue earned from subscriptions monthly | |
| ARPU (average revenue per user) | The average amount of income generated per user, typically per year or per month | ARPU = Total revenue ÷ Subscriber count |
| Revenue churn | The amount of MRR lost over a period through unsubscribes, pricing plan downgrades, etc. | Can be expressed as a dollar amount (by simply seeing how much less was earned in a month) |
| Revenue churn rate | Revenue churn expressed as a rate | Revenue churn rate = MRR lost ÷ Previous MRR |
| Customer churn | The number of customers lost over a period | Expressed as the number of actual customers lost |
| Customer churn rate | The rate of customer churn | Customer churn rate = Customers lost ÷ Previous customer count |
Mobile app marketing metrics
| Metric | Meaning | How is it measured? |
|---|---|---|
| Installs | The number of app installs | In Google Play or App Store it measures by real installs, but all other tools shows install after the first app launch |
| DAU (daily active users) | The number of people who open your app every day | Available through in-app analytics |
| MAU (monthly active users) | The number of people who interact with your app monthly | |
| Stickiness ratio | The ratio of highly engaged “sticky” users to regular users | Stickiness = DAU ÷ MAU |
| Uninstalls | The number of app uninstalls | When app is deleted from the phone. Can be tricky for IOS |
Growth metrics
| Metric | Meaning | How is it measured? |
|---|---|---|
| Activation rate | Visitors are ‘activated’ when they take a desired action with your product | Activation rate = Visitors who take action ÷ Total visitors |
| CRR (customer retention rate) | The number of customers retained over a period of time | CRR = (Number of customers at end of period − Number of new customers) ÷ Number of customers at beginning of period |
| CAC (customer acquisition cost) | The average amount of money spent to get each new customer | CAC = Advertising spend ÷ Total new customers |
| Conversions | A conversion occurs when a visitor becomes a customer—taking a desired action such as signing up or making a purchase | |
| Conversion rate | A measure of the success of an advertising channel based on the proportion of conversions to interactions | Conversion rate = Number of conversions ÷ Total interactions |
| LTV (lifetime value) CLV (customer lifetime value) | The total income you are likely to get from a customer for the duration of their patronage | These values will be provided by your internal reporting from invoices or payments |
The NPS (Net Promoter Score)
The Net Promoter Score is an indicator of the prevailing sentiment of your customers. The NPS calculates customer satisfaction by asking them a simple question: on a scale of 1–10, how likely are they to recommend your product to others?
This metric is widely used due to its simple nature and impact—it cuts right to the heart of customer loyalty and sentiment. If they are likely to recommend you, they are likely to be retained as a customer—and, as a bonus, might even attract new customers themselves.
Bespoke product metrics
Your product is unique and may have its own measure of success. To better identify the best measurable response from your customers, you may need to build on the above metrics with your own measures.
For example, a video game developer may identify that its highest-scoring players spend the most money on the game. The players’ scores have thus become an identified marketing metric that can be used to assess whether a channel is providing users who are making a profitable interaction.
Growth marketing builds on this concept, utilizing data-driven campaigns based on customer satisfaction to maximize growth throughout the entire marketing funnel.
Knowing the jargon helps, but understanding the metrics gets results
Most marketing metrics are simple in concept. It is less simple to know how to combine them to get the most insight, and to fully recognize the impact your marketing campaigns are having. An experienced growth marketing team from Mighty Digital will work with you to understand your business and identify the metrics best suited to measure real growth.
Acronyms, terminology, jargon—knowing the right words helps, but it takes time to figure out the real-world implications a metric may have in different advertising channels or for different industries. Properly assigning an interaction to a marketing channel is also becoming an increasingly complex task.
Mighty Digital builds industry-leading digital marketing campaigns and has the institutional knowledge to ensure your marketing metrics are properly measured and intelligently interpreted. We can ensure your marketing channels are fully optimized and your product growth is fully realized.
