Tracking and Exploiting Marketing KPIs: Leveraging Business Intelligence for Enhanced Performance

Marketing data analysis is essential for measuring the effectiveness of campaigns launched by a company, whether in terms of return on investment (ROI), conversion or brand awareness. However, it would help if you relied on relevant marketing KPIs to exploit this data’s full potential with the help of a Business Intelligence tool.

Marketing analytics: what are the challenges?

Analytics enable marketers to improve their knowledge of customers and implement relevant actions to achieve their strategic objectives.

Better still, it helps them make forecasts, identify trends, and build models to support decision-making at every level: choosing the most effective communication channels, allocating the marketing budget, targeting the most profitable prospects, etc.

Companies can also use Business Intelligence (BI) to centralise, sort, and process this data efficiently: this is known as marketing intelligence.

What are the main marketing KPIs?

The rise of digital marketing has revolutionised how companies communicate with their potential customers but also, the way they gather information about them. There are many examples of marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) with a variety of objectives.

Marketing indicators linked to website traffic

The website has established itself as an essential communications medium for businesses. Traffic research is therefore an aspect that marketing teams should not overlook.

Organic traffic

Organic traffic refers to visits obtained through SEO, i.e. website optimisation for search engines. In other words, it refers to visitors who arrive on your site after clicking on a link in the Google search results, for example.

This KPI is important for measuring the effectiveness of your SEO actions, but also for identifying the best referenced web pages that generate a lot of visits.

Referral traffic

Referral traffic measures the number of Internet users who have landed on one of your pages while they were visiting another site. This indicator shows the number of incoming links (or backlinks) pointing to your site.

Paid traffic

This KPI measures the traffic obtained through advertising: CPC campaigns on search engines, ads on social networks, banner ads on third-party sites, etc.

This enables you to assess the return on investment of your campaigns, as well as identifying the channels that attract the most visitors and generate the most conversions.

Traffic from social networks

As its name suggests, this indicator measures traffic from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

It allows you to identify the social networks that attract the most visitors to your website, as well as the types of publication that generate the most traffic.

Traffic from emailing

This is the number of Internet users who have clicked on a link in your promotional emails and newsletters. By analysing this KPI, you can identify the most effective types of email and improve future campaigns.

Marketing metrics linked to website engagement

Generating traffic to a site is a good start, but visitors still need to interact with it. This is precisely what these indicators are designed to measure.

Time spent on the site

The average time spent on the site or on a specific page is an important indicator, as it reflects the quality of your content. If visitors spend several minutes on a blog article, for example, it means that it is relevant and addresses their issues.

This KPI also assesses your ability to keep visitors on your site by offering them other interesting content.

Bounce rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site immediately after arriving, without visiting any other pages.

A high bounce rate may indicate that visitors are not finding what they are looking for on your site. It can also be explained by a poor user experience: outdated design, loading times that are too long, etc.

The conversion rate from visitors to leads

On a website, converting a visitor into a lead involves collecting certain data about the visitor, such as their name, e-mail address or telephone number.

As part of an inbound marketing strategy, a commonly used technique is to offer downloadable content (such as a white paper) in exchange for this information. But it can also be a contact form or a quote request form.

In all cases, a high conversion rate means that the company is offering relevant content that responds to the issues faced by its target audience.

Formula

Number of visitors/number of leads obtained


KPIs for lead management

While the website is a valuable tool for obtaining leads, it is essential to use the right KPIs to measure the effectiveness of lead generation.

Cost per lead (CPL)

The cost per lead measures the cost of acquiring a lead. It therefore reveals the effectiveness of marketing campaigns: the higher the CPL, the more the company is investing in generating leads.

Formula

Total marketing expenditure/Number of leads obtained

 

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

The customer acquisition cost represents the average cost required to convert a lead into a customer. This marketing metric can be used to identify the most profitable marketing channels, so that you can invest more in them.

Formula

Total costs associated with acquiring new customers/Number of customers obtained

 

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value is an estimate of the profits that a company can expect to make from a customer over its lifetime.

Formula

(Average basket x Purchase frequency) x Average customer lifetime

 

Lead-to-customer conversion rate

This indicator measures the proportion of leads that have made a purchase. It is used to monitor the quality of leads on an ongoing basis: a low rate indicates that the company is not attracting the right people to its site or that it is not proposing offers that are suited to its target audience.

Formula

Number of leads/number of customers obtained


Email marketing indicators

Emailing remains an essential marketing channel for businesses. Hence the importance of using key indicators to assess its effectiveness.

Deliverability rate

The deliverability rate refers to the proportion of e-mails that have been successfully delivered to your recipients’ inboxes. A low deliverability rate indicates that a large number of e-mails are considered undesirable by spam filters.

Opening rate

The open rate measures the number of messages that have been opened by their recipient. It is indicative of the quality of the email subject line, which should make prospects want to read the content.

The time at which the email is sent can also influence the open rate: analysing this can help you to determine the best day and time for emailing.

Formula

Number of emails opened/number of emails delivered

 

Click-through rate (CTR)

The click-through rate measures the percentage of recipients who have clicked on a link in an e-mail. A high click-through rate means that your prospects are interested in the content or products highlighted in your e-mails.

Formula

Number of clicks/number of emails delivered

 

Churn rate

This marketing metric measures the number of contacts who have unsubscribed from your newsletter. An unsubscribe rate that is too high indicates a lack of interest in your emails or in your company, which means you need to readjust your emailing strategy as quickly as possible.

Formula

Number of unsubscribes/number of emails sent

 

KPIs linked to performance on social networks

Social networks are essential to any digital marketing strategy. There are a number of indicators that can help you measure your performance on these platforms.

The number of subscribers

The number of followers on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram page is a basic indicator of your company’s popularity on the networks.

Publications reach

Reach is the number of users likely to see one of your publications in their News Feed. This KPI enables you to estimate the potential visibility of your brand with a given audience.

Engagement rate

Engagement on social networks refers to users’ interactions with your publications, i.e. likes, shares, comments, clicks and retweets.

A high engagement rate indicates that your publications are relevant and attractive to your audience.

Formula

Total number of interactions on a publication/Number of people exposed

 

Retail KPIs

Finally, there are marketing metrics specific to the retail sector, of which the following are a few examples.

The average basket

The average basket measures the average value of your customers’ purchases, whether in shop or on your e-commerce site.

Formula

Sales/number of transactions

 

In-store footfall

This KPI refers to the number of visitors to a sales outlet over a given period. Low footfall reflects a lack of attractiveness or awareness of the shop.

Average frequency of purchases

Purchase frequency is an indicator of customer loyalty, as it measures the average number of transactions made by each customer.

Formula

Number of transactions/number of customers

 

Basket abandonment rate

This specific e-commerce marketing metric measures the number of people who have placed products in their shopping basket without completing their purchase.

A high shopping basket abandonment rate can be explained by delivery charges or other hidden costs that the customer did not anticipate, a complex or insecure payment process, or a delivery time that is too long.

Formula

Number of orders/number of baskets created

 

How can you exploit the full potential of your marketing KPIs?

Monitoring your marketing performance indicators is essential if you are to steer your actions accurately. However, using KPIs is more difficult than it seems…

The data analysed comes from a multitude of sources, from social networks such as Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, to software such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console. As a result, the indicators are scattered and do not always use the same units of measurement, making analysis more complex.

Hence the importance of adopting Business Intelligence software capable of automating data collection, preparation and cleansing. This simplifies the day-to-day life of marketing teams, while guaranteeing the quality and reliability of their analyses.

A BI tool can also be used to create customised marketing and sales dashboards. Updated in real time, these dashboards make it much easier to monitor KPIs on a day-to-day basis, so you can manage your marketing activities more effectively. Better still, the key indicators are represented in graphical form, making the data perfectly understandable.

Finally, a Business Intelligence solution takes care of creating reports. Complementary to dashboards, reporting provides an exhaustive account of the company’s marketing activities at any given time.

Essential for measuring the impact of your campaigns and continuously improving your strategy, marketing KPIs are invaluable management tools for your business. As long as you use them in the best possible conditions, thanks to a Business Intelligence tool that considerably simplifies data collection, analysis and visualisation. So you can concentrate on interpreting the results and making informed decisions on a daily basis.