Twitter Chatter: Optimize Marketing with Metrics

Massimo Paolini on April 29, 2011

By Lauren Carlson – CRM Market Analyst

In ye olde days of marketing (a few years ago), marketers had limited tools for tracking metrics. They could monitor simple things such as open and click rates for email campaigns, but they didn’t have much visibility beyond that. With modern technology and tools, such as marketing automation software, marketers have access to actionable marketing analytics that give them visibility into how marketing campaigns are performing and directly affection ROI. Lisa Cramer of LeadLife Solutions contributed a post to the Marketing Automation Software Guide site outlining the most important metrics to measure and how marketers can use that data to improve performance and better understand their impact on revenue.
In the past, organizations had a very limited view of the funnel: qualified opportunities to sales. However, this view omits important steps in the lead life-cycle. In order to send the most highly qualified leads to sales, marketing needs a complete view of the lead life-cycle, tracking lead origin and intent based on area or level of interest. Finally, they need to see what percentage of leads generated turned into closed deals so that they can measure the effectiveness of their efforts.
This seems like a lot of data to track, but new systems and processes make it possible. Let’s say, for example, that a marketer sends out an email campaign that links to a landing page. That landing page is linked to similar pages of interest. Here are some metrics that marketing should be tracking:
  • Clicks and opens (old school, but still important)
  • Most popular links, if there were multiple
  • How many clicks turned into conversions
  • What other pages did visitors navigate to?
  • Time spent on other pages.
The next step depends on your lead management process. Leads need to be scored based on behavior/demographic information so that you can determine if they are “sales ready” or not. Let’s say that your system scores leads automatically. With this next set of metrics, you can gain insight into how well-targeted your email campaign was overall, as well as drill down into individual aspects such as engagement, timing, content, etc.
  • How many leads were considered “sales ready”?
  • How many leads never converted?
  • How many leads were passed to sales and over what period of time?
  • How many “sales ready” leads moved on to become opportunities?
  • How many opportunities became closed deals and what revenue came from each?
  • What was the total amount of revenue attributed to the campaign?
Tracking these metrics helps marketing understand how well they are performing. Why is this important? Because more and more, companies are realizing marketing’s impact on the company’s bottom line. With access to these new systems and metrics, marketing can better track their performance, improve their method and help drive company growth.
You can read the article in full on the Marketing Automation Software Guide blog.

Web Analytics Education: Goal Conversions and Funnels – Part 3

Massimo Paolini on November 18, 2010

More instructions on how to create goals and their associated funnels. The different goal types, with examples.

The Google Analytics series thus far has covered the basics on reports from understanding the difference between Dimensions and Metrics, through selecting a date range, a chart option, or a secondary dimension. We then covered in detail how to setup an account, create profiles, add the Async code, and lately we explored eCommerce. See the full list below and at the bottom of every educational post.

Read More about Web Analytics Education: Goal Conversions and Funnels – Part 3

Web Analytics Education: Goal Conversions and Funnels – Part 2

Massimo Paolini on November 16, 2010

Here are the detailed instructions on how to create goals and their associated funnels. Image driving your car without a destination. While it may be fun, there is very little purpose or productivity. In business using Web Analytics without goals is kind of driving blindfolded without a destination. Useless and dangerous.

The Google Analytics series thus far has covered the basics on reports from understanding the difference between Dimensions and Metrics, through selecting a date range, a chart option, or a secondary dimension. We then covered in detail how to setup an account, create profiles, add the Async code, and lately we explored eCommerce. See the full list below and at the bottom of every educational post.

Read More about Web Analytics Education: Goal Conversions and Funnels – Part 2

Web Analytics Education: Goal Conversions and Funnels – Part 1

Massimo Paolini on November 11, 2010

This is the holly grail. This is what makes those stats sing. Setting goals puts everything in perspective. It allows the numbers to tell you how well your are doing, or how much your marketing plan sucks. You can use the information to make real business decisions that affect your bottom line or you can just look at how many visitors you had last week, your choice.

The Google Analytics series thus far has covered the basics on reports from understanding the difference between Dimensions and Metrics, through selecting a date range, a chart option, or a secondary dimension. We then covered in detail how to setup an account, create profiles, add the Async code, and lately we explored eCommerce. See the full list below and at the bottom of every educational post.

Read More about Web Analytics Education: Goal Conversions and Funnels – Part 1

I heard someone talking about a “sales funnel” in GA. What is it and how does that work on my website? –Margaret W.

Massimo Paolini on October 10, 2009

eCommerce Funnel Image

Just as your kitchen funnel is designed to take some food item or liquid from a large container and guide it neatly into a smaller opening, a sales funnel in Google Analytics is a visual method of watching your potential customers (visitors) move along your goal path. It’s very helpful in seeing where people “pop out” and don’t finish the process. As a result, this gives you a chance to ask yourself why your audience is jumping ship before they have reached your goal.

For example, I was working with an eCommerce site and they had never set up their sales funnel. Once that was in place, they found dozens of people starting the purchase process by selecting their items, putting in their shipping information, but not completing the sale.

This made us ask several questions:

  • what were the customers finding out for the first time on that page? (e.g. Shipping or handling fees not stated earlier)
  • was the credit card function working?
  • did the checkout page give the customer all the information he/she needed?

In this case, the checkout page was broken and customers couldn’t find the “submit order” button! Under normal circumstances, customers would have sent an email to the company and pointed this out, but we’re talking about a small company and people were simply going to Google to find a different company that sold the same products instead. Even more upsetting was that this had been going on for at least a month! Imagine the lost sales!

To set up a good funnel, you need to establish your goal pages. If you sell something on your website, it could be as simple as:

  1. Customers will put items in the shopping cart
  2. Customers will input shipping information
  3. Customers will complete the transaction

But if you don’t sell something, you should still have goals and then watch what happens in the course of your funnel

  1. Viewers read my blog
  2. Viewers will click on an additional blog entry
  3. Viewers will click on the “contact me” button