And What to Monitor Instead
Every marketing platform or tool provides some preconfigured metrics that the publisher/developer wants you to believe are important. They are important – just not for you. Many marketers may also tell you that these are important because they take the developer’s word at face value. Some may even have bought into their importance.
Here’s how to tell when a number or statistic is important: If you cannot directly use it to track progress along your buyer’s journey, or tie it to another metric that can, it’s safe to ignore it. When it comes to measuring success, you want to see progress towards a sale, or data that helps you understand why the sale has not happened. The following three, commonly tracked metrics are actually meaningless. I’m going to explain why, and then offer suggestions for what to track instead.
Email Open Rate
Email open rates have long been an unreliable number. Email servers and clients can report opens when a human was not involved (want to know how? Email me). And now, with Apple privacy settings, the number is even more unreliable – except, ironically, the Apple platform readers who have chosen to share their information. But even if you could rely on the number of opens, you have to dig deeper into your data to find out who opened the email. So, this is a vanity number, and it always has been. You should ignore this one.
Create an experience with your email messages that engages your reader in a more meaningful way and helps you learn more about them. This requires custom targeting, personalized messages, and integration of a good CRM. A general email blast is not going to do that for you.
Website User or Traffic Acquisition
Bots, overseas, or untargeted traffic – even competitors who visit – can make your User or Traffic Acquisition data virtually meaningless. While these numbers may help the technical team to fine tune optimization, tracking the number of visitors to your website adds very little data that can help improve your sales. Traffic is anonymous, and their intentions are largely unknown.
As with email, use your website, and landing pages, to create a memorable experience for your visitors who are prospective customers. Make sure they find the information they need quickly, and then encourage them to engage further. People are impatient. Asking them to hunt for the information they need will be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Social Media Impressions or Reach
I’m including LinkedIn as social media (we can argue later). Impressions are not the same as views. This statistic is just to let you know how many times you post or content was displayed, not how many people actually saw it or paid attention. Even if it did mean the number of people who saw your post/content, do you know who they are?
Instead of impressions or reach, use your social media to start conversations and engage with those who find your content interesting. for increases in interactions (comments) and start conversations with those who interact with your content.
As I like to tell my clients, metrics are important, but meaningful metrics are importanter (yes, spellcheck yelled at me for that one). If you would like to have a discussion about which metrics you might want to consider tracking, set up a complimentary call! What have you got to lose?
