Gleansight has conducted a research by asking marketers which a part of the marketing automation platform they find the foremost challenging. About 54% of marketers have said that the choice and use of the right metrics to monitor and measure marketing automation’s efficacy is more challenging than dealing with other parts and features of automation platforms.
Some metrics can be especially more effective in tracking the results of automation platforms. That’s why it is important to watch out for the following things that can misguide your measurement process.
- Inaccurate segmentation
- Your content marketing strategy and repertoire of existing content
- Incorrect marketing and sales alignment (SMarketing)
- Data produced that your marketing automation platform
- The features and capability of your marketing automation software
Once you have a full understanding of those flaws that will hamper your efforts to measure the effectiveness of marketing automation performance – you are good to go and ready to start with the right metrics – so what are they? Let us show you below.
Types of Metrics
There are four major types of metrics that widely cover most marketing activities and implementation approaches. We have explained all four kinds of these metrics below. We will will explain all the various metrics that fall under these four main types so that you can be better informed and make wise decisions in your selection of metrics to use:
Activity Metrics –
The Activity Metrics are the metrics that track activities that occur at the initial stage of implementing a marketing automation software. Activity metrics help identify if your automation investment can produce any positive results. Hence, you need to consider these metrics to look at and examine if your marketing automation investment is worth your money. Once you figure out that the software is worthy of your investment, you can also examine if your team is making the maximum use of the software and the number of activities your company performs by using the software.
You can also determine how useful the software is and/or if it is too complex and time-consuming for your team, and how long it will take to start generating significant revenue over your investment.
See how these activity metrics can assist you in determining if your marketing team is able to make the best use of the software or if they are facing any challenges that may limit the optimum performance from your automation investment.
Number of Emails Sent
This activity metric is an excellent indicator, especially when you are monitoring how well your marketing team is making the best use of the marketing automation platform tool and your investment in the software. This is also the best activity metric to understand if your automation investment is effective in enhancing performance or if it is a performance barrier.
Configuration of Quality Behavioral Triggers
Even if your team is engaged in actively using the automation software to send emails, continually check if they are using the right quality behavioral triggers.
Marketers often use the automation platform to carry out simple email sending activities, whether that is driven by any specific customer behaviors or targeting any specific lead segmentation. If this is how your team is using the automation software, then your automation investment is over-investment.
To examine if your team uses the software for such simplified email delivery activities, then look for quality behavioral triggers that target any specific lead segments or customer behavior.
Response Metrics –
The response metrics are beneficial to find out how your prospects and customers feel about receiving your emails and resources. Response metrics help you identify if your marketing automation effectively connects and engages your targeted audience.
You can also conduct a feedback survey to seek feedback from prospects and customers on your business communications, content, and offers. Then, you can measure your marketing automation based on these response metrics.
Site Traffic
If your email campaigns are already increasing conversions, then there will be an upsurge in your website traffic. Use these metrics to track your website traffic sources and measure the traffic which is augmented by your emails, before and after implementing the marketing automation software.
Email Open and Click-Through Rate
These email open and click-through rate metrics play an important role in indicating if your emails are well-designed from the email template, headers and preheaders, subject lines, email copy, product offers, and other aspects of your emails.
When your email campaign receives lower email open rates and click-through rates than usual, or compared to previous campaigns, consider performing A/B tests to optimize your emails to targeted lead segments and increase these response metrics.
Unsubscribe Rate
Your email list health will start deteriorating if you are not practicing lead database health checks periodically and not taking care of email list hygiene. As a result, the unsubscribe rate may increase and indicate how your subscribers are receiving and acting on your emails that are sent through the marketing automation software.
Make sure the unsubscribe rate does not exceed 1% at any cost. If the unsubscribe rate exceeds 1% after you have implemented a marketing automation solution, then this is a good indicator that email copies and design are not useful to your subscribers. You will need to consider strategizing and sending reactivation emails and reconsider your lead segmentation.
Efficiency Metrics –
Efficiency metrics indicate if your marketing automation is making any significant impact on your sales and marketing metrics. If the marketing automation is implemented effectively, then you will witness positive impacts in these following efficiency metrics.
MQLs Generated Through Lead Nurturing
Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) are the leads that are likely to increase conversion depending on your pre-close lead activities. If your marketing team is effectively nurturing leads by leveraging the automation software, then this number of MQLs also will rise.
Sales-Accepted Leads
With the increase in reconversions, the lead intelligence which informs your sales team about the sales funnel also improves. Reconversion also creates better quality, well-informed, and well-nurtured leads that are added to the funnel and considered more sales-ready.
The increase in the number of your sales-ready leads indicates that your marketing automation software is enabling your team to make better quality leads. If your MQLs are diminishing, you ought to check if the lead scoring model is effective or if there is a problem with the sales and marketing alignment.
Cost Per Customer
Your sales and marketing team may notice that the funnel is loaded with leads by implementing a good marketing automation system. Using a marketing automation software to nurture your leads that enhance engagements can save huge on the cost per customer. Therefore, the top of the funnel leads are not being wasted. Instead, those leads in funnels are qualified to be sales-ready and have a greater scope of getting converted into customers.
Value Metrics –
In addition to those three metrics mentioned above for measuring your marketing automation platform’s success, consider value metrics that indicate if the marketing automation implementation can impact the ROI. Consider these following metrics that can measure the worth attainable from the automation implementation.
Revenue Generated
This is an excellent indicator of what proportion of revenue is attributed to your investment in marketing automation platforms. Monitor the revenue growth metric for measuring closed deals and the average sale price, which will also increase in addition to the amount of conversions.
Cost of Investment vs. Revenue Generated
After measuring the revenue growth attributed to leads nurtured with the automation platform, focus on the value of ownership of the software. If you are creating more revenue by using the marketing automation software, look at the expenses of using the software to get that revenue. Include both the staff overhead costs of running the software and the cost of the software and see if the sum of those two costs does not exceed the revenue generated using the software.
Conclusion
You can consider the closing rate on marketing-sourced leads metric to measure the value of revenue received from your investment. Now tell us, which measurement metrics are you implementing to measure the effectiveness of your marketing automation implementation and marketing efforts?
