15 Essential Marketing Automation KPIs You Must Track to Unlock Business Growth

Marketing automation is only as good as the data you feed your platform with. Tracking the right KPIs is crucial to understand the impact of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

A marketing automation tool is a powerful source for businesses to streamline and optimize their marketing efforts. However, in order to truly reap the benefits of digital marketing automation, it is important to track the key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns and strategies. 

According to a survey by Marketo, nearly 80% of marketers acknowledge marketing automation as the #1 contributor to their success. 

And 61% of marketers use marketing automation to generate more leads. 

Tracking the right KPIs is key to reaching the full potential of your marketing automation platform as it helps:

• Effectively target your customers
• Meet your organizational goals
• Drive the desired results 
• Keep a check on ROI 

So, in this blog post, we will discuss 13 essential KPIs that you can track to propel your digital marketing automation efforts and drive growth for your company. From lead generation and conversion rates to email open and click-through rates, these KPIs will help you identify the areas of success and of improvement in your marketing efforts. 

15 Marketing Automation KPIs You Need to Keep an Eye On

In marketing automation, there are 4 main categories of marketing KPIs to take into account, which also serve as a representation of the key conversion funnel steps:

Acquisition Indicators: Acquiring New Contacts

1. Active/ Inactive Contacts

The quantity of active contacts indicates the proportion of your contacts that have lately interacted with your brand. 

Inactive contacts, on the other hand, are individuals who have not engaged with your brand in a few weeks or months. Consider deactivating or deleting them from your database as well.

Why?

Because these are the connections who are most unlikely to become your customers.

The evolution of active contacts over a given period is interesting to watch.

2. Prospect Qualification Rate

It is important to understand your prospects' qualifications in order to implement this concept. The two methods of generating leads and qualifying them are largely different. 

You must count the number of people who have converted from simple contacts to prospects—in other words, those who exactly match your target market—in order to arrive at this result. 

In line with your qualification standards, you will also need to evaluate those who have transitioned from prospects to potential customers.

Engagement Indicators: Contact and Brand Interactions

3. Social Media Engagement

This metric refers to the level of interaction and participation that your audience has with your social media content and accounts. 

Social media engagement can include likes, shares, comments, and other forms of engagement. 

Social media engagement is important to track because:

• It provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts and the interests and preferences of your audience. 
• You can identify which types of content and campaigns are resonating with your audience and which, not.
• A high level of social media engagement indicates a strong relationship with your audience and a positive brand image. 

It's also worth noting that social media engagement is not just a vanity metric, it's a key indicator of how much your audience trusts and likes your brand, and how much they are willing to promote it voluntarily.

4. Inbox Hit Rate

The percentage of emails that reaches your subscribers' inboxes is your overall inbox hit rate.

Your subscribers receive some of your emails, while others bounce or end up in spam or junk folders. A greater inbox hit rate indicates that you are sending out emails to your subscribers more effectively, increasing the likelihood that they will read what you have to say.

5. Click Through Rate (CTR) or Call-to-Action

CTR is a metric that measures the number of times a user clicks on a link in an email, ad, or other digital marketing campaign, divided by the number of times the link was displayed or sent out. 

This KPI is important because it can provide insights into how effectively your marketing campaigns are capturing the interest of your audience. 

How does a high click rate help your business?

A high CTR indicates that 

• your campaigns are effectively drawing in users 
• your messaging and calls to action are resonating with them. 

Moreover, monitoring the CTR can help you identify which types of content and campaigns are a success and which may need tweaks.

6. Bounce Rate

When your audience navigates away from the site after viewing only one page. 

This KPI is important because it can provide insight into how effectively your website is engaging visitors and retaining their interest. A high bounce rate may indicate that your 

• website's design or content is not effectively capturing the interest of visitors, or
• your website is not meeting the needs of its target audience. 

On the other hand, a low bounce rate suggests that your website is engaging and effective at keeping visitors on the site

Bounce rate is not only a website metric but also a key performance indicator for email campaigns. A high bounce rate on email campaigns may indicate that your subject lines or sender name are not attracting attention; your email's design is not visually appealing; or your email's content is not relevant to your audience. 

7. Site Traffic

The amount of visitors to a website over a specific time period is measured by site traffic, commonly referred to as website traffic.  

This KPI is essential to track since it gives information about a website's overall visibility and reach and can show how well your marketing and SEO strategies are working. 

Where a low amount of site traffic may reflect that your marketing efforts are not helping reach your target audience or your content is not appealing to users, a high level of site traffic suggests that your website is successful in attracting and keeping visitors. By tracking the website traffic, you can find areas of success or improvement in your marketing strategy.

Conversion Indicators: Actions that Push Contact in the Customer Journey

8. From Contacts to Prospects

This rate informs you of the number of contacts qualify for becoming your leads. 

You must decide in advance what a qualified prospect for your company is in order for this metric to function. 

9. From Prospects to Clients

The prospects to clients ratio or the quote-to-close ratio measures the actual customers who buy from you. 

You should track this metric every three months; however, it greatly relies on your sales cycle. The longer your sales cycle is, the more measurements you should take over a long period of time.

10. Lead Average Score

The average lead score is a great approach to assess the overall quality of your generated leads if your business has implemented a lead scoring strategy. 

To determine your average lead score, you simply need to average the scores of all of your contacts over a period of time X.

11. Marketing Qualified Leads

The quantity of leads that you identify as having the potential to convert into customers in the future based on specific criteria.

MQLs often have undergone a lead generation form or quiz, lead nurturing, and have been identified as suitable fits for the company's goods or services. 

Measuring Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) is important because:

• It allows you to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts in generating leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers. 
• MQLs are leads that have demonstrated a higher level of engagement and interest in your company's products or services, and are therefore considered more valuable than other leads.
• By tracking MQLs, you can determine which marketing campaigns and tactics are most effective in generating high-quality leads and make data-driven decisions to optimize your lead generation efforts. 
• Measuring MQLs can help you understand how many leads are needed to close a sale, identify the funnel drop offs, and improve the customer journey.

12. Customer Retention Rate

The percentage of clients (active or not) who continue to do business with you over time.

It is a good approach to assess your success in luring in new customers while also keeping your current customer base content enough to avoid switching to a rival company.

Retention and Revenue Indicators: Contact Loyalty

13. Marketing Automation ROI

Your marketing automation's return on investment is calculated like any other ROI: the total amount of campaign earnings less the total amount of money you invested in the campaign. 

Your return on investment is actually the growth in sales over the prior period, for say, a quarter. Therefore, your ROI increases as the volume of sales increases.

14. Repurchase Rate and Repeat Customer Revenue (RCR)

This rate represents the number of customers that made several purchases during a specific time frame and the revenue earned from those customers is RCR.

You may learn a lot about your consumers' loyalty from their repurchase and revenue rate. Tracking repeat customer revenue is crucial to running automated loyalty campaigns. 

15. Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a metric that measures the value of a customer to a company throughout the course of their engagement with that company.

In addition to a customer's current value, CLV also considers the customer's potential future worth.

You must recognize this statistic in order to make wise choices about how to invest in client relationships.

Conclusion

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial to understanding the effectiveness of your marketing automation efforts. Open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and lead generation are all important metrics to measure as they provide insights into how well your campaigns are resonating with your audience. 

By monitoring these KPIs, you can make data-driven decisions and optimize your marketing automation strategies for better results.
Looking for a marketing automation agency that can help you track KPIs for better data-driven decision-making? Experts at Growth Natives are experienced in offering the best marketing automation services and have certainly got your back! Write to us today at info@growthnatives.com.