10 KPI’s all affiliate marketers should be measuring
In a time when there is no shortage of data to measure how a website could improve in effectiveness, publishers should have the mind set of marketers, which means continuously finding ways of improving their ROI. This is only possible if you are measuring the right metrics. While measuring your impressions, clicks, social media shares and conversion rates is important, you should also be measuring how these metrics relate to one another in order to get a holistic picture and understand the value of each touch point. Here are 10 KPI’s every affiliate marketer should be measuring: Total visits – Measuring your total number of visits will give you a “big picture” idea of how well your campaign is driving traffic. If you notice your numbers drop from one month to the next, you’ll know to investigate one of your marketing channels to figure out why. New sessions – A metric found in Google, it’s a good one to understand because it tells you whether your site is sticky enough to encourage repeat customers as well as how effective your outreach efforts are. Channel-specific traffic – Found in Google’s ‘Acquisition’ section this metric will segment your traffic based on their point of origin i.e. direct, referrals, organic or social. Bounce rate – Generally, you want the bounce rate to be as low as possible because the more time someone spends on your site, the more likely they are to convert and perform meaningful action. Total conversions – Total conversions is one of the most important metrics for measuring the profitability of your overall marketing efforts. Low conversion numbers could be the result of bad design, poor offerings, or otherwise disinterested visitors. Lead to close ratio – This metric is easy to define: simply divide your total number of sales by your total number of leads, and you’ll get a ratio that defines your sales success independent of your marketing efforts. Customer retention rate – Most conventional businesses can measure this by calculating what % of customers return to their business to buy again. A low retention metric can be a symptom of a product or service that isn’t sticky, or an indication of lacking outreach programs. Customer value – Customer value is a difficult metric to calculate. To find your average customer value, you have to take into account all sales the average customer will initiate over the course of your relationship. Knowing your customer retention rate will help here. Cost per lead (CPL) – To calculate your cost per lead, take a look at the average monthly cost of your chosen campaigns and compare it to the total number of leads you generated with that specific channel over the same period. Projected ROI – The single most important factor for any individual marketing campaign because it demonstrates its profitability. The formula is simple: compare your cost-per-lead against your lead-to-close ratio, and compare that figure against your average customer value. For example, if you pay R200 per lead and close 50% of your leads, you’ll pay R400 for each successful new customer. If your average customer value is more than R400 in this example, you’ve generated a profit and your marketing campaign can be considered a success. AdMarula’s tracking platform already provides several of these metrics where publishers on the performance and transaction reports are able to measure their conversion ratios whether it is from click to lead or lead to sale and so on. These combined with your own web analytics can give you the insight necessary to maximise your content and your marketing efforts and ultimately your and the client’s ROI. Happy selling! Mawande Barnes – Affiliate Manager
