In the past decade, continuing advances in technology have ensured that the ‘science’ of marketing has evolved tremendously. With the advent of digital channels and social media, marketing today is measured more precisely than ever before.

So, while an outsider may view digital marketing activities as a hit-or-miss phenomenon, agencies know that this is clearly not the case and that marketing success is quite measurable. The most important metric for digital marketing agencies while measuring the success of a campaign are KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators.

Digital Marketing KPIs are quantifiable values that help marketers track and evaluate success across all channels. KPIs can help digital marketers in making the right decisions by revealing where and when they should be investing more, and consequently, increasing a campaign’s return on investment. In addition, they are also useful in helping clearly define the goals and expectations of a campaign.

With so much campaign data available, though, it is also easy to miss the wood for the trees. Focussing on the wrong metric can be completely counterproductive.

Without much further ado, here are some of the most important KPIs that every digital marketing agency needs to pay attention to.

Average Cost per Lead

One of the primary objectives of any marketing campaign is to generate leads. This metric shows how much it costs a campaign to acquire a new lead. The KPI can help an agency evaluate whether marketing activities with an objective to attract new leads are worth the time, effort and money they are spending on it.

Cost per Conversion

Once you have a lead, the next step is to convert them to a paying customer. This marketing metric measures the cost of acquiring a lead that converts to a paying customer. While a campaign can potentially generate hundreds or even thousands of leads for you, the conversion rate is usually much, much lower – in low single digit percentages.

Lifetime Customer Value

An important tenet of marketing is that retaining a customer is even more important than acquiring one. It is important for most business, and especially for a subscription-based one, for customers to be loyal and add more value than just a single purchase. This metric helps an agency measure the lifetime value a customer brings in, and measuring it is the first step to figuring out how to increase it.

Social Media Engagement

The importance of social media for today’s businesses cannot be overstated, and of all the social media metrics, this is perhaps the most important one. This KPI measures the number of people who engage with a social media campaign, whether it is by liking, sharing, or commenting on it.

Email Click-Through Rate

Email marketing is an important aspect when it comes to a digital marketing campaign. The Email Click-through rate calculates the success of your email marketing campaigns by measuring the clicks generated through it. So, for instance, if your marketing email gets 500 clicks from 10,000 emails sent, your click-through rate is 5 per cent.

Inbound Link Building

This is a crucial metric for measuring a site’s search engine optimization. The KPI measures the number of quality links from pages with high rank that lead back to your website. A high measure on this metric is guaranteed to lead to an increase in a site’s Google search ranking.