How to analyse and measure your digital marketing plans?

The key to knowing whether your digital marketing plans are successful or not, lies in the means to analyse and measure their social impact. Digital marketing metrics are really useful for finding out if you are working well in Marketing, if you are hitting your targets or if you are making the right decisions to reach your goals.

There are a number of metrics, each one designed to measure a specific area of a digital marketing plan. Choosing the correct metrics is a big part of what makes a campaign successful, since the information that they gather will provide you with will help you decide what to do, how to evolved, what changes to introduce and what aspects of the company need improving in order to obtain good results or improve on the results already achieved.

How to analyse and measure your digital marketing plans.

The process of analysing and measuring digital marketing plans is done through a series of steps that are important to follow correctly in order to get the right results. The process is divided into 3 stages:

1.- Set and detect objectives

First of all, it is important to start a marketing plan with some goals or objectives in mind. Without setting these objectives or targets it can be difficult to work, as you don’t exactly know where the end of the road is, what you expect to achieve or how long it should take to get there.

Setting goals must be done before launching a campaign, establishing the areas to work on, the customers to be reached or the sales to be achieved. The objectives that you set will let you know if you are doing your job well, if all the expectations have been met and also if the plan has been done properly.

The objectives can be, the target audience, the sales you want to achieve, the number of opens that an Email marketing campaign should get, etc. The objectives should always be specific, reasonable, and measurable over time.

Although the whole process may seem a bit complicated, you have to set your targets based on the metrics you are going to use and the type of metrics your company´s disposal. You shouldn’t set a target that is not possible to measure. Targets must be realistic and measurable.

Once the plan has been launched it is time to measure, you should firstly highlight and prioritise the most important targets that have to be achieved. After that you should set secondary targets and then finally the ones are not as important, mainly because they won´t be achieved in the short term or they don´t affect this plan.

2.- Measuring the results

In order to measure the results well it is important to first identify and measure those metrics relating to the main objectives set out by the company.

Once you know what metrics to use, its time to start measuring and evaluating the campaign. It is not necessary to have sophisticated ways of measuring but you really should have metrics and systems that can measure the basics and fundamentals. They must be easy to program, interpret and use.

If you want to know some of the most important metrics depending on the marketing plan that you have set up, there is the Periodic Table of B2B digital marketing metrics. In this table you will find all of the important aspects related to digital marketing measurement. What are the differences between Social Networks, Web marketing, SEO, SEM and Email marketing? This table has all the answers.

The main objective of the periodic table is to understand the regular behaviour of the most frequently used metrics in digital marketing. This original graph helps companies to act in the right way, know the industry standards and if their measurements are going in the right direction.

3.- Analysis of results and implementing a new plan

Once you have the results it is important to do a detailed and thorough analysis of the data. The information that has been compiled will give you the clues about what is happening in the company, the number of sales achieved, how well the digital marketing messages have worked, how the customer interacts with the company and if the investment provided is consistent with the results obtained.

It is very important the companies have an analysis and metrics evaluation program. The company who understands the value of these aspects will succeed, as they will be able to prioritize their analysis and identify whether the results are good or bad. This way they will be quicker in implementing new plans to improve their results.

The analysis of the results must be followed up with the implementing new measures that help to improve on the results that were achieved. In the event that the results were more than satisfactory, it would be a good idea to adjust the objectives in order to reach higher goals in the future.

Marketing metrics that you should keep in mind

It is important to remember the main metrics that you can work with, those that will help you promote the best image of your company, get a better position for your brand and be able to account for the successes and failures of your digital marketing plan. Here are some metrics that you should keep in mind:

Open Rate

It is an essential metric in email marketing. The Open Rate counts the number of messages that have actually been opened. It is not a metric that can measure the level of interest the reader has relating to the content of the message, but does provide an overall image of the number of opened messages.

A potential margin for error must be included in this rate, as there is always the possibility that there will be clients who will open the message by mistake. Despite it being an extremely interesting metric, it is important not to rely in it too heavily, as is sometimes done, it is simply a good indicator but not a definitive one.

Conversion Rate

The Conversion Rate is the number of customers who have completed an expected action and converted into leads.

This rate measures from the moment a customer starts an action until it is completed. It is important to know the results of this metric, as the conversion is what justifies the investment in digital marketing.

Click Rate

This metric is essential and can be used in any type of digital marketing action. The Click Rate measures in a similar way to that of the Open Rate, with the total number of successes or non-actions of the customers counted.

The Click Rate is an interesting metric to combine with heat maps, as it offers an overview of the points where customers have clicked the most, the sections that they found the most interesting, and the path that they took while navigating. Heat maps will give you enough information to modify and test a new website design. It is ideal and easy way to help in the conception, design and optimisation of the website.

ROI – Return of investment

More important than knowing the places of the website where the customer clicks, is to know to what extent your digital campaign is driving sales and revenue. The ROI, or Return Of Investment is the data that gives you all the information on whether the company´s investment is returning a profit or loss.

Knowing how to calculate and work out ROI will be crucial when calculating the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns that have been launched.

In order to effectively measure you marketing plans you first have to launch your marketing plans. If you want to do real marketing, then MDirector is the solution, the most complete Email Marketing and Marketing Automation platform there is, combining email marketing, SMS marketing, CRM retargeting and Landing page optimization.