Website, social media and email marketing are the three pillars of digital campaigning. The data analytics associated with each of these platforms offers a wealth of insight into your audiences and underpins a successful communications campaign.
Tracking who reads your digital content, for how long and when, gives you (and your client) a deeper understanding of how well your content is being received, and where content can be tailored specifically for different audiences.
The aim should be to efficiently gather data that provides a potent overview of the efficacy of PR and marketing efforts, measured over time. By using an evidence-based methodology, clients can save money, time and effort by arming themselves with powerful data in order to make informed decisions.
While the amount of data your analytics software can track may seem daunting at first, it’s easy once you learn how to track some basic numbers. Here we look at a few key terms used in website, social media and email marketing analytics.
What should we track and why?
Website
USERS – represents the number of visitors to your website. Users are separated into two subcategories which are equally useful, depending on your objectives.
- Users, or Visitors, will tell you the total number of visits to your site, including repeat or multiple return visits.
- New Users, or Unique Visitors, represent the number of individual visitors to your website. Someone who visits your site one or more times over a given period will be counted as one user.
These numbers provide two important ways to measure visitor numbers to your website. The Users metric is useful if, for example, you are interested in finding the total number of times an ad campaign running on your website may have been viewed (see also Impressions). New Users are useful for gauging the actual size of the audience you are reaching.
SESSIONS – represents the number of times a user engages with your website within a given timeframe, including repeat visits by the same user. The user activity within a session may range from a single Pageview to multiple Pageviews, events, interactions, or transactions. These numbers provide insight into user activity as well as behaviour by showing the steps a user takes within a session and the decisions they make in their journey. This data can inform marketers, for example, on whether the content of a campaign is achieving its objectives.
DURATION – the ‘Avg. Session Duration’ metric refers to the average length of time users spend on your website. The ‘Avg. Time on Page’ metric will tell you how long users spend on a specific webpage or set of pages. Attention is currency, and by knowing how much time users invest in content, marketers can fine-tune their webpages to better meet their business objectives.
PAGEVIEWS – represents the total number of pages viewed on your website. Repeated views of a single page are counted. It’s important to know if a high number of page views is due to the quality and value of the content on your site, OR whether visitors are unable to find what they’re looking for, OR to know which pages on your website don’t perform well.
TRAFFIC SOURCES – analytics software helps you break down your traffic sources into useful categories. Examples include:
- Organic Search: search engine traffic
- Referral: backlinks from other sites
- Direct: domain being typed directly into a browser
- Social: social media traffic
Each of these sources will provide you with information about where your traffic is coming from so marketers can target those sources more specifically with digital marketing.
BOUNCE RATE – describes what happens when a visitor reaches your website and immediately leaves. This usually means they didn’t find what they were looking for, they reached your site by accident, OR they found exactly what they needed and left to go there (in the case of a directory listing). Bounce rates apply not only site-wide but also at page level. Marketers are able to, for example, identify poorly performing pages and make adjustments.
Lost visitors equal lost opportunities. Understanding why is important so that existing issues that may be turning visitors away can be quickly identified and fixed. Acceptable bounce rates vary depending on a site’s purpose. A directory listing, for example, would declare success with a very high bounce rate because it means people are finding what they want immediately.
CONVERSION RATE – describes the percentage rate of visitors who achieved a goal on your website. Some examples of goals can include: completing a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, filling out a contact form, registering for an event or viewing a certain page on your website.
A low conversion rate might mean it’s possible that you’re either attracting the wrong kind of visitors, OR the content on your site is ineffective. Monitoring conversion rates can also tell you if something is wrong with your website, e.g., if your conversion rate suddenly drops, this may be caused by an issue with a shopping cart or sign-up form.
Social media
Different social media platforms may use different terminology but the principles are basically the same. Analytics can quickly become complex especially with the many products using different approaches to interpreting metrics. Below is a simple overview of a few terms that are used in the channels we find ourselves using most – LinkedIn and Twitter.
The demographic data LinkedIn provides on users who view your profile, posts or pages can used by marketers to better target their audience. However, the analytics available for your personal profile page are not nearly as powerful as those available for a company page. This would seem an odd decision by LinkedIn given its personal pages are arguably where most activity, connection and engagement take place. A range of powerful analytics tools for LinkedIn Pages can be found under the Analytics menu.
Personal Pages
PROFILE VIEWS – the number of people who have viewed your profile in the past 90 days. A reliable indicator of interest in your LinkedIn identity. Also shows as a percentage the rise or fall in views over past week. (Demographic breakdown available only to Premium users.)
POST VIEWS – the number of times your most recent post was visible to your audience. Does not necessarily indicate meaningful engagement with your content. Follow link beneath post for a breakdown of users viewing your posts.
SEARCH APPEARANCE – the number of times your profile appeared in search results over the past week. Useful for understanding the demographic of LinkedIn users interested in your personal profile as well as the keywords they may have used in their search.
Company Pages
UNIQUE VISITORS – represents the number of individual members who have visited your page over the past 30 days. As with Profile Views, a reliable indicator of interest in your product or services with additional visitor demographics data.
PAGE VIEWS – represents the total number of times your LinkedIn page was viewed. This metric can help build your LinkedIn network and is a more reliable number when compared with post views or impressions as it represents actual views of your page.
POST IMPRESSIONS – The total number of times your post was visible to your audience over the past 30 days. Useful in gauging post reach but, as with Post Views, does not necessarily indicate meaningful engagement with your content.
CLICKS, LIKES, MENTIONS and RETWEETS are all useful indicators of engagement. These metrics help you gauge how your Tweets are being interacted with by your audience.
PROFILE VISITS – represents the number of users who have visited your page over the past 30 days. This metric is also useful when compared with LinkedIn Profile Visits.
TWEET IMPRESSIONS – these numbers are available within a summary date-range or for individual Tweets. Like ad impressions or views, this metric represents the total number of times a Tweet came into view in your users’ feed over a period of time, either as a 28-day summary of all Tweets or a total number for an individual Tweet.
Email marketing
As with social channels, different email marketing packages may have their own terms to express their analytics but the fundamentals are mostly the same. Here are a few key terms to know with the email marketing tool we find ourselves using most – Campaign Monitor.
OPEN RATE – expressed as a percentage, indicates the total number of recipients who viewed your email in their inbox. Metrics include total number of opens, the recipient, what was opened and the number of opens are also given.
CLICK RATE – expressed as a percentage, indicates the number of recipients who clicked a link in the campaign email. Metrics include total number of clicks, the recipient, what was clicked and the number of clicks are also given.
UNSUBSCRIBE RATE – this number, expressed as a percentage, is useful for reporting. The actual number of unsubscribes and the recipient are both also given and are especially valuable pieces of data to monitor when maintaining lists and list segments. Helps marketers better target content to the right audience.
BOUNCE RATE – expressed as a percentage, the bounce rate is useful for reporting. Gives vital data such as hard and soft bounces which can let the marketer know whether the email had network or other technical issues being delivered to your recipient or the recipient’s email address or domain is no longer active.
Chris Hocking Strategies
This is an overview of the metrics we use to better understand the effectiveness of our campaigns. We view the combination of web, social and email platforms as the pillars of our digital campaign approach. Combined with traditional strategies, this triangulated methodology gives our clients an advantage over their competitors who are not approaching their campaigning in a strategic manner.
We offer effective solutions to help clients measure and track digital efforts in order to make evidence-based decisions. Drop us a line via mobile on 0418 603 694, email or our contact page.