The only 3 marketing analytics numbers you need to worry about
When it comes to marketing analytics, most online business owners fall into two camps:
- They can recite their conversions, bounce rates, and ROI on marketing spend by heart
- Or they run as far away from numbers as possible and don’t track any of it
If you’re in the second group, that’s a huge mistake. To grow your business, you must be strategic. And that’s not possible without a basic understanding of marketing analytics.
The good news is, you don’t need to be a math whiz or memorize a laundry list of KPIs (that’s “key performance indicators,” as marketing wonks like to call them).
At IWT, we’ve helped thousands of everyday folks build successful businesses from scratch by focusing on 3 important marketing analytics numbers.
They are:
- Monthly traffic: The number of unique visits your website gets in a month
- Email opt-in rate: The percentage of visitors who join your email list
- List conversion rate: The percentage of emails you send that actually result in a sale of your product or service
Let’s walk through an example of everything in action.
Pretend your website gets 1,000 visitors per month. And readers opt in at an average rate of 10% (for simplicity, let’s assume no growth and no unsubscribes). That means that after 1 year, you will have 1,200 people on your email list (1,000 x 12 x 10%):
Let’s also pretend that when you look at the data in your shopping cart software, you find out that a product you sell converts at 1% to your list. That means if you send an email, you can roughly expect 12 sales (1,200 x 1%).
If you have a $50 product, you make $600 with a single email (1,200 x 1% x $50 = $600). Send another, and you can expect to pocket $1,200. Not bad!
Don’t get hung up on exact numbers or benchmarks for now. What I just showed you was a hypothetical example. Figures will be different for every industry.
But understanding these marketing analytics is a powerful thing. And the beauty of this is that once you start paying attention to your marketing analytics, you can make improvements.
What a dip in traffic can mean for your business (and how to fix it)
Continuing with the above example, let’s say you see your monthly traffic take a nosedive. You’re now getting 800 visitors a month. According to your marketing analytics, at end of the year you’ll end up with:
- 9,600 total site visitors
- An email list with 960 subscribers (based on a 10% opt-in rate)
- Only 10 of which will become buyers (1% list conversion rate)
If you’re selling a $50 product, you’re only making $500 per email now.
But since you have the analytics in front of you, it’s easy to see where you’re struggling and fix it. In this case, all you need to do is double down on traffic to get things back up to speed.
To help you do that, we have a video on the 3 best ways to get traffic to your website.
Want to build a business that enables you to live YOUR Rich Life? Get my FREE guide on finding your first profitable idea.
3 ways to fix your email opt-in rate
If your traffic and list conversion rate are okay, but your opt-in rate tanks, it’ll be a huge hit to your business.
Here’s what I mean:
- Your site still attracts 12,000 visitors a year
- 600 people will join your email list (if your opt-in rate drops to 5%)
- And now you’re only making 6 sales
All of a sudden, you are in a situation where the value of sending one email is $300.
Luckily, the fix is easy.
It all starts with asking one simple question: Why should anyone sign up for your email list?
If you don’t have a good answer, that’s a huge problem.
People are flooded with emails from retailers, friends, family, social networks they haven’t signed into for months, and much more. They don’t need — or want — another email newsletter.
To make people want to give you their email address, you have to cut through all the noise and clutter.
Here are some examples of each:
Personal trainer and world-record deadlift holder Jordan Syatt knows his audience not only wants to lift more weight, they also want to do it safely. So he created an entire guide around it called The Deadlift Bible.
Evan Marc Katz is a dating coach for women. He knows that conventional dating advice revolves around finding chemistry, but he realized this also creates problems for women looking to find “The One.” So he created a video on this to get women to opt in for his email list.
Then there’s Matt and Regan, who teach people how to make plant-based meals. They realized a burning pain for their audience was spending too much time in the kitchen to prepare healthy recipes.
Their email course around their “Chipotle Method” on preparing healthy meals in a time crunch solves this problem.
Once you have a guide that solves your audience’s problem, just write a great headline so it becomes a no-brainer for people to join your email list. Your opt-in rate will soar. But only if you spotted the issues in your marketing analytics first.
(Related: How I increased my email signups 130% without using a popup.)
List conversion rate: How to get people to take out their credit cards
Finally, if your marketing analytics reveal that your traffic and opt-in rates are okay, any problems are most likely with your list conversion rate.
Continuing with the same example:
- Your site still attracts 12,000 visitors a year
- 1,200 people will join your email list (10% opt-in rate)
- Only 6 people buy (0.5% list conversion rate)
It’s the same situation as above: You’re only making $300 per email (if you’re selling a $50 product).
Here you’ll want to check your email funnel for the 3 signs that you might be losing sales.
Once that is squared away, make sure you have the 3 keys to six-figure sales pages nailed down.
When it comes to marketing analytics, there’s no shortage of things you can track. You can figure out which blog posts are getting the most traffic and which ones get the most action on social media. But at the end of the day, your job as a business owner is to make sure you’re profitable.
That’s what these 3 metrics can do for you.
Like this blog post? Learn how to create amazing content like this that attracts and engages your target buyers with our FREE Ultimate Guide To Remarkable Content.
