The use of data in online sales is nothing new. E-commerce brands have been using data to drive sales, reach new audiences and increase sales for the better part of the last two decades. But customer and audience data has become deeper, broader and even more useful.
By 2022, all e-commerce brands should be using key metrics to identify advertising, drive sales and improve fulfillment.
Making the connection: advertising metrics
There are dozens of different advertising metrics that you can track across many different channels and platforms. Some for search, some for social networks and some for paid advertising.
According to a Klipfolio guide, setting up measurable marketing metrics can help you track digital marketing performance on SEO, social media growth and more: “With such a wide variety of channels being used, it’s important for marketing teams to actively track progress and performance. in real time with the right marketing metrics.”
So what are the “right” marketing metrics? These are the five e-commerce brands we recommend starting with.
- Marketing attribution: identify where your traffic is coming from: organic search traffic or a paid advertisement? Do people browse from a mobile or desktop device?
- Click-through rate: you’re sending your message, but is it landing? See how often people click to receive emails, social campaigns, CCPs and more.
- Returning visitors: Are you building a following or just getting people to stop by? Returning visitors are a good indication that your content marketing is working; you’ll just need to make some adjustments to drive real conversion.
- Abandonment funnel: Highlight where you can optimize based on where people abandon their journey. Was it in the second drip email? Once they reached the landing page?
Selling your brand: showcase metrics
Marketing and sales are more connected than ever, so some of these sales metrics overlap with advertising metrics. Track these KPIs to see how well your store is doing once people land there.
- Bounce rate: How many people leave your site after just one page? If this number is high, you should rethink the design and content of your website to encourage visitors to stay.
- Customer lifetime value: Think of this as customer retention. Include: segmented income. The higher your purchase frequency and the larger your customer base, the more critical your LTV will be for your company to consider in future decisions.
- Page views: are you reaching the people you want to reach? Looking at page views in relation to your other marketing metrics will give you a snapshot of effectiveness.
- Cart abandonment: You reached out to your audience, brought them to your site, showed them your products, encouraged them to “add to cart,” only to have them abandon before checkout. What went wrong? E-commerce brands often make the checkout process too difficult or add surprise shipping fees, causing customers to jump ship. If your cart abandonment rate is high, it’s time to reevaluate your checkout process and account creation.
Bringing it home: shipping metrics
Context: Your relationship with customers does not end once you make a sale. How can you improve their experience during the last mile?
- Inventory accuracy: A “sold out” message is a good way to keep customers from ever coming back to your store. Make sure that the stock you list online reflects your actual inventory.
- On-time delivery: Do you want good customer reviews? Fast and reliable delivery is at the top of everyone’s lists these days, so be sure to keep this number as high as possible.
- Rate of Return: This covers all your bases, depending on the reason for the return. If the rate is high, investigate where these returns are coming from and how you can improve satisfaction from the start.
Multichannel: uniting marketing, showcasing and fulfillment
With multichannel e-commerce, you can’t separate your marketing efforts from your sales or inventory management from your sales. Your marketing efficiency will affect the size of your sale, the size of your sale will affect your shipping costs, your shipping costs will affect your profitability, your profitability will affect your advertising spend… you get the idea, right?
They are all interconnected, and you should treat them as such.
To keep things on track in multichannel e-commerce, you’ll need two things: a short list of critical KPIs for your e-commerce brand and a way to visualize how these metrics interact, ultimately affecting your bottom line. You can use the metrics identified above as a starting point and narrow them down based on what is most important to your brand.
Changing your mindset to think of marketing, sales and fulfillment as part of the same entity is one thing. But actually bringing them under one roof is another.
Having separate platforms does not mean that your metrics must remain in a silo. You can use a profit analysis dashboard, for example, to gather the most relevant metrics for advertising, sales and fulfillment. Monitoring your earnings and e-commerce marketing performance shouldn’t be difficult, and a single dashboard for all your metrics makes it easier. If you want to outsource this service, contact Several.
