2024 is the year of engagement metrics.

“Where are the leads?” might be how your new year started. I hope not, but if that’s the case, keep reading.

As we embark on another year of doing more with less, consider this: quality leads that convert to revenue take time to bake, and small wins are often early indicators of bigger opportunities to seize. The problem is that this requires patience, and most growth teams—especially those answering to shareholders and investors— are short on time and budgets and still expected to produce monumental results.

2024 is the year for getting real.

In numerology, 2024 represents an eight-year, a year that represents infinity and continual flow (quite literally, draw the number 8). It also means letting go, relinquishing control over things we have little to no control over, and setting specific, perhaps alarmingly realistic goals. For instance, you might say in your next leadership call, “Attaining 110% revenue growth YoY via an increase in MQLs by 30%, while operating with 50% less budget and a reduced headcount is not realistic or attainable.” This would be a logical, and freeing statement to make.

Rational? Yes. Is it anchored in facts? Yep. Risky? For sure.

But change often requires risk-taking. And that’s the power to step into this year.

Marketing teams are often faced with challenging reporting tasks and a lot of grey areas while quantifying marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and determining what information to share. So, should you report on engagement metrics or action metrics, and what is more important? How your organization views marketing efforts will dictate which of these metrics are often shared and appreciated. Ideally, it’s both and your organization is sophisticated enough to understand the value of each.

In the spirit of going with the flow and controlling only what we can, finding small wins and gleaning insights will be imperative and this can be done with deep analysis of engagement metrics.

Who owns the metrics?

Marketing owns the MQL, therefore they own the supporting metrics and get to determine how to report their metrics—this includes engagement metrics which lead to MQLs and qualified sales opportunities in the pipeline. It is a chicken and egg argument, and thus each facet of the marketing analytics machine must be able to speak to both engagement and action metrics.

With cohesive sales and marketing teams, the marketing-to-sales handoffs are usually clearly defined and hinge on some semblance of funnel attribution and lead flow optimization, operative word here being “cohesive”. This could be as simple as “if, then” behavior logic via marketing automation to CRM queue routing, or as complicated as a persona-based lead scoring by workflow and solution alignment.

Either way, knowing what metrics are defined as the holy grail at your organization—those that 100% impact the pipeline and ultimately lead to captured revenue—will determine where your marketing team’s creative and strategic efforts land. And of late, marketing teams’ creative energies and ideation have been stifled in place of superficial wins and pressures to hit unrealistic revenue numbers. This creates a team that is disengaged and generally apathetic to experimentation, the very pillar of marketing. Engagement metrics analysis and understanding the indicators here are more important than ever.

Engagement metrics show us how to read the room.

We’ve all been in meetings where marketing and sales just aren’t connecting. Whether it’s a whole lot of marketing jargon and not enough quantitative results, or perhaps a misunderstanding of systemic lead flows in general, getting clear on engagement behaviors and quantifying them can help solidify marketing impact and ultimately, more accurate forecasting efforts. This is a win for everyone.

Similar to an employee engagement survey, your audience’s engagement, or “check-ins” with your brand and offerings can point to greater insights and help hedge against challenges later. Engagement metrics show engagement behavior —the signals that your audience is digesting information and content—but these metrics do not directly result in outcomes such as revenue. These are simply indicators to determine how comfortable and willing the audience is to engage with your company. While engagement metrics are important, this is where marketing and sales often miss each other—engagement does not directly equal outcomes. It simply shows what your audience is paying attention to, where they are paying attention, and how they prefer to consume the information.

Engagement metrics inform creative marketing strategy.

At first glance, Marketing teams may want to proceed with caution when reporting engagement to the broader organization, however, it is about telling the story to the masses as to why these metrics matter. Do not forego them—but do not confuse them with MQLs—an often critical error that can quickly detract credibility from the marketing team.

A good example of this at work is when marketing teams present low-value form fills, for instance, an asset download such as a whitepaper or ebook as an MQL. These engagement activities should not be confused with a marketing qualified lead, or someone who is sales-ready. This is where marketing loses credibility with commercial and product partners because offering downloads does not translate to opportunities or captured revenue. In best practice, calling any engagement touchpoint a “lead” is not accurate and can be misleading. While engagement can certainly be taken into account and scored in attribution models, it is not recommended that engagement activities should be substituted for standalone MQLs in reporting. A whitepaper download does not mean the contact is ready for a sales conversation or is at all interested in buying your product. Perhaps they are interested in industry research and are validating their assumptions.

Instead, treat engagement activities like clues and as a detective, use these touchpoints as indicators of buying behavior. By using these indicators, marketing teams can leverage opportunities to refine audience segmentation, build engagement/nurture campaigns, and align offerings more strategically by persona and workflow. This information can also help with competitive analysis, e.g.) battlecard preparation and enablement for sales teams as well as assessing trends and patterns in website traffic.

Balance action metrics with creativity and patience.

The quickest way for marketing and sales teams to get on the same page is to speak to action metrics and lead with these, using engagement metrics as supporting data. Action metrics are clear, tangible, and trackable behaviors that translate to direct business outcomes. More importantly, they are universally understood as activities that drive revenue across the organization. Generally, these are high-value form fills such as demo requests, “contact us” submissions, or free trial signups.

With the advent of self-service models, and depending on the complexity of the solution offered, many prospective buyers are looking for a seamless experience and immediate product use, bypassing sales representatives entirely. Keeping this in mind, action metrics such as free trials can be implemented in most cases across product lines. Where this gets interesting though, is observing the workflows and engagement within the product throughout the free trial. For example, immediate usage drop off could indicate the offering does not meet the intended audience’s needs, or they’re using another product altogether and do not deem yours as a necessity in their day-to-day life. These data points lend well for additional marketing and product partnerships to drive a more favorable UX within the offering, bring the user’s attention to must-have features and capability sets within the product, or indicate further strategic consideration in determining the user journey and audience segmentation.

Parting thoughts: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

All metrics matter and determining what matters to your organization’s goals is key. This is not necessarily done by a committee, but rather by the owner of the data point...(Looking at you, CMO.) Your marketing team is a creative and science-based engine busting at the seams with outstanding ideas that often never get heard due to fear of sounding irrelevant or not in alignment with often overinflated, and unattainable revenue goals.

Partnership, education, and realistic expectation setting will be key in the year ahead, and I challenge you to not shy away from information sharing that can add value to the marketing engine and beyond—via engagement metrics and data. This is your year, we all believe in you.