29 Must-Measure KPIs for Every Stage of the Customer Lifecycle

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Digital Marketing, Sales and Customer Experience Strategies, Tactics and Employees

Quite simply, there's now way to effectively measure your performance without first establishing the right key performance indicators, or KPIs — and some KPIs are more informative (and valuable) than others.

To cut through the noise, I've compiled a list of more than two dozen metrics against which you must analyze the results of your digital marketing, sales and customer support efforts.

Most importantly, I demonstrate how certain KPIs should be prioritized at each stage of the customer lifecycle, enabling you to hone in on what really is and isn't working.

Customer Journey Stage 1: Reach (Social Media + Digital Ads)

1. Reach. Reach is determined by the number of accounts that see your content.?Monitor your average reach and the reach of each campaign and post, as well as what percentage of your content reaches followers versus non-followers.
2. Impressions. Impressions represent the number of times your content is seen. Look out for high impression numbers, as it may suggest a uniquely high level of stickiness to the particular post or campaign.
3. Engagement rate. The engagement rate is the level of interaction with your account, campaign or content, compared to your reach, followers or audience size.?To measure your engagement rate by reach (ERR) for a single post, divide your total number of engagements per post by your reach per post, and multiply by 100.?To measure your average engagement rate across all posts within a campaign (or any series of posts, for that matter), add up all the ERRs from the posts you want to average and divide by the total number of posts.?To measure the rate at which your followers engage with a single post, divide the total number of engagements by your total number of followers and multiply by 100. To measure your average engagement rate amongst your followers, add up the rates for all the posts and divide by the total number of posts.?To measure your engagement rate by impressions for paid content, divide your total engagements on a post by total impressions and multiply by 100.?To measure your average engagement rate by impressions, add up all the rates for all your paid content and divide by the total number of posts.?To measure your daily engagement rate, divide your total engagements in a day by your total number of followers and multiply by 100.?To measure your average daily engagement rate for longer-term analysis, add up all your daily rates and divide by the total number of days.
4. Amplification rate. The amplification rate is the degree to which your followers share your content.?To calculate your amplification rate for a specific post, divide the post’s total number of shares by your total number of followers and multiply by 100.?To obtain your average amplification rate, add up all your amplification rates and divide by the total number of posts.
5. Virality rate. The virality rate is the degree to which your content is shared exponentially, expressed via impressions.?To determine your virality rate for a single post, divide the post’s total number of shares by its impressions and multiply by 100.?As with the previous KPIs, to calculate your average virality rate, add up all your virality rates and divide by the total number of posts.
6. Audience growth rate. Audience growth rate is the speed at which you’re increasing your follower counts.?To calculate your audience growth rate, track your net new followers over a predetermined time period, divide that number by your total audience and multiply by 100. To benchmark your progress, do the same thing for your key competitors.
7. Social share of voice (SSoV). Your SSoV is the percentage of people talking about your brand compared to all other brands within your industry or niche.?To calculate your SSoV on a particular social media platform, add up every mention of your brand, do the same for your competitors, add all sets of mentions to obtain the total, and then divide your brand mentions by the industry total and multiply by 100.?To compare your SSoV to that of a specific competitor, perform the same calculation for their total number of mentions.?To measure your SSoV across social media, add up every mention of your brand on all platforms, do the same for your competitors, and complete the same equation.
8. Social sentiment. Social sentiment refers to the feelings and attitudes behind the conversations that accounts are having about your brand on social media. Customer sentiment analysis refers to the examination of customer sentiment as expressed by customers (or users) across platforms and devices throughout the customer journey; this can include data collected via voice-of-the-customer programs, self-service portals, customer surveys, customer reviews and even social media posts, blog post comments or email replies.?The customer sentiment score refers to the value applied to customer sentiment, expressed numerically in a range typically between 0 and 5, 0 and 10 or 0 and 100.?To measure your social sentiment, or follower sentiment, you could develop your own manual scoring system; or, you could invest in AI.?Social media sentiment analysis tools employ machine learning to generate sentiment scores from algorithms that, for social media, scan follower interactions, tracking phrases, words and behaviors with pre-assigned values, and then integrate measurements to gauge whether customers have positive, negative or neutral views; they also provide actionable insights based on when, where and why sentiments develop.

Customer Journey Stages 2-3: Acquisition + Conversion (Lead Generation + Conversion)

1. Web traffic sources. The website traffic source metric measures which sources are driving visitors to your website, as well as how visitors from each source are behaving (e.g., goal completions or bounce rate). The four primary traffic sources are: direct traffic, from visitors who type your URL directly into their browser to visit your site; referral traffic, from visitors who arrive at your site from a third-party source, such as another website or social media platform; search traffic, from visitors who arrive at your site from searching for your brand or a specific search term or keyword; and campaign traffic, from visitors who arrive at your site as a result of a dedicated campaign, with pre-established tracking parameters. This information can be used to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns and overall brand awareness, engagement, lead generation and keyword strategies.
2. Click-through rate (CTR). Perhaps the most important KPI for analyzing how well your keyword strategy relates to your actual offerings, your CTR measures the percentage of searches that produce clicks to your website. While your keyword rankings determine whether your website or web page will appear on a SERP, your CTR demonstrates how effective your meta title, meta description and other website SEO elements are in producing new site visitors.
3. Returning visitors. Particularly important for demonstrating the value of your content marketing strategy, the returning visitor metric tracks what happens when a user returns to your site multiple times. In addition to tracking total number of return visits, this metric can provide valuable information on pages per session, average session duration and bounce rate, three sub-metrics that can tell you whether your content is delivering what you promise — and what consumers and customers expect.
4. Goal completion rate (GCR). The goal completion rate measures the percentage of website visitors who take a particular action to complete a predefined goal, like signing up for a free trial or downloading a whitepaper. Used often for A/B testing and user-centric website redesigns, your GCR can be used to determine the effectiveness of your lead generation campaigns, as well as your efforts to design for the best UX.
5. New leads generated. When it comes to leads, there are a variety of essential metrics, including total number of leads, leads per source, and cost per lead. New leads generated refers to the amount of new leads added to your CDP or CRM during a given time period or as the result of a specific campaign. This information can be used to measure the effectiveness of the campaign or your overall marketing efforts, and is of utmost importance because leads are what the sales team uses to convert website visitors from interested consumers to paying customers.
6. Lead conversion rate. The lead conversion rate, or website traffic/lead ratio, tells you the percentage of website visitors who convert to leads as a result of your on-site lead generation mechanisms (such as a demo request, a content download or a newsletter signup form). This metric is important because it provides details on the overall quality of your website traffic, as well as which sources are producing the most leads.
7. Lead-to-sale conversion rate. Also known as sales conversion rate and lead-to-customer conversion rate, the lead-to-sales conversion rate refers to the percentage of your leads that convert (e.g., as a result of your email drip campaign or sales conversations) to customers. To determine your sales conversion rate, divide the number of leads converted by the total lead volume and then multiply it by 100%.

Customer Journey Stages 4-5: Retention + Loyalty (Customer Experience)

1. Churn rate and MRR (monthly recurring revenue) churn. The churn rate is the rate at which your customers stop subscribing or shopping with your brand over a specific time period. Low churn rate, obviously, reveals customer satisfaction; high churn rates mean there’s something wrong with the product or service, your marketing of that product or service, or the amount of effort required to subscribe to or purchase that product or service. To calculate your churn rate: set your analysis period (e.g., a month, a quarter, six months, or a year); subtract the number of customers you had at the beginning of the time period from the number you had at the end; and divide this figure by the number of customers you had at the beginning. For instance, if you had 100 customers on day one and 75 on day 30, your churn rate is -25% ((75/100) x 100 = -.25 = -25%). Your MRR churn, meanwhile, tells you the amount of monthly recurring revenue gained or lost as a result of your customer churn.
2. Customer effort score (CES). As it sounds, CES measures the amount of effort your customers have to expend to execute specific actions, like completing an online form, finding a product or resolving a technical issue. To determine your average customer effort score, you’ll again need to create a survey; this time it should ask customers to rate the level of effort required to complete an activity or series of activities. The results will tell you whether you really designed for UX, and what you should change to improve the user experience.
3. Customer sentiment. While many organizations strive to ascertain customer sentiment using traditional CX KPIs, customer sentiment encompasses more than a customer’s level of satisfaction or likelihood of promoting the brand; customer sentiment is complicated, qualitative and ephemeral — measuring how the customer feels about you. Customer sentiment analysis refers to the examination of customer sentiment as expressed by customers (or users) across platforms and devices throughout the customer journey; this can include data collected via voice-of-the-customer programs, self-service portals, customer surveys, customer reviews and even social media posts, blog post comments or email replies. Customer sentiment score refers to the value applied to customer sentiment, expressed numerically in a range typically between 0 and 5, 0 and 10 or 0 and 100. To measure customer sentiment at your company, you could develop your own manual scoring system; or, you could invest in AI.?These AI-powered tools employ machine learning to generate sentiment scores from algorithms that scan customer interactions, tracking phrases, words and behaviors with pre-assigned values, and then integrating measurements to gauge whether customers have positive, negative or neutral views; they also provide actionable insights based on when, where and why customer sentiments develop.
4. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT). The CSAT demonstrates each customer’s level of satisfaction; analyzed in totality, your customer satisfaction scores can tell you whether you’re truly offering customer-centric experiences — and, if not, what needs to be changed. Usually measured on a five-point scale, from very dissatisfied to very satisfied, you can use the CSAT to gather feedback during any stage of the customer lifecycle. All you have to do is establish criteria for your scoring, establish the metric that equates to a positive score, and include customer survey forms in your digital marketing and CX communications. Then, to determine your organization-level percentage score, multiply your pre-established positive score by 100. For instance, if you have 50 positive scores from a total of 100, your CSAT is 50% ((50/100) x 100 = 50%).
5. Customer health score. The customer health score is used to determine whether or not a customer will remain loyal over time. In contrast to most other customer experience metrics, the customer health score requires strategic legwork and is developed from a collection of the other CX KPIs most important to your unique business. Among the most commonly included metrics are:?product/service usage period; product type (free/paid, license level, etc.); number of interactions with the support team; money spent with your brand; social media posts about your brand; referrals to your brand; and willingness to answer customer experience surveys. Based on the metrics that make the most sense for you, develop a grading system for your customers; then, for easier segmentation and personalization, divide them into four categories: high-value; healthy; unhealthy; and at-risk.
6. Net promoter score (NPS). Often coupled with CSAT, NPS measures the likelihood a customer will recommend you to others — and, ideally, become an influencer for your brand. To determine your NPS, develop a survey with a single question or multiple questions geared toward promoting and sharing, on a scale from 0 to 10, from “not likely at all” to “very likely.” Customers who provide (average) scores between 0 and 6 are considered detractors; passive customers typically score between 7 and 8; and your promoters will give you a 9 or 10. Then, to calculate your NPS, simply subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. And for more detailed, nuanced, qualitative feedback, ask an open-ended question, as well. All of this information can be automatically added to your customer profiles in your CDP or DXP.
7. Customer lifetime value (CLV). The CLV is a forecasting of the net profit an organization can expect to earn from a customer over the entire period of their relationship. When measured and ranked by customer, the CLV can help you segment — and better personalize the experiences for — your highest-value customers. When combined and contrasted with total expenditures, you can determine the overall effectiveness of your digital marketing, sales and CX efforts. To determine your average CLV: calculate your average purchase value; multiply your average purchase value by how often a purchase is made; and then multiply this figure by your average customer lifespan. For example, if your average purchase is $100, made twice a year for 3 years, your CLV is $600 ($100 x 3 x 2 = $600). To use this measurement to improve your marketing to high-value customers, create a list of the customers with a CLV exceeding your average.

Bonus (Expenses + Revenue)

1. Cost per click (CPC). Your CPC is the amount you pay per click on a paid ad.?To calculate CPC, divide the total cost by the total number of clicks and multiply by 100.
2. Cost per lead. As with anything in business, marketing needs to be measured in terms of ROI; when measured alongside cost per acquisition (or customer acquisition cost), customer lifetime value and return on marketing investment, the cost per lead metric can provide valuable information on the cost-effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
3. Cost per acquisition. Like the cost per lead metric, which indicates how much you spend to generate a new lead, cost per acquisition, or customer acquisition cost, measures the cost of converting that lead into a customer.
4. Customer retention cost. Investing in new customers is between 500% and 2500% more expensive than retaining existing ones. Of course, retaining customers costs money too. And to ensure your marketing and CX strategies are producing positive ROI, you need to measure the cost of your customer retention efforts. To calculate your customer retention cost, or CRC, add all of the expenses incurred in keeping (and obtaining!) customers and divide that figure by the number of customers in your database. If your CRC is higher than your MRR, or monthly recurring revenue, it’s time to make some changes.
5. Earned growth rate. NPS was invented by Fred Reichheld, who introduced “the one number you need to grow” in Harvard Business Review in 2003. “Since then, NPS has spread rapidly around the world” and is now used by two thirds of the Fortune 1000. Unfortunately, this has proved problematic, with “self-reported scores and misinterpretations of the NPS framework… sow[ing] confusion and diminish[ing] its credibility.” So, Reichheld and team developed a new “complementary metric that drew on accounting results, not on surveys," to quantify actual customer value. Earned growth rate, the researchers realized, would be “far more resistant to gaming, coaching, pleading, and the response biases that plague the results of non-anonymized surveys.” It would also “reinforce the effectiveness” of the original KPI, NPS, by providing “clear, data-driven” connections across and among customer success, repeat and expanded purchases, word-of-mouth recommendations, positive company culture and business results. Earned growth comprises two elements: NRR, or net revenue retention; and ENC, or earned new customers. Earned growth rate measures revenue growth generated by returning customers and their referrals, while the earned growth ratio measures the ratio of earned growth to total growth. To determine your earned growth rate, begin by calculating your NRR as follows: organize your revenue by customer; tally current year revenues from existing customers (who were also customers the year before); divide this amount by the previous year’s total revenues; and express this figure as a percentage. Next, to “ascertain why new customers have come on board,” isolate the percentage of new customers earned through referrals (your ENC) from new customers gained via other methods. (Since “few firms” could quantify their ENC, Reichheld and team “pioneered a solution,” simply by adding a “relatively painless step” to the customer onboarding process: asking them the “primary reason” they gave you their business.) Finally, sort your customers into two categories, “earned” (e.g., from a referral) and “bought” (e.g., a Super Bowl ad or sponsored social media post); use a set of expected customer responses, along with an open-ended “other” response, to gather additional information to help you fine-tune the categories and options over time; and determine your earned growth rate by adding your NRR and ENC together?and then subtracting 100%. (Of course, if you want to compare your results to those of your competitors, you’ll need them to follow the same earned growth rate framework.)
6. Return on marketing investment. As it sounds, your return on investment from marketing is a measure of how much revenue you’ve generated from a specific campaign — during a specific time period, or overall. To determine your marketing ROI, subtract your marketing costs by your sales growth, multiply by 100, and divide by your marketing investment.
7. Monthly recurring revenue and expansion MRR. Also a sales metric and ideal for SaaS and subscription-based businesses, your MRR tells you how much your customers are spending with you each and every month. Expansion MRR identifies how much your customers are spending outside of recurring subscriptions or payments. To measure your total monthly recurring revenue, multiply your number of monthly customers by their average monthly spend; for expansion MRR, add all additional revenue and multiply that figure by your total number of customers.

Further Reading

• Your Guide to Simplifying the Digital Experience >>>
• Optimizing Customer Journeys with the Email Drip Campaign >>>

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