Data analysis can be hard. Not everyone likes building custom reports or doing pivot tables. What if you could get advanced marketing metrics from an easy-to-use tool like Google Sheets or Excel?
Well, you can with Act-On’s Engagement Insights.
Engagement Insights is an easy-to-use templated approach to measuring marketing performance with tools you’re already using – Google Sheets or Excel.
Our customers love Engagement Insights
Don’t just take our word for it. Our customers love the product, too.
Becky Montchal, director of marketing at Symmetry Software, was able to get Engagement Insights set up inside of 20 minutes, including watching a 7-minute tutorial video.
“Having it set up on a Monday,” Montchal said. “And being able to begin making high-level decisions by Wednesday morning is pretty significant and super helpful with the Engagement Insights product.”
Montchal leads the 3-person marketing team at Symmetry, a payroll tax withholding software company that determines accurate taxation for employee paychecks. Their clients include many brands you’ve heard of: Southwest Airlines, Samsung, Walmart, Lowes, Whole Foods, and more. As Montchal says, several folks reading this are probably impacted by Symmetry’s software and don’t even know it.
For a small team, it’s important the tools they use are equally nimble, fast and easy to use. In addition to Engagement Insights, Montchal said they use Act-On for landing pages, website prospecting, emails, automated programs, and ongoing transactional communications with their customers.
“We’re an extremely metrics-driven team,” Montchal said. “In marketing, there is a ton to do and we need to be really careful on how we’re utilizing our time.”
One of the first things they did with Engagement Insights was to research why inbound leads dropped in the last month of each quarter. They looked at which quarters they sent the most emails, and whether email open rates dropped in the third quarter.
They began asking questions they could then test against, and get answers for using Engagement Insights. Those included: Would they see better performance if they sent fewer emails? Could they better segment their lists and set up multiple automated lead nurture programs that could drive more leads? And how do these trends fit with the overall seasonality of their industry?
Gaining visibility into marketing metrics you care about
With Act-On’s Engagement Insights, powered by Data Studio, marketers are able to quickly gain visibility into what they care about:
- Email & Message: Measure key metrics across all email campaigns including number sent, opened and click thru rates
- Forms: Know exactly which forms are converting visitors into leads and see trends over time
- Landing Pages: Better understand which campaign landing pages are performing best, as well as see the engagement trends over time
- Content Assets: Focus future activities by learning exactly what your audience is engaging with on your website, as well as when they are engaging
Five common questions that advanced marketing metrics help solve
Getting your Engagement Insights report is one thing (I have mine set up to be delivered to me first thing each Monday), but what can all that data do for you? Here are five common questions you can use your insights to help answer.
- Are we sending too many emails?
- What are our top converting forms?
- Are we promoting the right landing pages?
- What is our top performing content?
- How are our email opens and clicks trending over time?
Are we sending too many emails?
Begin by looking at email performance week over week, month over month. You can then begin asking and answering questions such as: Is your open rate spread out evenly over time? Or when sends are higher, does your open rate decline?
Based on those results, you can begin taking action in a couple of ways. You can address email frequency by using subscription management tools and giving your users the opportunity to choose which emails they want to receive and when.
You can also utilize Email Fatigue Rules to set limits in your account to ensure your audience is not getting over-emailed.
What are our top converting forms?
Look at the data to get insights on the performance of your forms. Next begin asking questions such as: Which forms have high views, but low submits? And vice versa, which forms have high submits, but low views?
As you get those answers, you can begin taking some action. For forms that have high views, but low submits, you can look at where you can decrease the number of fields on the form. There is a rule of thumb for forms that for each additional form field after 3, you halve the number of submits you receive. So, if you had 100 submits for a 3-field form, you would only get 50 submits for a 4-field form, and only 25 submits for a 5-field form.
The takeaway? Only ask what you need at that moment. Ultimately, you’ll want more information about your prospects, and for that, you could consider using a progressive form that asks a new question each time a prospect engages. So today you might ask them for their title, and then next time you ask for their zip code or their phone number, and so on, until you get the rich profile data you’re after.
Another option for improving form submits would be testing different words, colors, and button shapes for your call to action.
Are we promoting the right landing pages?
Use Engagement Insights to look at traffic to your landing pages for a set period. Then begin asking questions, such as: Does the amount of traffic align with the number of campaigns being sent out that are driving people to that page? Does it make sense?
Actions that you can test and explore include refining your CTAs, ensuring your CTA is clear and concise and accurately reflects the content on that landing page. You can also A/B test which CTAs drive the most traffic to your landing pages.
What is our top performing content?
Use your data to determine your most downloaded assets during a period. Once you have that, begin asking actionable questions such as: What are the similarities between the best performing content? What are the similarities between the worst performing assets? Are they long form or short form? Are they all eBooks or all gated on-demand webinars?
Additionally, you can look to see if there are any similarities with how your top performing content is being promoted. Are they more effective when promoted in social, or in an email, or PPC?
You can also look to see how your best performing assets can be repurposed. As Larry Kim would say, “How can you make unicorn babies?” Turn that eBook into a webinar, a blog post, a video and so forth.
Getting a sense of what content your audience is engaging with will inform your content strategies moving forward.
How are email opens and clicks trending over time?
How is your engagement trending over time? What are the high-level trends? What are the peaks? What are the engagement valleys? What emails were being sent during those times? Were there other events that may be factoring into these trends (the new Gmail update; or the seasonality of August vacations)?
Then use that data to find problems, as well as opportunities for growth. Using your marketing metrics helps you identify what you are doing well, so you can mimic that, and try to replicate that success in other campaigns.