6 Key Metrics to Measure Success from Your Retargeting Programs

Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Liz Mallett, Marketing & Customer Success at Kwanzoo Inc.

Today many companies are running site and email retargeting programs to capture net new prospects and nurture existing leads. Site retargeting allows you to convert the 95%+ of prospects who leave your site on their first visit without filling out a form. Email retargeting is a newer tactic which allows you to serve display ads across the web to your email list users, engage those users beyond emails, and ultimately accelerate your pipeline.

Retargeting and other display campaigns have traditionally been used strictly for generating net new leads. However, it’s important to be aware that retargeting campaigns provide several other benefits, from helping nurture existing prospects, to increasing site traffic and conversions, growing brand awareness, and supplementing your existing email-based nurture campaigns.

Here are 6 key metrics that we have found to be essential for measuring the success of retargeting programs:

1. Lead Conversions/CPL

What this is: Lead conversions are simply the number of leads that can be directly attributed to your retargeted ads. These may be form conversions on your landing page, or conversions directly inside the ad when you use in-banner lead form ads, allowing you to avoid a landing page redirect.

Why it matters: Capturing net new prospects is clearly a primary goal, helping you expand your pool of known prospects and drive higher sales.

2. Nurture Touches

What this is: Nurture touches from retargeting and display campaigns are engagements from existing contacts with your retargeting display ads, with mid-stage or late-stage offers or content. These help nurture these contacts and move them toward becoming sales-ready leads

Why it matters: Nurture touches are an extremely important metric because they can help you generate higher quality leads, i.e. folks who are actually ready to buy your product. These touches also help you to identify untapped sales-ready leads from your existing contacts.

3. View Through Conversions

What this is: View through conversions are conversions that occur when a prospect views your retargeted or display ad on the web, skips the ad, but then returns to your site and converts on the landing page. They are measured using a view through conversion pixel placed on your landing page(s).

Why it matters: Simply counting direct conversions from your ads without counting view through conversions means you are missing a piece of the puzzle, since you are not reflecting all your leads that came in as a result of your ad campaign.

4. Site Visits

What this is: Site visits are the number of visitors driven to your site by your ad campaign, as measured by clickthroughs from ads & firings of view through site visit pixels (which count the number of people who view your ad and then later go to your site), or alternately by calculating the increase in your site traffic (ie from Google Analytics) prior to and post your retargeting campaign execution.

Why it matters: Retargeting campaigns can significantly increase your site traffic, by bringing in visitors both directly and indirectly through increased brand awareness. For instance, in a recent client campaign, we saw over 22% higher site traffic, with 5% higher view through site visits from a retargeting campaign.

5. Email Opens

What this is: Percentage of email recipients opening your nurture emails, pre-and-post retargeting campaign.

Why it matters: An email retargeting campaign can supplement your existing offers sent to email users through your nurture emails. It can help you to nurture inactive email list segments, which in turn increases user engagement.

6. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

What this is: Marketing qualified leads, or MQLs, are leads who have been qualified by the marketing team as likely to become customers relative to other leads. This often depends on a point value (from lead scoring) or required firmographics, specific prospect activities, and behaviors, as determined by and agreed to between your marketing and sales team.

Why it matters: MQLs are considered to be a more accurate conversion metric than a simple top-of-funnel lead capture, because this metric gets a lot closer to representing the type of lead that turns into a customer. In essence, measuring MQLs generated is a truer representation of value from your retargeting program spend.

The Big Picture

All of these metrics offer important insight into your campaign performance. We recommend using a combination of all of these, as you determine which metrics are best aligned to your company’s goals, at the company level and for your individual offers. If you can optimize your campaigns with an eye toward what matters most for the campaign in question (e.g. nurture touches for mid-funnel offers, vs. top-of-funnel leads or MQLs for net new prospecting), your demand gen efforts will get that extra lift, placing you a big step ahead of your competition.