Special Report: Marketing Metrics Every Membership Site Owner Needs to Know
by Jennifer Davey
If you’re a small business owner or a self-employed professional, your time and resources are VERY valuable. To be successful and have a work-life balance, you need to make the best use of both. The only way to do this is by implementing metrics that will help you measure your success.
Below is a list of the key metrics I suggest my clients track. This information can usually be pulled together easily and quickly and should be looked at weekly. This is a great task for your virtual assistant if you have one.
Metrics for Your Website:
- Metric – Keywords people are using to find your website.
- Why you need this information – It lets you know if the articles/blog posts you are writing and the keywords you are targeting are on track, and it allows you to watch for hot trends.
- Metric -Your current website traffic and your current traffic in relation to last week and last month.
- Why you need this information – It shows how many unique visitors you have and how many new eyeballs (people) you’ve driven to your site. Overall, are your marketing tactics driving more traffic each month?
- Metric – How many repeat visitors you have.
- Why you need this information – If you have a lot of repeat visitors, this means you have sticky and relevant content. If you don’t have a lot of repeat visitors, you probably need to improve the quality of your content.
- Metric – The percentage of visitors who sign up for your newsletter or ezine.
- Why you need this information – This lets you know if your offer is compelling or needs some tweaking. It also lets you play with your web site’s layout.
- Metric – The number of people who bought something or became clients.
- Why you need this information – It gives you your conversion rate (the percentage of visitors that purchased), it gives you an idea of how well your website is converting, and it allows you to play with your marketing tactics to see what actions give you a bump in conversions.
- Metric – The dollar value of each visitor (the total value of all sales divided by the number of visitors).
- Why you need this information – It keeps you from spending more per visitor than they are worth.
Metrics for Your Ezine or Newsletter:
- Metric – Percentage of people who opened your newsletter.
- Why you need this information – It lets you know if your subject line was compelling, which subject lines hit the ball out of the park, and which subject lines bombed.
- Metric – Percentage of people who clicked on the call to action in your newsletter.
- Why you need this information – It gives you guidance on your offering and call to action.
Metrics for Your Marketing Campaigns:
- Metric – Identify where your leads are coming from. What marketing activities PULLED them to you?
- Why you need this information – It allows you to concentrate on the marketing efforts that work and to drop the ones that don’t.
- Metric – What did your leads do? Did they download a specific report? Purchase a product? Become a client?
- Why you need this information – It clarifies what your target market is most interested in and where they feel the most pain.
- Metric – Which marketing activity pulled in the highest-converting leads and which brought in the most profitable leads?
- Why you need this information – It allows you to concentrate on the marketing efforts that earn you the most and spend less time on the ones that don’t earn as much.
Metrics for Your Membership Site:
(You get ALL of these when you are a member here at Membership Site Analytics!)
- Metric – What is the lifetime value of a member?
- Why you need this information – This is probably the most important metric you could possibly have as a membership site owner. Because lifetime value (LTV) tells you down to the penny how much you can spend to acquire a new member and still break even. Once you know your LTV… and you know your conversion rate for getting new members… then you can determine exactly how much you can spend per click on Adwords or Facebook ads. This is powerful because you’ll be able to dial in your advertising campaigns to be as productive and as profitable as you want. And you’ll also know how long it will take you to turn a profit — a critical piece of information if you’re rolling profits back into advertising.
- Metric – What is the average length of membership?
- Why you need this information – In most industries, the average length of membership is around 3 or 4 months. If your average length of membership is less than 3 months, then you know you have some work to do. If it’s more than 4 months, then you’re doing well. And no matter what your average is, you can always be working on improving it.
- Metric – Who are your most loyal members?
- Why you need this information – After 6-12 months of data have accumulated, you’ll discover that you have a small group of ultra-loyal members. These are members who will stick with you far longer than the average member will. In fact, they may keep paying you for years. One strategy is to reward your most loyal members so they stay even longer. Send them a free bonus report. Invite them to a private teleseminar. Offer them some consulting. Whatever you think makes sense. In fact, something as a simple as a handwritten thank-you note sent by mail could go a long way toward building goodwill and keeping that member forever. And here’s another tip: Your most loyal members may also be super affiliates in the making. If you have an affiliate program, remind your loyal members how much they can make by promoting your membership site.
- Metric – What month (or months) do people cancel most?
- Why you need this information – You may notice that the highest number of members cancel in months #1 and #4. Now you know exactly at what point in time you need to do something to reinforce the value of your membership. Maybe you add a surprise bonus gift. Maybe you add some additional high-value content. Or maybe you simply remind them of the benefits of membership via an autoresponder email. Whatever you do, do it with the purpose of reducing cancellations in those “problem months.” Not only will this increase your average length of membership, it will also increase your Lifetime Value and how much money you make from your site each month.
Meet Jennifer Davey
Jennifer Davey
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