marketing-performance-analytics

---
name: marketing-performance-analytics
description: Analyze marketing performance with key metrics, trend analysis, and optimization recommendations. Use when building performance reports, reviewing campaign results, analyzing channel metrics (email, social, paid, SEO), or identifying what's working and what needs improvement.
---

# Performance Analytics Skill

Frameworks for measuring, reporting, and optimizing marketing performance across channels and campaigns.

## Key Marketing Metrics by Channel

### Email Marketing

- **Delivery rate**: Emails delivered / emails sent (Target: 95-99%)
- **Open rate**: Unique opens / emails delivered (Target: 15-30%)
- **Click-through rate (CTR)**: Unique clicks / emails delivered (Target: 2-5%)
- **Unsubscribe rate**: Unsubscribes / emails delivered (Target: <0.5%)
- **Conversion rate**: Conversions / emails delivered (Target: 1-5%)

### Social Media

- **Impressions**: Total times content was displayed
- **Reach**: Unique users who saw content
- **Engagement rate**: (Likes + comments + shares) / reach
- **Click-through rate**: Link clicks / impressions
- **Follower growth rate**: Net new followers / total followers

### Paid Advertising (Search and Social)

- **Click-through rate (CTR)**: Clicks / impressions
- **Cost per click (CPC)**: Total spend / clicks
- **Cost per acquisition (CPA)**: Total spend / conversions
- **Return on ad spend (ROAS)**: Revenue / ad spend
- **Quality Score (search)**: Relevance rating (1-10)

### SEO / Organic Search

- **Organic sessions**: Visits from organic search
- **Keyword rankings**: Position for target keywords
- **Organic CTR**: Clicks / impressions in search results
- **Domain authority**: Third-party authority score
- **Backlinks**: External sites linking to you

### Content Marketing

- **Pageviews**: Total views of content pages
- **Average time on page**: Time spent on content pages
- **Bounce rate**: Single-page sessions / total sessions
- **Scroll depth**: How far users scroll on a page
- **Lead generation**: Leads attributed to content

### Overall Marketing / Pipeline

- **Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)**: Leads meeting qualification criteria
- **Sales qualified leads (SQLs)**: MQLs accepted by sales
- **MQL to SQL conversion rate**: SQLs / MQLs
- **Customer acquisition cost (CAC)**: Total marketing + sales cost / new customers
- **Marketing-sourced revenue**: Revenue from marketing-originated deals

## Reporting Templates and Dashboards

### Weekly Marketing Report

- **Top 3 metrics** with week-over-week change
- **What worked** this week (1-2 bullet points with data)
- **What needs attention** (1-2 bullet points with data)
- **This week's priorities** (3-5 action items)

### Monthly Marketing Report

1.  Executive summary (3-5 sentences)
2.  Key metrics dashboard (MoM and target comparison)
3.  Channel-by-channel performance summary
4.  Campaign highlights and results
5.  What worked and what did not (with hypotheses)
6.  Recommendations and next month priorities

### Dashboard Design Principles

- Lead with metrics that map to business objectives
- Show trends over time, not just point-in-time snapshots
- Include comparison context: prior period, target, benchmark
- Group metrics by funnel stage or business question
- Keep dashboards to one page/screen

## Trend Analysis and Forecasting

### Trend Identification

Look for:

1.  **Directional trends**: consistent movement over 4+ periods
2.  **Inflection points**: where performance changed direction
3.  **Seasonality**: predictable patterns by day, month, or quarter
4.  **Anomalies**: one-time spikes or drops
5.  **Leading indicators**: metrics that predict future outcomes

### Simple Forecasting Approaches

- **Linear projection**: extend current trend line forward
- **Moving average**: smooth out noise by averaging last 3-6 periods
- **Year-over-year comparison**: use last year's pattern adjusted for growth
- **Funnel math**: forecast outputs from inputs (Leads \* Conversion Rate = Customers)

## Attribution Modeling Basics

### Common Attribution Models

- **Last touch**: 100% credit to last interaction
- **First touch**: 100% credit to first interaction
- **Linear**: Equal credit to all touchpoints
- **Time decay**: More credit to touchpoints closer to conversion
- **Position-based (U-shaped)**: 40% first, 40% last, 20% split middle

### Attribution Practical Guidance

- Start with last-touch if you have no model in place
- Compare first-touch and last-touch to understand awareness vs. conversion drivers
- Use position-based as a reasonable middle ground for B2B
- No model is perfect — use attribution directionally

## Optimization Recommendations Framework

### Optimization Process

1.  **Identify**: which metrics are underperforming?
2.  **Diagnose**: where in the funnel is the problem?
3.  **Hypothesize**: what is causing the underperformance?
4.  **Prioritize**: which fixes have the biggest impact with least effort?
5.  **Test**: design an experiment to validate the hypothesis
6.  **Measure**: did the change improve the metric?
7.  **Scale or iterate**: roll out wins; iterate on failed tests

### Prioritization Framework (Impact vs. Effort)

1.  **High impact, low effort**: do immediately
2.  **High impact, high effort**: plan and resource
3.  **Low impact, low effort**: do if capacity allows
4.  **Low impact, high effort**: deprioritize