{"id":96887,"date":"2017-10-26T07:09:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T07:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailrelay.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/30\/measure-roi\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T02:13:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T02:13:53","slug":"measure-roi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailrelay.com\/en\/blog\/2017\/10\/26\/measure-roi\/","title":{"rendered":"How to measure the ROI of your online strategy using KPIs"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the main advantages of investing in online marketing is that results are measurable in every circumstance<\/strong>. No matter which channel you’re working in, you’ll always be able to get analytics reports that show you the ROI you’re getting from your digital strategies.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s abundantly clear that all of this is a big advantage over traditional marketing, where the numbers are often approximate rather than objective.<\/p>\n

For example, you can find out a newspaper’s circulation, so you could estimate its reach, but you can’t know exactly how many readers each copy will have. However, from any email marketing or social media advertising campaign you launch, you can get exact data.<\/p>\n

In that sense, you should lose your fear of investing in online marketing, since you can get very interesting information, such as the number of people who interact with your content, the number of opens you get from each email sent or the number of subscribers you receive through a given landing page (among other things).<\/p>\n

Knowing data like this is very important for measuring your ROI and working out how profitable your online marketing strategy is. So, how about we answer questions like these?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What ROI is.<\/li>\n
  2. Why ROI is so important.<\/li>\n
  3. How to measure ROI according to your goals.<\/li>\n
  4. Which KPIs let you measure ROI according to your goals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

    What is ROI, why should you measure it and what should you base it on?<\/h2>\n

    Carrying out marketing actions, whatever type they are, makes no sense if no goals are set. So, once your goals are set, the next logical step is to analyze whether they’ve been achieved, or to what extent they’re already a reality.<\/p>\n

    One way to understand whether your goals have been achieved is by analyzing the return on investment, and that’s what we’re going to look at next.<\/p>\n

    \u25ba Definition of Return on Investment (ROI)<\/h3>\n

    \u201cReturn on Investment, or ROI, refers to the value, in economic terms, that results from the marketing activities carried out.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

    In other words, it’s the economic value equivalent to a campaign’s performance. It comes down to knowing how much has been invested and how much has been gained thanks to that marketing campaign.<\/p>\n

    How is ROI calculated? It’s very simple. You use a formula that consists of subtracting the amount invested from the revenue obtained<\/strong>, and dividing that amount by the investment. This gives us a percentage that represents the return relative to the investment.<\/p>\n

    It will be clearer with an example. Let’s imagine we’ve invested \u20ac200 in a social media campaign and the sales generated through that campaign came to \u20ac1,000. We would need to do this calculation: <\/strong><\/p>\n

    (1000-200) \/ 200 = 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

    In other words, the ROI is 4%. Which means that for every euro invested in that campaign, 4 euros have been received. Obviously, this would be a profitable action.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    When the result of that formula is negative, it means there has been no return on the investment, and that money has been lost instead. In these cases, the actions carried out would not have been profitable.<\/p>\n

    \"measuring<\/p>\n

    \u25ba The importance of ROI in marketing<\/h3>\n

    For quite some time, companies and businesses that were starting to carry out marketing activities on the Internet didn’t worry about calculating ROI. It was taken for granted that, since these activities were much cheaper than traditional marketing, it wasn’t necessary.<\/p>\n

    What’s more, not many of them had real professionals in the field, so the investment in human resources wasn’t excessive.<\/p>\n

    Little by little, it has been shown that online marketing is much more than posting a couple of status updates on a social profile. Having a good professional who knows the field and the characteristics of each channel is necessary to get the most out of online marketing.<\/p>\n

    At the same time, the constant appearance of new options in this field has made it necessary to increase investment. This has led companies to take online marketing much more seriously and, as a result, they’ve started to value it in economic terms as well.<\/p>\n

    For all these reasons, many digital marketing consultants and professionals have to demonstrate the value of their work by presenting reports and achieving goals based on ROI.<\/p>\n

    What advantages does this change in how we view online marketing bring?<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. It lets you save money:<\/strong> By knowing which actions are bringing in profits and which aren’t, it’s easier to know what to boost and what you can do without, which in the long run means significant savings.<\/li>\n
    2. It identifies niches of potential customers<\/strong>: Analyzing the data from your actions shows where users are most willing to become customers.<\/li>\n
    3. It helps you evolve:<\/strong> Constantly analyzing your actions is necessary to drive your marketing strategy forward and to know with some certainty which direction to keep your work heading in.<\/li>\n
    4. It predicts your financial situation:<\/strong> Based on the actions carried out, you can make a prediction that’s fairly close to reality about what is going to happen. This makes it possible to start planning the next budget allocations.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      \u25ba Measuring ROI according to strategic goals<\/h3>\n

      ROI, as we’ve seen, is an economic value. You could say it’s the one tied to the ultimate purpose of marketing actions: sales.<\/p>\n

      However, it can be analyzed and related to KPIs, or indicators, that don’t refer exclusively to revenue.<\/p>\n

      Keep in mind that financial profit tells us how actions have performed so far, but something that isn’t bringing in money right now may do so in a while because we’re achieving other goals.<\/p>\n

      ROI can be used to analyze actions related to:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Direct sales:<\/strong> This is the main goal, the one tied to the sales of products or services that you get directly from your actions.<\/li>\n
      2. Visibility<\/strong>: This is a medium- and long-term goal. You may not get direct sales at first, but you will be gaining visibility, which in the long run will turn into an increase in sales. This goal aims for search engine rankings and reach on social media through strategies across the different channels (social media, email marketing, website, blog\u2026), putting different techniques into practice such as link building or guest blogging, among many others. ROI, therefore, would be the final or indirect goal, since the immediate results are measured through organic traffic, referring domains, backlinks, etc.<\/li>\n
      3. Branding<\/strong>: To strengthen brand image, very different marketing actions are carried out in each strategy, especially in terms of design and communication (with the ultimate aim of selling, of course). These are therefore the most complex actions to relate to ROI, since the results you get are more abstract. Even so, it’s possible to measure them with indicators such as the engagement generated on social media or the volume of interactions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        In the next section we’re going to look at which KPIs, or indicators, can help us define ROI with respect to the different strategic goals.<\/p>\n

        \"KPI\"<\/p>\n

        KPIs for calculating ROI according to your strategic goals<\/h2>\n

        Based on the goals being pursued and the stage each action is at, you can measure the results to find out whether you’re getting a return on your investment or not.<\/p>\n

        Analyzing the indicators, or KPIs, related to each type of goal will help you know whether you’re on the right track or need to make urgent changes to your online marketing strategy.<\/p>\n

        Keep in mind that below I’m going to tell you about the main KPIs that can help you measure your progress toward certain goals, but they’re generic indicators that you often need to adapt to the specific channel you’re working in.<\/p>\n

        For example, a conversion in a Google AdWords campaign can be a phone contact through an ad, but in email marketing it can be someone who directly buys a product.<\/p>\n

        \u25ba KPIs related to sales goals<\/h3>\n

        This is the clearest goal and the easiest to analyze objectively. In this case, the figures for what you’ve invested and what you’ve received come directly into play, and they ultimately tell you whether you’re selling more or not.<\/p>\n

        It’s the goal we all have, and the most important one when it comes to judging a project’s viability.<\/p>\n

        The KPIs that will help you analyze it are:<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Leads generated<\/strong>: You can get leads from any channel you work on. They can come from a landing page, an email or social media. These leads will be users who have taken the actions you propose and that bring them closer to becoming potential buyers.<\/li>\n
        2. Conversions<\/strong>: These are the users who have directly become customers. To find out your ROI from conversions, you need to calculate how much you’ve invested in online marketing actions for a single user. In other words, if a user has seen your ad 3 times or has read an email from you, how much has that cost you? And how much did they pay for their purchase? That way you’ll know whether what you receive is greater than what you invest.<\/li>\n
        3. Returns<\/strong>: You also need to take into account returns of products sold. The marketing campaign may be good but be offering something that doesn’t match reality and cause a high percentage of returns, which would not only fail to give you a good ROI but would probably be costing you money.<\/li>\n
        4. Complaints<\/strong>: Likewise, it’s important to analyze the complaints you receive via email, social media or your website form. They may not be returns yet, but if they aren’t resolved well, they’ll end up becoming returns. You need to assess these complaints and try to minimize them.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          \u25ba KPIs related to visibility<\/h3>\n

          Visibility is one of the medium- and long-term goals, since it has to do with the reach your brand, products and services have on the Internet.<\/p>\n

          The challenge here is reaching the right people, those who are part of your target audience or, in other words, who are likely to become future customers.<\/p>\n

          Also, keep in mind that depending on how much affinity users have with your brand, they’ll be at one stage or another of the sales funnel. Remember that not all users need the same amount of time to end up becoming your customers.<\/p>\n

          And how can you know whether your campaigns are getting you good results in terms of visibility? Here are some KPIs that will help you find out:<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Reach<\/strong>: You can measure the reach of your campaigns on almost every channel. It refers to how many people have been exposed to the action, although to know whether they’ve really become interested or have interacted with it, you need to take the rest of the KPIs into account. The greater the reach of your actions, the more visibility your brand will be getting.<\/li>\n
          2. Impressions<\/strong>: This is another way to measure the reach of your paid actions. In both social ads and AdWords, the tools tell you how many impressions have been served. This figure shouldn’t be confused with the number of users who have seen the ads; there may be more impressions than users because each user has seen the ad several times.<\/li>\n
          3. Frequency<\/strong>: This refers precisely to the number of times each user has seen an ad. A high number isn’t as good as it may seem. If you overwhelm users, they may take it as something negative. It’s good to remind them of your ads, but you shouldn’t be annoying either.<\/li>\n
          4. Traffic<\/strong>: Web traffic is another clear indicator of your brand’s visibility. The higher it is, the better visibility you’ll be getting. Make sure your website lives up to expectations if you don’t want users to run away.<\/li>\n
          5. Followers<\/strong>: The number of followers of your social profiles indicates how large your online community is and how many people your posts are reaching.<\/li>\n
          6. Opens<\/strong>: As for email marketing<\/a>, once again, this KPI tells us how many subscribers have opened the email and bothered to read it. If this figure is high, it means you really have your subscriber list well segmented (or at least it should be).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            In fact, we once talked about how to increase the open rate in this video:<\/p>\n