If creating reports or analyzing marketing metrics feels like reading another language, it may be helpful to consider working with a professional who can help interpret the data. There are many terms to describe what you are looking at, and often the terms sound very similar to each other. It doesn’t matter when you start using multiple analytics platforms, you will find that the same metric is called different things.
You shouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out the meaning of jargon when you’re analyzing your marketing.
We created a glossary of common marketing analytics terms to help you understand your analytics software. If you’re looking at your analytics and feeling overwhelmed, this article can help. It outlines some key things to look for when you’re looking at your data.
Basic Marketing Analytics Terms Everyone Should Know
All Interactions
An Attribution Report in HubSpot that equally values every URL or source someone visits before converting.
Analytics
Analytics in marketing refers to analyzing data to determine how effective marketing activity is in terms of return on investment. Marketers use the term analytics to talk about the dashboard or system they use to review and track data.
Annotations
These are notes on specific parts of a chart in Google Analytics to help you better keep track of certain things that happen in your marketing. This refers to data points that are far from the rest of the data. They are often left out when creating a graph because they can skew the results. Anyone who has access to your Google Analytics account can view annotations at any time.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of people who leave your website after only viewing one web page. This metric is found in Google Analytics.
Brand
A brand is how a company is seen and felt by possible clients. A brand’s logo and other design elements, the voice it uses when interacting with customers, and the target customers it’s known for serving are all pieces of the brand.
Buyer persona
When marketers create ads or website copy, they target imaginary people known as buyer personas. The buyer personas are not real people, but they are created from data of actual consumers. The personas are then used to help determine the tactics and tone of the messages that will be delivered to the audience.
Call to action (CTA)
A call to action (CTA) is an element on a website that encourages visitors to take a specific action, such as subscribing to a newsletter or submitting a contact form. Calls to Action (CTAs) are a means of directing potential customers to the next step in a sales funnel in order to increase conversions.
Channel Grouping
This Google Analytics feature allows you to categorize your marketing activities into groups. The Acquisition Reports allow you, by default, to compare metrics by channel name, traffic source, medium, or campaign name. You also can set up custom channel groups. Learn more about doing that here.
Companies Properties
The Properties tab in HubSpot contains important information about the contact’s company, such as the company name and the website URL. You can locate these properties in individual Contact records and the Companies Report.
Customer journey
The customer journey is a process that businesses use to track a potential customer’s interaction with a product or service, from initial interest to post-purchase follow-up.
Dark post
A social media advertisement that only appears in the feeds of users that have been specifically targeted rather than on the company’s formal page is known as a dark post.
Dimension
A data attribute that can be used in filters. You can also create your own custom dimensions In Google Analytics, some default dimensions include the browser being used, the landing page, and any campaigns that might be running. You can also create your own custom dimensions.
Direct Traffic
If someone visits your site by typing in the URL, it means they went directly to your site without clicking on a link. If I were to open either Chrome or Safari and type in “http://hubspot.com,” that would be counted as direct traffic according to HubSpot’s analytics.
Email marketing
Sending content via email to people who have subscribed to receive marketing emails is email marketing. Check your inbox—you’ve seen countless examples.
Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is a metric that measures how long a person spends on your website. In addition to the number of pages viewed, it also considers the amount of time spent on the site. 05 In other words, if a visitor only views one page, their engagement rate would be 0.05. This metric can be found in Google Analytics.
Entrances
A session in Google Analytics begins whenever a user enters the site. The number of times this happens is tracked as entrances. For example, someone visits your homepage, then a landing page, before leaving your website. One entrance would be counted on your homepage and no entrances would be counted on the landing page. This is because their first exposure to your website was through your homepage.
Filter
You can change the data that is shown in your reports by altering the settings. To view only your blog posts from a report with page URLs, you should type in ‘blog.YOURCOMPANY.com’. The process of only showing certain posts is called filtering.
First Interaction
This model assigns 100% credit to the first touchpoint for a conversion.
Hit
A hit is a name for user interactions. This sentence is talking about different things that can be considered a “hit” on a website or application. These hits can include things like how many times a page is viewed, how many transactions are completed, how many items are interacted with, or how long it takes a user to complete a task. This term is used in Google Analytics.
Inbound Marketing
This marketing method uses strategies like content marketing and social media marketing to attract potential customers who have not yet made a purchase. Inbound marketers connect with potential customers by meeting them where they are in their purchase journey instead of using hard-selling techniques. The ideal goal of this tactic is to get them interested in learning more about the brand. A gas grill manufacturer is writing an article highlighting the benefits of gas grills over charcoal grills. This article provides useful information about a topic that prospective customers are interested in, which may lead them to ask more direct questions about purchasing a gas grill.
Infographic
Infographics areimages that present statistics, data, and other information in an easy to read and well designed format.
Interaction Score
The interaction score in HubSpot determines what data the Attribution Report looks at, as well as what Attribution model to use in the analysis. The Attribution Report can be accessed in various ways, such as by URL, referrer, or source. And then a different model can be chosen.
Key performance indicator (KPI)
A key performance indicator is a metric that shows whether a company is meeting its marketing goals. This can vary depending on the context. For example, some people may consider the number of sales inquiries to be a success metric, while others may consider the number of visitors who watch over 75% of a video on a page to be a success metric.
Keyword
When users enter a keyword or phrase into a search engine, the engine looks for all of the websites that contain that keyword. The engine then ranks the websites according to how often the keyword appears on the website and how relevant the website is to the keyword. In order to improve their site’s visibility in search engines, savvy digital marketers incorporate relevant terms into their web pages.
Last AdWords Click
This report credits 100% of the conversion to the last AdWords click.
Last Interaction
This particular Attribution Report model in HubSpot attributes all the credit for a conversion to the URL that the person clicked on just before converting.
Lead
A lead is someone who has shown interest in a brand in the past and is likely to buy from that brand in the future.
Metrics
Metrics are measurable indicators of how well a campaign is performing. Some common metrics people use to measure success are click-through rate, cost per lead, bounce rate, and conversion rate.
The monthly unique visitor (MUV)
This refers to an individual who visits a social media site at least once within a given month. A page’s click reach is the number of unique clicks it draws.
Off-site content
The content that is located away from a company’s home website is designed to promote the company’s website, product, or service to potential customers.
On-site content
A company’s website content includes all of the text, photos, videos, and other information that it produces and makes available to the public. The content on your website should be designed to give prospective customers the best possible experience while they are looking for your product or service.
Organic Search
When a visitor originates from a search engine. This does not only include Google, Bing, and Yahoo, but also other companies.
Pageview
Every time a page is loaded or reloaded, Google Analytics monitors and collects data about the activity.
Paid Search
When a visitor originates from a paid search advertisement.
Public relations (PR)
PR involves controlling how information about a company is disseminated, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. PR professionals work to spread positive news about their brand and to minimize the impact of any negative press.
Qualified lead
A qualified lead is an individual that the marketing team has deemed to be a viable prospect for marketing their product, based on marketing efforts that have shown this individual has a potential interest in the product.
Referrals
When someone visits your site from another website.
Return on investment (ROI)
Every marketing campaign requires an initial investment of time and/or money in order to be successful. The return on investment (ROI) is a performance metric that quantifies whether the money earned from a campaign is worth the initial cost.
Revenue Report
The report shows how much revenue is attributed to each marketing activity. For example, you can use HubSpot to see how much revenue your email marketing or social media efforts have generated with a Revenue Report.
Sales funnel
A sales funnel is the journey new leads take from becoming aware of a product to making a purchase. A sales funnel is a system that takes someone from being aware of a brand to becoming a loyal customer.
Score
Each URL or source is given a score, called a “HubSpot Attribution Model,” based on its value. A high score indicates that the URL or source generates a lot of conversions, while a low score means that the URL or source doesn’t generate many conversions. The score is based on the Attribution model you select. For more information on scores, see this article.
Simple Decay
This model gives credit for the conversion to the six most recent interactions. So if you visited seven pages before converting to a lead, the final six pages you visited would get credit. Page seven would get 50% more credit than page six if they were both of equal length. This means that if you’re on page six, you’ll get 50% more credit than if you’re on page five. And so on.
Testimonial
A testimonial is a person’s written or spoken statement that explains the value of a product or service. This is a common element that is found in marketing materials. Customer testimonials are often used to make a marketing message more believable.
Time Decay
This is an Attribution Model in Google Analytics that gives the most credit to the touchpoints that were closest in time to the conversion. The Simple Decay model in HubSpot is the most similar model, but it does not consider time.
Time on Page
This is the average time spent on a page. This metric is calculated in Google Analytics.
Unique selling proposition (USP)
What makes your product unique and different from the competition? Some possible reasons that a product might be chosen over others are that it is unique, has superior quality, is low-priced, or can be bundled with another product.
Unique Visitors
A new visitor coming to your website for the first time.
User experience (UX)
User experience is making sure that a website is easy to understand and navigate for visitors.
Visit-to-Contact Conversion Rate
This ratio is a measure of how many new contacts your organization made for each visit during the selected period. This metric can be found in HubSpot.
Visit-to-Customer Conversion Rate
This calculation provides the average number of customers per visit. This metric can be found in HubSpot.
Vlog
Video blogs that are part of a brand’s content marketing strategy.
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