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Digital Marketing Math: All the Formulas You Need to Know on One Page
Digital marketing math can help you improve your email marketing campaigns and online marketing initiatives. By getting a good handle on your analytics and email metrics, you can improve your digital marketing campaigns using real data instead of guesswork.
Math not your thing? Don’t worry.
Digital marketing math is relatively simple and we’re here to help.
Basics of digital marketing math
Even with the most important digital marketing math formulas on this page, you don’t need advanced math skills to use them.
Most of the time, these metrics will be calculated for you by various analytic programs and software services. For online advertising and analytics for your own website, you’ll probably use Google Analytics.
For email campaigns, Campaign Monitor offers a full suite of detailed analytics:
Image Source: Campaign Monitor
So, while you don’t need to calculate all these metrics yourself, understanding how they’re calculated can help you better understand what they actually mean. Let’s be honest, even the most experienced digital marketers often have a fuzzy grasp on the numbers.
So, understanding how these analytics are calculated can help you be much more effective as a digital marketer.
Common digital marketing math formulas
Here are some of the most common and helpful digital marketing math formulas. We have grouped these marketing math formulas into four categories: online advertising, website analytics, email marketing, and customer engagement/buzz.
Remember the basic operands:
+ add
– subtract
* multiply
/ divide
1. Online advertising digital marketing formulas
Cost per impression (CPM)
COST / 1000 IMPRESSIONS
An impression is how many times an advertisement is displayed on a web page or search engine. It does not include clicks. You might get a ton of impressions with few clicks. So, depending on where you’re advertising, it might be more affordable to pay per click vs. by impression.
Cost per view
COST / VIEW
Cost per view is like cost per impression but relates more to video ads (e.g. YouTube ads).
Click-through rate
CLICKS / IMPRESSIONS
This calculation actually tells you whether your online advertisement is working. The more clicks you have per impression, the better. To improve your ad CTR, improve your ad design and/or better target the delivery to the proper segments.
Conversions per impression
CONVERSIONS / IMPRESSIONS
This metric tells you how many actual sales you get per impression.
Conversion rate
CONVERSIONS / CLICKS
This tells you how many conversions you’re getting per click. This is a crucial metric.
Revenue per click (RPC)
REVENUE / CLICKS
Understanding how much money you bring in for each click helps you plan your ad spends accordingly. Higher revenue per clicks would justify perhaps investing in an ad campaign even if the click-through rate wasn’t that high, as long as those few clicks convert.
2. Marketing math for website analytics
Page views per session
# OF PAGE VIEWS / 1 SESSION
How engaged are people with your website? A session refers to a single time your customer or prospect spends looking at your website.
Percentage of new browsing sessions
# NEW BROWSING SESSIONS / # TOTAL BROWSING SESSIONS
You might want to calculate this metric if you want to know about your new customer growth. If your ads are bringing back the same people over and over again (and they aren’t buying anything new), that’s not a good thing.
Average time spent on a landing page
TOTAL TIME SPENT BY ALL VISITORS / TOTAL # VISITS
Are your landing pages actually engaging your customers? Or are they causing a high bounce rate?
By finding out how much time is spent on your landing page—the page you’re directing customers to—you can get an idea of what’s working. Of course, actual conversions count, too.
Bounce rate (per page)
VISITORS LEAVING AFTER VIEWING ONE PAGE / TOTAL VISITORS
There are two main ways to calculate bounce rate. One is based on whether your visitor stays on your website (by clicking another internal link).
The other (which you need Google Analytics or some other software for) calculates how much time is spent on a page.
Exit rate
USERS LEAVING SITE / TOTAL # USERS VISITING PAGE
This calculation is related to the bounce rate, but it’s not quite the same. This metric informs which pages are more likely to encourage exits from the website.
Buy per detail rate
# PRODUCTS PURCHASED / TOTAL PRODUCT DESCRIPTION VIEWS FOR THAT PRODUCT
Are your visitors spending a lot of time looking at product descriptions before purchasing? This metric can tell you whether your customers are looking for that specific information.
Cart per detail rate
# PRODUCTS ADDED TO CART / TOTAL PRODUCT DESCRIPTION VIEWS
Similar to the above metric, this formula tells you about the time spent researching before an item is placed into the shopping cart.
Cart abandonment rate
1 – (# PEOPLE WHO START CHECKOUT / # PEOPLE WHO ADDED TO CART)
Are people adding things to their shopping cart and then quitting? If this number is too high, two things might be happening: One, your shopping cart system is too complicated. Two, your pricing or shipping isn’t transparent enough.
Image Source: Pixabay
Items per purchase
# ITEMS / # PURCHASES
Get a better idea of how to bundle and tailor purchases with the items per purchase metric.
3. Email analytics and digital marketing math
Email marketing metrics can help you craft and improve your drip marketing campaigns and email newsletters. Use some of the following email marketing metrics to get better results with your online marketing initiatives. Remember, Campaign Monitor does all this work for you:
Email metrics are multiplied by 100 to get a percentage.
Bounce rate
BOUNCES / EMAILS SENT X 100
If your emails are bouncing too much, you need to clean up your list.
Email open rate
TRACKED OPENS / TOTAL DELIVERED (NON-BONCE) X 100
How many people are actually opening your emails? If they aren’t, you might want to work on your subject lines.
Email click-through rate
CLICKS / EMAILS SENT X 100
You want people to click on the links in your emails. Shoot for an email click-through rate of 4%, depending on your industry average.
Email CTOR (click-to-open) rate
CLICKS / OPENED EMAILS x 100
The CTOR rate is an even more important metric than the click-through rate. It tells you how effective your emails actually are once they’re read.
Email conversion rate
CONVERSIONS / EMAILS DELIVERED X 100
Ultimately, you want your email marketing messages to turn into sales. Find out how you’re doing with by measuring your email conversion rates.
4. Customer engagement and social media analytics
With customer engagement and social media analytics, you may need to set up your own spreadsheets and keep track of things manually. If you really don’t want to bother with the digital marketing math, you can use programs like Buffer, which calculate many social media metrics for you. Plus, you can integrate with Campaign Monitor via Zapier.
Image Source: Pixabay
Engagement rate
ENGAGED USERS / REACHED USERS * 100
Engaged users are users that interact with your social media posts in some manner, such as liking or commenting.
Social media buzz market share
SOCIAL MEDIA USERS TALKING ABOUT YOUR BRAND / SOCIAL MEDIA USERS TALKING IN YOUR INDUSTRY
This might be a little challenging to calculate, but with some research, you might get an idea of what your company’s actual “buzz” is.
Average likes per social media post
ADD UP LIKES PER X POSTS / X POSTS
How many likes are you getting for each social media post? If you hear crickets, then you should investigate why your content isn’t connecting with your audience.
Average shares per social media post
ADD UP SHARES PER X POSTS / X POSTS
Likes are important, but shares are even better. Are your posts being shared?
Following/follower ratio
# FOLLOWING / # FOLLOWERS
You can use this metric to inform how many people you’re following vs. how many are following you.
Negative feedback rate
HIDDEN-DOWNVOTED-REPORTING AS SPAM / REACHED USERS
If people are downvoting or reporting your posts as spam on a regular basis on social media platforms, you’re in some serious trouble. Rethink your content marketing strategy.
Wrap up
To summarize, digital marketing math can help you see what you’re doing right and doing wrong with your online advertising campaigns. You’ll want to track your metrics in four basic areas:
- online advertising
- website analytics
- email marketing
- customer engagement/social media buzz
The more you know, the more you can improve your digital outreach.
Campaign Monitor provides all the email metrics you need for your digital marketing. Contact us for more information.
