You’ve been working hard (emphasis on the hard) preparing for your next launch, and it’s finally go time. Congrats, you did it! Now you can finally sit back and watch all that effort pay off… right? Not quite. Even though the bulk of the work is finished, there’s still one very important thing you have left to do: track your sales funnel metrics.
Your sales funnel metrics aren’t goals themselves, but rather a measurement of your progress toward meeting your goals. Research shows that by tracking the right metrics (which we’ll get to in a minute), you’re actually twice as likely to hit your objectives—pretty important stuff!
Plus, watching metrics during your launch allows you to see what’s working and what’s not in real time. That way, you can make informed decisions about which adjustments need to be made to future launches so you can hit your goals.
The Best Sales Funnel Metrics to Track to Hit Your Goals
So, we’ve established that tracking your sales funnel metrics during your launch is key, but we haven’t addressed the most important question: Which metrics you should track to gain the most insight about the success of your launch.
While there are many helpful metrics to watch, let’s talk about the 5 we recommend you pay attention to in order to optimize your launch and reach your goals.
Metric #1: Sales Vehicle Opt-In Rate
Your sales vehicle is the free offer you use to create excitement before your launch, showcase your expertise, and build trust with your audience. Often it’s a webinar, challenge, or training related to your new product or service that gives people a taste of what’s to come and culminates in a special promotion to purchase your offer.
Tracking the opt-in rate of your sales vehicle (or the number of people who sign up) as one of your sales funnel metrics can give you a number of helpful insights:
It can tell you how effective you were at generating interest in your sales vehicle, which could indicate a need to re-examine your promotional content, posting schedule, or posting mediums.
It can give you an idea of how many warm leads you may have, as well as tell you how many attendees to expect at your webinar or challenge (usually 20–30% of registrants).
It can provide you with an initial estimate for the number of conversions, as many of your buyers are likely within the set of people who opt-in to your sales vehicle.
It can also potentially indicate a need for alternative or additional dates and times if your opt-in rate is lower than expected.
Metric #2: Sales Vehicle Attendance Rate
Whereas your sales vehicle opt-in rate tells you how many people sign up for your webinar or challenge, your attendance rate shows you how many people actually showed up. This is a key sales funnel metric to track because it points you to your hottest leads.
A great attendance rate indicates that you have a lot of people interested in your offer (Hooray!). By going one step further and keeping track of who attended, you can personalize your follow-up through segmenting and increase the likelihood that they’ll convert.
On the other hand, a less-than ideal number of attendees could indicate that your audience needs more reminders about the date and/or time of your webinar, or more frequent check-ins during your challenge. If this is the case, you can adjust your email sequence to include more frequent reminders, especially on the day(s) of the event.
Metric #3: Email Open Rates
Your email open rates indicates the number of people who opened your emails compared to the total number of people you sent them to. The average open rate is 21%, but the exact number to aim for depends on your industry. Open rates are a great sales funnel metric to track for a couple of reasons:
They can tell you how effectively you've nurtured your audience in advance of your launch.
The more trust you’ve built with them, the more likely they are to listen to what you have to say! If your open rates are lower than you’d like, consider taking a second look at your nurture strategy to see what you could be doing better.
They can show you how effective your subject lines are.
Low open rates may indicate that you’re not piquing your audience’s interest, which means you might want to test out different subject lines. Nailing your subject lines is key to a successful launch, so don’t overlook this aspect of your emails. (If you need inspiration, check out our Optimize Your Sales Emails Workbook.)
One strategy you can use to try to improve your email open rates is to include an “opt out” link at the end of your emails. That way, anyone who isn’t interested in your offer can choose to leave your promotional segment without unsubscribing from your entire list. This prevents your open rates from being skewed by disinterested contacts.
Oh, and make sure you’re avoiding your contacts’ spam filters! Making it into your audience’s main inbox is a sure way to improve open rates.
Metric #4: Email Click-Through Rates
In addition to open rates, another helpful sales funnel metric to track is your email click-through rates (CTR), which is the ratio of people who click on a specific link (in this case a link to register for your webinar or visit your sales page) in your email to the total number of people who viewed the email. A good average to aim for is 2–3%, although again, this depends on your industry.
Email CTRs are useful because they can provide insights about the effectiveness of your content. If your audience has already opened your email, the only thing standing in the way between them and your sales page is the email content itself!
So, if you have lower-than-expected CTR for one or more emails, consider what you could change to be more persuasive. This could include your messaging, calls-to-action, or even the structure of your sequence. A change in positioning, a different wording, a slicker format, or the addition of an extra testimonial or two can make all the difference.
TIP: If you’re not already doing so, you can also try implementing more audience segmentation to increase your CTRs. Certain contacts may need more or less nurturing before deciding to purchase depending on where they are on their customer journey.
Metric #5: Conversion Rate
The final and perhaps most exciting sales funnel metric to watch is your conversion rate! This is the number of people who ultimately decide to purchase your offer.
Tracking your conversion rate can be nerve wracking—after all, the last thing you want to see after all that effort is a less-than-successful launch—but it’s important in understanding the overall efficacy of your strategy and can show you whether you’re on track to reaching your sales goal.
The further down the sales funnel you go, the more difficult it is to determine exactly which factors impact your metrics, so it’s not always easy to know what a poor conversion rate could indicate. However, when compared to your other metrics, you can get a better idea of what your numbers are telling you.
- For example, high email CTRs but a low conversion rate likely means there’s an issue with your sales page. Although you won’t be able to pinpoint exactly what the problem is based on the metric itself, you know where to set your sights and can investigate further from there. Some areas to look at are the content, user experience, and navigation.
- On the other hand, a low conversion rate combined with low email open rates and click-through-rates indicates that the issue is earlier on in the sales funnel. Perhaps you didn’t draw in enough people in the first place, which would lower your metrics across the board.
No matter what numbers you see, tracking your conversion rate and other sales funnel metrics is key to learning and growing as a business owner. Even if you’re not seeing the results you were hoping for, you’ll have the data you need to make adjustments and turn your next launch into a success!
Optimize Your Next Launch Even Further with Expert Guidance
Even when you know which metrics to track, it’s not always easy to make sense of the data. With our Launch Strategy Intensive, you can sit down with a strategy expert to discuss the details of your launch, evaluate your goals, and create a solid plan to optimize your content and maximize your conversions.