I'm sure there will be questions about the best KPIs to track, what are some of the *worst* KPIs to commit to achieving?

When I think about measurement gone wrong, my first question is typically about the marketer, not the KPI. All KPIs can be useful, assuming your measurement is scalable (i.e., it doesn’t take a week to do the analysis) and you are using them appropriately (i.e., context is everything). That said, here are some metrics that I generally find less material to understanding the health of the business: Impressions/Followers/Engagement: In a world overrun by bots, ad impressions, social media follower ...Read More

The worst KPIs to commit to are the ones that are easy to game, disconnected from revenue, or only measure activity instead of outcomes. A few big offenders: Lead volume or CPL goals. They push teams toward cheap, low-intent leads that don’t convert well downstream. Email opens or click-through rates as primary goals. They’re noisy, increasingly unreliable, and don’t consistently correlate with revenue or at least it’s hard to tie it back. Website traffic goals. Traffic can be bought or optimize ...Read More

This is another great question! I think there a few categories of KPIs where you should be wary: (1) KPIs or metrics that are out of your control. I fully believe that marketing and demand generation should be really focused on driving meaningful results for the business. I see a lot of folks talking about demand generation having a revenue target. I think that's a relevant lagging indicator, but a really hard leading indicator to drive. You want to be able to have controls on the inputs in orde ...Read More

To determine the KPIs you want to track, it's important to align with stakeholders on which KPIs matter most. While there may not be an inherently "wrong" KPI to track, some may require more analysis to understand the full picture. Here are a couple of examples: Email open rates can indicate interest in a topic or message, and can be useful for benchmarking overall email engagement. However, open rates aren't always the most accurate due to bots, email client blocking, or privacy features. Inste ...Read More

I hesitate to use the word "worst" because, in most cases, KPIs aren’t inherently bad—they’re often just "less optimal" depending on the context, goals, and how they’re used. That said, there are definitely KPIs that can lead you astray if you're not thoughtful about their relevance to your objectives or the limitations of your organization. Here's some KPIs I would be wary of: "Big Swing" KPIs These are ambitious, high-reaching goals that aim to inspire teams and generate excitement—think "doub ...Read More

I love this question, though it’s a challenging one because there are plenty of KPIs that can be misleading or even counterproductive to commit to. Generally, I believe it's best to avoid KPIs that seem too easy, too vague, or overly flattering. The reason is simple: there are countless ways to tweak metrics to make them appear more favorable than they actually are. Common Quantitative Pitfalls (often volume-based without a quality component): -Leads collected during an event: For instance, it’s ...Read More

My least favorite KPI is 'incremental ROI,' which I find almost impossible to calculate accurately. Even with tools and software it’s difficult to isolate the true incremental impact of any single campaign or tactic in a complex buyer journey and an everchanging market. It’s tempting to be able to say that for every extra dollar, I’ll make x dollars in pipeline, but that answer is usually more of a vanity metric than true representation of reality, even when the math matches. And when teams focu ...Read More

I’m going to give you two specific KPIs that I recommend against committing to if not paired with a quality metric. Why? These two metrics in isolation are not meaningful. They are solely quantity metrics with no quality indicators.  Sign-ups or MQLs. Why? Similar to what I noted above if you exceed your target for this KPI, but it doesn’t translate to quality or an impact on the business, does it matter?  Website traffic. Why? While important when paired with quality metrics, this KPI by itself ...Read More

Any range of A/B tests that are unlikely to impact customer engagement, trust or revenue growth. This is most obvious with the subject line testing done in batch and blast email campaigns, but there are so many other tests that get run. Color scheme variations. Body paragraph tests. Headline word choice. Don't get me wrong. I believe in A/B testing. the trick is to test something really big. For example, a navigation experiment that seeks to drive significantly more existing customers to a page ...Read More