30 Essential Data Analytics Terms Every Marketer Should Know

Essential data analytics terms marketers should know

Familiarize yourself with the following key marketing data analytics terms:

1. Actions

An action is any user interaction with your website, application or product. This could be an email sign up, page view, download, video play, purchase or any other activity you would like to track.

2. Algorithms

An algorithm is a set of rules or instructions designed to solve a problem or perform a specific task. In marketing, algorithms often analyze data, automate processes and optimize decision-making. As artificial intelligence and machine learning boost business growth, businesses can leverage algorithms to help drive success. For example, many customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing software platforms allow you to create custom algorithms to more precisely measure progress toward your marketing goals.

3. Automation

An automation is a triggered response to a user’s activity or behavior. For example, if a visitor to your site downloads an e-book, that activity could trigger an automation to add the visitor to an email marketing campaign or create a new lead in your CRM software.

4. Attribution

Attribution ties results to specific actions, helping marketers understand which efforts contribute to their goals. For example, if you write blogs to generate more sales leads, you can set up attribution reports to track how many visits to that blog eventually convert to leads and sales. Marketers rely on attribution models and reporting to understand how well their marketing actions have performed.

Mark King, senior manager at direct mail marketing firm Data Science at SG360, emphasized that attribution metrics should align with an organization’s unique context. “Instead of relying on standard metrics that may not reflect your own data capabilities, focus on whether the data and metrics make sense for your specific context,” King advised.

5. Behavioral targeting

Behavioral targeting is an advertising technique that analyzes user behavior to deliver more personalized, relevant messaging. If a marketer collects the right data, they can use behavioral targeting to engage customers and prospects based on a variety of information. For example, you could send a personalized email showcasing the products a user viewed during their last visit to your website or app.

6. Bounce rate

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who land on your page and leave without exploring further or clicking elsewhere on your website. Marketers aim to lower bounce rates to keep visitors engaged longer and increase conversions.

Bounce rate is also a key email marketing analytic, but in this context, it refers to undelivered emails. Hard bounces indicate that an email address is likely invalid, while soft bounces suggest that a recipient’s mailbox may be full.

7. Churn

Churn is the percentage of customers who stop buying from you. There are multiple ways to calculate churn, depending on your business model. For example, at a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, if a customer subscribes for one year and doesn’t renew, they are considered to have “churned.” Keeping churn rates low is essential for maintaining higher revenue.

“Churn rate is a critical measure of customer retention that highlights risks needing attention,” explained Chlint Gargaritano, marketing manager at analytics firm Accoil. “Monitoring churn allows businesses to identify areas for improvement to retain customers and maintain revenue.”

8. Conversion rate

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of users who complete a desired action. For example, if 1 in 20 people visiting your site makes a purchase, that’s a 5 percent conversion rate. Lead conversion success depends on your goals; you can measure the conversion rates of nearly any activity, including free-trial sign-ups, white paper downloads and ad clicks. Conversion rates are valuable because they allow you to benchmark the success of specific marketing actions.

9. Cookies

Cookies are small files stored on a user’s browser or computer when they visit a website. These files (often referred to as tracking cookies) enable marketers to monitor visitors’ behavior on their site, retarget them on other websites, and analyze the paths visitors take while navigating their site.

10. Direct traffic

Direct traffic refers to visitors who arrive at your website without being referred from another source, such as a search engine or social media. This includes users who type your domain name directly into their browser or access your site via a saved bookmark. Direct traffic often indicates a strong online presence, as it typically comes from users already familiar with your business.

11. Engagement rate

Engagement rate measures how actively visitors or users interact with your brand and its content. This metric can be calculated in various ways. For example, a website visitor who clicks through multiple pages and spends significant time on your site is more engaged than someone who leaves after a few seconds. 

The term engagement rate also describes how people interact with social media posts — specifically, how many people like a post, share it with others and leave a comment. The term is also frequently used in email marketing and text message marketing.

“A high engagement score indicates that users find value in your offering, leading to better retention rates and upsell opportunities,” Gargaritano explained. “However, be cautious of over-relying on vanity metrics that don’t drive conversions or enhance customer lifetime value, as they can throw off your marketing strategies.”

12. Custom events

Custom events are specific actions or interactions a marketer defines and tracks to measure user behavior. For example, a mobile gaming company might want to track how many players complete the first level of a game. To do this, they would set up a custom event to monitor level completion. 

13. Impressions

Impressions refer to the total number of times a piece of content is displayed or viewed, regardless of whether the viewer interacts with it. While impressions can apply to websites, the term is more commonly associated with social media and digital advertising. For example, an X (formerly Twitter) post displayed to 200 users would generate 200 impressions.

Keep in mind social media platforms often limit the reach of organic (nonpaid) content to encourage businesses to pay for additional exposure through advertising.

14. Funnel

A sales funnel represents the stages a customer goes through, from first becoming aware of your product or service to making a purchase. In marketing, a funnel can also describe the steps users take from initial interaction with your brand to becoming a paying customer.

By analyzing funnel data, marketers can identify weaknesses in the conversion process and take steps to improve it. For example, an online retailer could see most customers are dropping off during the checkout process in their funnel and could optimize this process based on the data.

15. Labels

Labels help marketers categorize customers based on their behavior, preferences and other data. For example, a SaaS provider might analyze features used, support tickets submitted, and account activity to identify a customer as “at risk of leaving.” This insight allows the provider to create targeted campaigns, such as retention strategies, to persuade them to stay.

16. Lead score

Lead scoring assigns a numerical value to a lead based on how well they fit your ideal customer profile and their engagement with your brand. For example, a visitor who downloads a white paper, reads a blog post, attends an event and requests a demo may have a much higher lead score than someone who only downloaded the white paper.

17. Omnichannel

Omnichannel refers to the seamless integration of multiple communication and sales channels, ensuring a consistent customer experience. For example, if a customer is shopping for your product, their experience across multiple channels — tablet, smartphone, desktop and in-store — should be consistent.

18. Personally identifiable information

Personally identifiable information (PII) refers to any data that can be used to identify, contact, or locate an individual. Common examples of PII include phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security numbers and mailing addresses. PII plays a crucial role in data privacy and security regulations that require businesses to handle data responsibly to protect individuals’ privacy.

19. Properties

A property is a measurable or identifiable attribute you track to gain insights about your audience. For consumers, properties might include age, gender, location, company, email address and revenue. For business-to-business (B2B) clients, relevant properties could include industry sector, website address, number of LinkedIn followers and average revenue.

20. Referrers

A referrer is an online source that directs a visitor to your website. This could include social media posts, Quora questions, images embedded with links, posts on other blogs, backlinks and more.

21. Retargeting

Retargeting is a digital advertising strategy that tracks users who visit your site by placing a cookie on their device or browser. You can then show ads to the same users when they visit other sites that support retargeting. The goal is to reengage users who showed initial interest in your offerings but didn’t complete a desired action, such as making a purchase.

22. Revenue report

A revenue report is a financial scorecard that tracks the income generated by a specific action, event or campaign. For example, you might generate a revenue report to measure the revenue a particular marketing campaign has produced. 

23. Segments

Segments are groups of customers who share specific characteristics you define as important. For example, you could create a segment of users who belong to enterprise organizations, visited your site at least three times, and downloaded your e-book. Segmenting allows marketing teams to develop tailored strategies for various customer groups, improving campaign relevance and effectiveness.

Customer analytics solutions, such as Woopra, allow in-depth and targeted segmentation to help marketers quickly identify issues and opportunities. “Ignoring segmentation is a common mistake — one-size-fits-all strategies won’t cut it,” Gargaritano cautioned. “Effective segmentation allows for personalized experiences that improve engagement and conversion rates.”

24. Session

A session, sometimes referred to as a visit, is the duration of time a user spends on your app or website during a single interaction. The length of a session depends on your analytics solution. For example, a two-hour session might include the projects, purchases and reports a user interacts with on your application. Sessions typically end after a period of inactivity, and a new session begins when the user returns to your site or app.

25. Sources

A source can be any offline or online channel that drives traffic to your site or generates leads. Like referrers, sources can include search engines, social media, blog posts and more. Unlike referrers, sources may also include specific campaigns, including offline direct-mail campaigns. 

26. Taxonomy

Taxonomy is a way to organize your data into categories and subcategories to allow for greater segmentation and filtering. For example, if you’re tracking blog post engagement within WordPress, the taxonomies you could employ for additional filtering might include comments, searches, article views and blog subscriptions.

27. Touchpoints

Touchpoints are the interactions a user has with your business before becoming a customer. These interactions include anything from responding to an initial email to engaging in a live chat with a support representative.

Tracking touchpoints helps marketers understand which interactions are most valuable and how many it typically takes to convert an interested visitor into a paying customer.

28. Tracking URL

A tracking URL is a regular URL with a token or UTM parameter (see below) assigned to it. Tracking URLs allow marketers to track where specific traffic originated.

29. Unique visitors

Anyone who has accessed your website at any point in time is a unique visitor. This is tracked by a cookie placed on the visitor’s browser or device and their associated IP address. Visitors who return to your site using the same browser and device are counted as unique visitors. However, if visitors clear their cookies or use a different browser or device, they will be counted as new unique visitors.

30. UTM parameters

UTM parameters (also known as UTM codes or tags) are essentially source descriptions added to the end of a URL. They allow marketers to identify the exact source of traffic coming to their website and tie activity on specific channels to business results. 

Without a UTM tag, you might be able to identify that a visitor came to your site from social media, but you wouldn’t know which post or campaign drove that traffic. With a UTM tag, you can include the source (e.g., X), the medium (e.g., email), the content (e.g., “Why Marketing Is Awesome”) and the keyword associated with that campaign for clear attribution.

The best software for tracking marketing analytics

Mike Lewis, CMO at construction project information management software provider Newforma, emphasized that tracking marketing pipelines is essential for insight and improving results. “Understanding and learning what the return on every dollar spent in terms of leads, pipeline and closed-won business is the only KPI that matters,” Lewis said. “When you aren’t hitting these objectives, it’s time to drill down into things like email opens, response rates, website conversions, etc., to figure out what is really under the covers.”

Many of the following types of software provide this level of detailed tracking, either working independently or integrated with other solutions:

• CRM software: Many of the best CRM software platforms have built-in marketing and sales functionality that allows centralized funnel and conversion tracking across different advertising channels. Many CRM platforms, including Salesforce, also integrate with marketing apps like MassMailer and ActiveCampaign. (Read our Salesforce CRM review to learn more.)
• Email marketing software: The best email marketing software, including Campaigner and Constant Contact, can help you track email open rates, click-throughs, purchases and unsubscribes. (Read our Campaigner email marketing review and our review of Constant Contact to learn more.)
• Text message marketing software: The best text message marketing services allow you to monitor campaign performance and send results to apps, such as Shopify and Zoho.
• POS software: The best POS systems have built-in CRM functionality, allowing you to pull data to identify your best customers, what they buy and how often. You could then segment your list and create email marketing campaigns designed specifically to appeal to them.
• Accounting software: The best accounting software helps you analyze which products and services are most in demand, allowing you to create content and outbound marketing campaigns around them.
• Business phone systems: The best business phone systems enable you to monitor how quickly inbound calls are answered and assess the conversion rates of outbound callers.

Gargaritano recommends using customer data platforms (CDPs) to centralize and organize data seamlessly. “CDPs collect and unify customer data from various sources so you get a single view of each customer,” Gargaritano explained. “This makes more personalized marketing easier and leads to better data management across businesses.” However, Gargaritano warned against using overly complex analytics, as this can overwhelm marketing teams and negatively impact decision-making.

Turn knowledge into marketing success

If you’ve made it to the end of this article, you’re well on your way to becoming a data-driven marketing expert. While some definitions may vary depending on how your organization analyzes data, building a foundational understanding of these terms empowers you to transform data insights into meaningful actions.

“Creating actionable insights from trustworthy data is crucial because it provides insight into both where you’ve been and where you want to go,” King noted. By avoiding common pitfalls and choosing the right tools, you can enhance your marketing strategies and drive better results.