PAGE 2 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

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4

6

8

SECTION 2: SETTING THE STAGE

Digital Marketing Assets

Building Blocks of a Good Dashboard

Marketing Channels

21 Key KPIs for Marketing

SECTION 3: DEVELOPING THE DASHBOARD

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17

18

Dashboard Building & Best Practices

Picking a Strong Solution

Data-Driven Marketing with Adverity

How to Scale Digitally 3

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION

TABLE OFCONTENTS

PAGE 3 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

HOW TO SCALEDIGITALLY

INTRODUCTION

Over the last decade,digital marketingevolved massivelythanks to cloud, mobile,social, big data, andautomation.

With the rise of the new digitaleconomy, marketers realize the needto deliver an omnichannel experienceto engage connected consumers.From identifying the unique paths andpain points for each segment tocreating tailored solutions forcustomers, every marketer will need apowerful marketing dashboard.One that clearly tracks the heartbeatof the business by displaying vital KPIsand metrics.

One that highlights current andupcoming trends and opportunities,and flags up problems before theybite. One that allows you to share theright level of insight with the relevantstakeholders right across the business.This resource will show you how to doit right, what effective marketingdashboards should look like, and howyou can pick a strong solution.

PAGE 4 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

Before we dive into the details of themarketing dashboard, we will review some ofthe underlying building blocks that SaaScompanies need to think about when definingtheir marketing reporting framework.

Digital marketing assets

Marketing channels

Key metrics

1

2

3

BUILDING BLOCKS OFA GOOD DASHBOARD

SETTING THE STAGE

Data is the lifeblood of anyorganization, underlyingessential marketing

practices from customersegmentation to adplacement strategy.

Some marketing assets are hidden orvirtual. Others are more concrete. Bothtypes can be tracked and measured, tovarying degrees, using KPIs and metrics.

JEFF BULLASCMO Influencer

TANGIBLE ASSETSTangible assets are the mainstay of growthmarketing campaigns, whether they are basedon content marketing, social media marketing,search engine marketing, or traditional outboundmarketing via email, SMS or targeted account-based marketing (ABM).

Examples include:

• Free, gated and paid content such as shortor longform copy, images, graphics and videos.

• Your website and your email list.

HIDDEN ASSETS

Hidden assets are valuable for techniques suchas conversational marketing, influencermarketing and referral (word-of-mouth)marketing. They can also help build customerengagement, loyalty, advocacy, brand recognitionand reputation.

Examples include:

• Online brand and positioning aided by youruse of SEO keywords and hashtags.

• Your influencer relationships, social networks,and virtual communities.

DATA

Data is the most important digital asset when itcomes to measuring impact and results. Dataspans customer details, demographics, activities,behaviors and sentiments, as well as campaign orbusiness related information.

PAGE 5 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

DIGITALMARKETINGASSETS

SETTING THE STAGE

Research carried out by digitalmarketing consultant MarkSonders indicates that thedigital marketing channelsthat produced the highestvolumes of traffic for the 50biggest SaaS companies inJanuary 2020, were: organicsearch, referrals, email, socialmedia, paid search and digitaldisplay ads.

PAGE 6 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

MARKETINGCHANNELS

SETTING THE STAGE

Alongside assets,marketers shouldconsider the mix ofmarketing channels.

SaaS businesses sell cloud-based servicesthat users access and consume through asubscription model. This places a greateremphasis on things like user experience,service and support, demo requests andtrials, and word-of-mouth customeradvocacy. These factors need to bereflected in the marketing channels you useto attract, engage and convert prospects.

V

PAGE 7 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

ORGANIC SEARCH

Search engines such as Google, Bingand Yahoo are consistently the biggestsource of traffic, new visitors, and leadsfor SaaS businesses. This means searchengine optimization (SEO) and keyword-richcontent marketing are major drivers for SaaScompanies to target keywords,educate and attract leads.

PAID SEARCH

Search and display advertising have provento be effective channels for SaaS businessesto increase visibility and raise brandawareness. While it is possible to gain quickwins with low-spend campaigns and goodcontent, it takes a lot of time and resourcesto manage these campaigns at scale as theyinvolve thousands of keywords and landingpages.

EMAIL

Email marketing is a fine art, but as a channelit can yield significant results. Particularlywith warm leads who express their interestin your services by signing up for a webinar,newsletter or free trial. From the Attract toNurture, Convert, Close and after-sale Delightphases, well-written, relevant, personalizedcommunications can make email a strongchannel for SaaS marketers.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is great for engaging directlywith prospective customers, particularly forconsumer-focused SaaS offerings. Social adscan help businesses target and retarget leadseffectively across multiple platforms. With themajor social media channels offering their ownsophisticated ad platforms, it is simple to getyour A/B testing up and running quickly to findout what works best. And with holistic cross-platform analysis, you will also be able to seewhich social channels work best at driving yourTOFU, MOFU and BOFU goals.

WEBSITE & BLOG

Company website and blog are the mostimportant assets for any business. Postregularly, optimize for engagement, and keepthe customer experience front of mind. Thedifference, however, is that you want to funnelsite and blog visitors through to conversion.This could be anything from downloading awhitepaper to signing up to your newsletter,agreeing to a free trial, commenting on a blog,or purchasing a SaaS package.

REFERRALS

Referral traffic can come from a broad rangeof places. Successful SaaS companies generateleads and visits from content syndication, PRactivities, or product placements. Referrals alsocome from marketing partnerships, online oroffline conferences and events, reseller andaffiliate programs, and from posts in onlinecommunities such as LinkedIn, Quora or Reddit.

21 KEY KPIs FORYOUR MARKETINGDASHBOARD

SETTING THE STAGE

Now we have looked at someof the main marketingchannels SaaS companiesneed to consider, let us lookat some important KPIs youcould incorporate into yourmarketing dashboard totrack activity across thesechannels by differentobjectives based on themarketing funnel.

KPIs and metrics are similarin nature. However, metricsare used to numericallymeasure an aspect of the

business, such as site visitorsor sales. They become KPIswhen they are used in

relation to a specific target,company goal or businessoutcome. Then, they can

indicate whetherperformance is on track, orabove or below expectations.

PAGE 8 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

01. CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR)The CTR is a KPI related to both Clicks and Impressions, translatingClicks into trends, rather than leaving them as aggregate numbers.You calculate the CTR by dividing the total number of Clicks your adgets by the total number of Impressions, to generate a percentage. Ahigh CTR implies that you are attracting the right leads into yourwebsite, which increases the probability to purchase.

02. VISITORSBeing able to track your website visitors helps you get a sense ofyour audience, and the direction and speed your business isgrowing. Also worth tracking are monthly unique visitors, andmonth-on-month and year-on-year visitors through Google Analytics.

03. SIGNUP CONVERSIONSTry-before-you-buy is a great way of tempting customers to becomeengaged, and eventually buy the premium suite. That is why it isimportant to track the number of signups, whether it is for a freetrial, time-limited discounted package, a freemium scheme, or thefull deal.

KPIsTHAT TRACKCAMPAIGNSUCCESS

KPIsFOR WATCHINGYOUR COSTS

04. WEBSITE CONVERSIONSConversions build on Clicks and CTRs, requiring users to act oncethey have interacted with your ad, make this a KPI worth tracking.From tracking website purchases to newsletter signups, assetdownloads or watching a video, you can define the types ofconversions you want to track.

05. AVERAGE COST PER CLICKAverage cost per click is calculated by dividing the cost of your clicksby the total number of clicks your campaign received. By monitoringthis over time, you can begin to understand hourly, daily, weekly andseasonal trends, in order to address trends and anomalies inmarketing performance.

06. COST PER CONVERSIONAnother KPI metric worth watching is Cost per Conversion - ad spenddivided by the number of conversions it generates. Using a datavisualization tool, this metric can quickly show you which campaignslook on track financially, and which ones do not. This can prompt you tooptimize individual elements, such as messaging, targeting, graphics orCTAs, to get the best impact and returns.

PAGE 9

07. CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COSTCAC represents the true cost of gaining a new paying customer. Itincludes money spent on sales, marketing, advertising andcommission, as well as customer onboarding expenses. You dividethis cost by the number of deals closed to get your CAC. Because itcan be such a complex calculation, some firms apply machinelearning and AI to get a more comprehensive view of CAC.

08. RETURN ON AD SPEND (ROAS)ROAS is a sophisticated measurement that can be tricky to calculatewithout access to the right data and the ability to analyze it. However,augmented analytics technology can enable you to analyze CTRs bykeyword at a granular level and help calculate their revenue value.

09. LEAD TO CUSTOMER RATEThis measures how well you are generating sales-ready leads in agiven period of time, or rather how many leads turn into payingcustomers. It is considered one of the most critical KPIs for SaaScompanies because it enables them to assess the efficiency of theirmarketing and sales funnel, as well as their potential growthforecast.

10. MONTHLY RECURRING REVENUESmall and large SaaS businesses alike would benefit from knowing whattheir MRR figure is, as well as their Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). It isa simple figure to derive because it aggregates all revenue the businessreceives from paying customers each period, regardless of pricing plansand billing cycles.

11. AVERAGE REVENUE PER USERARPU tells you how much money the business makes for each personusing its service. It is a valuable KPI for tracking the financial value ofeach customer to the business, particularly when you compare newwith existing customers, and a helpful analytics KPI for SaaScompanies with large user bases.

12. CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUECLTV tracks the average amount of money your customers pay duringtheir relationship with your company. It is an important yet mostcomplex metric but knowing this will help the business determinetheir investment in sales and support, marketing, and productdevelopment.

PAGE 10

KPIsESSENTIAL SALESAND REVENUE

CAC =CAC =TTotal Markeotal Marketing Expting Expensesenses

++Total Sales ExpensesTotal Sales Expenses

# New Cu# New Customers Acquiredstomers Acquired

Revenue Earned FromRevenue Earned FromAdvertisingAdvertising

AAdvertising Expensedvertising Expense

ROAS =ROAS =

(Lifetime spend -(Lifetime spend -lifetime variable costs)lifetime variable costs)# of Customers Acquired

CLTV =CLTV =

CE = Number of customers at the end of the period measuredCN = Number of new customers during the periodCS = Number of customers when the period began

PAGE 11

13. NUMBER OF ACTIVE USERSThis one does what it says on the tin and can be measured: at aspecific point in time, weekly, monthly, or annually. It is also anindicator of product or service adoption.

14. CUSTOMER CHURNMeasuring churn is a top priority for SaaS marketers, as the industrysuffers from high levels of customer movement. By measuring churn forspecific products , app bundles or price points, you can get an insightinto how satisfied customers are with their particular purchase, andhowmany might be leaving because of them.

15. CUSTOMER RETENTION RATEThe flipside of customer churn, the customer retention rate designatesthe percentage of customers the business has retained over a givenperiod, for example straight after signup, after seven days, 14 days orthree weeks.

17. VIRAL COEFFICIENTFollowing on from NPS, the viral coefficient is a number that lets youknow how many customers each existing customer brings to you, onaverage, through word-of-mouth marketing. It does this by measuringinvites and calculating the conversion percent. A bigger viralcoefficient means faster business growth and happy existingcustomers.

Numbers of users * AveragNumbers of users * Average number of referrals * referral conversion ratee number of referrals * referral conversion rate

Numbers of users

16. NET PROMOTER SCOREAnother measurement of customer satisfaction is the NetPromoter Score, a key metric for SaaS service providers to gaugethe health of their customer relationships. This KPI is calculatedbased on responses to the question ‘how likely are you torecommend our company or services to a friend or colleague?’. Youwill subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage ofpromoters to get your NPS.

KPIsCUSTOMERSATISFACTIONMEASUREMENT

Users at beginning of periodUsers at beginning of period- users at end of period- users at end of period

Users at beginning of periodUsers at beginning of period

[ (CE -[ (CE - CN) / CS] x 100CN) / CS] x 100CRR =CRR =

“how likely are you to“how likely are you torecommend our companyrecommend our companyor services to a friendor services to a friend

or colleague?”or colleague?”

NPSNPS

CHURN RATE =

PAGE 12

18. NUMBER OF SUPPORT TICKETSCREATED

This customer service KPI measures how many customers arerequesting help at a specific point in time, either with queries,comments or complaints. A spike in support tickets could point to aproblem, and by categorizing support tickets by type, you can quicklydrill down to solve the problem.

19. AVERAGE FIRST RESPONSE TIMEThis KPI gives you a window onto your support team’s activities. Rapidresponses can help to raise customer satisfaction, as first impressionscount, and spikes in response times can reveal underlying problems thebusiness needs to address.

20. AVERAGE RESOLUTION TIMESimilarly, average resolution tells you how long it takes agents toresolve an issue or close off a support ticket. Your average resolutiontime is the total of all your resolution times divided by the numberof cases resolved.

21. CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SCORECSAT tracks how satisfied customers are with your organization’sproducts and services. It is derived from a customer feedback surveytaring satisfaction from a scale of 1 to 5. It differs from NPS inmeasuring customer satisfaction as opposed to loyalty.

KPIsKEEPING TABS ONYOUR CUSTOMERSERVICE

PAGE 13 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

DASHBOARDBUILDING &BEST PRACTICES

DEVELOPING THE DASHBOARD

Underpinning many of these KPIs are thetechnical processes that carry out dataintegration and transformation. This part ofthe technology stack collects data from abroad range of sources including GoogleAds, a CRM system, social media, or an emailservice.

Advanced marketing analytics platforms cangather this information together, harmonizeand prepare it so different types of data can

be analyzed and compared effectively. Gooddata integration and transformation canproduce powerful and more precise insights.

Take Adverity’s intelligent marketingplatform as an example. The solution can beused to build different visual storiespowered by your data from multiplesources. In the next section, you will seeexamples of reporting dashboards you canbuild.

Using a bar chart, you can show all the metrics that are provided within each ad channelyou invest in. To track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, youmay want tolook at clickthrough rates, cost per click, conversion rate and cost per conversion.

Once you have integrated data from all your ad campaigns and CRM system, you canalso build charts to show channels that have beenmost successful in converting leadsto customers.

You can show different aspects of your paid ad performance activities and how they impact differentpipeline stages. This could include a pie chart or a graph to show you the effectiveness of sources for allpaying customers in a given period. You can show different aspects of your paid ad performance and howthey impact different pipeline stages. See below for examples.

PAID PERFORMANCEMARKETING DASHBOARD

PAGE 14 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

InstagramFacebookLinkedInGoogle AdsTwitterGoogle CampaignManagerYouTube

MRR Closed Won per Deal Source|Channel Type

45,38 %

28,15 %

11,34 %

5,46 % 5,04 %2,94 % 1,68 %

Instagram Facebook LinkedIn Google Ads Twitter YouTubeGoogle CampaignManager

0

10

20

30

40

50

New Customers per Deal Source|Channel Type

PAGE 15 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

One of the most important dashboards for SaaS business is to track your demand pipeline. From theleadership team to the board of directors, activities in the funnel is crucial to business growth. Here aresome dashboards that can display key metrics we discussed previously.

DEMAND PIPELINE DASHBOARD

You can get an overview of your MRR development by looking at customer conversion frommarketingsourced or influenced opportunities and deals, as well as a high-level view of marketing ROI.

For an executive view, you can also show overall ad spend and calculateROAS to prove the effectiveness of your overall marketing strategy.

TARGET PACING

$ 5,729,135Ad Spend ($)

+1,61 %vs. oneyearago (%)

ROAS (%)Ad Spend(€)

Costs(€) R

OAS(%

)

Aug. '19 Sep. '19 Oct. '19 Nov. '19 Dec. '19 Jan. '20 Feb. '20 Mar. '20 Apr. '20 May '20 Jun. '20 Jul. '20 Aug. '200

120k

240k

360k

480k

600k

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

1,894 %ROAS (%)

+50,43 %vs. oneyearago (%)

Jan. '20 Feb. '20 Mar. '20 Apr. '20 May '20 Jun. '20 Jul.'20 Aug. '200

400

100

200

30072,56 %

65,30 %68,90 % 69,44 %

83,00 %

60,68 %65,71 % 64,94 %

Monthly Opportunities & SQLs

SQLs Opportunities (deals) Opportunities to SQLs ratio (%)

13.31 % 13.20 %1113.82 %

13.14 %113.78 % 13 88 %13.88 % 14.15 % 14,36 %14.36 %

Jan.'20 Feb.'20 Mar '20 Apr.'20 May'20 Jun. '20 Jul. '20 Aug.'200

2400

800

1600

3200

MQLs SQLs SQLs to MQLs ratio (%)

Monthly SQLs &MQLs

MQLs, SQLs & OPPS

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Going deeper into your pipeline analysis, marketers can also get abetter sense of your Lead to Customer ratio by comparing MQLs, SQLsand opportunities.

Data visualization is also a highly effective way of displayingand sharing vital business KPIs. An executive dashboard willtrack overall business health through revenue and spend.

BUSINESS KPI DASHBOARD

END-TO-END SUITEThere are a small number of full, end-to-end marketing analyticsplatforms that offer marketing data integration and transformation,dashboard visualization and analytics. One of these suites focuses moresquarely on advertisers, and another features a volume policy, whereusers need to buy more users and rows, and this tends to get expensive.

DATA INTEGRATION AND TRANSFORMATIONSome tools specialize in data integration and transformation – alsoknown as Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). These tools can feed datainto business intelligence, data warehouse, reporting or datavisualization applications. Many marketing-centric products out thereare adequate but not enterprise-ready or fit for large scale use. Othersare low cost, but only offer simple use cases, or a small number of APIsthat can link them to different external marketing or ad platforms.

DATA VISUALIZATION FEATUREThere are also several popularmarketing data visualization solutionsavailable on the market, which work with complementary ETLapplications. However, many of these are general business tools, notfocused on displaying marketing insight; while others are very technicaland require specialist expertise to use. Others pack business intelligencebut lack suitable connectivity to external marketing platforms.

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PICKING A STRONGSOLUTION

DEVELOPING THE DASHBOARD

When it comes to selecting the rightsolution to implement a marketingdashboard, there are several in themarket. They each have their pros andcons in terms of price points, featuresand functionality, technical knowledgerequirements, and service and support.

INTELLIGENT BUDGETALLOCATION OPTIMIZATION

PAGE 18 | BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DASHBOARD WITH SAAS KPIs

Through automating data integration from hundredsof sources, our vendor-agnostic platform can deliver asingle view of marketing performance across yourbusiness. Its powerful marketing technology stackmakes it possible for SaaS marketers to create highlyeffective visual dashboards that display detailed andactionable marketing and business information.

In addition, SaaS marketers can apply augmentedanalytics to their data to get AI-powered insights -proactively discovering trends, detecting anomalies,and predicting problems and growth areas.

As a result, SaaS marketing teams can boost theirproductivity, accelerate change, drive customerexperience and indtroduce business efficiencies. Areyou ready to build the dashboard of your dreams?

Find out more at adverity.com

Adverity’s marketing data integration andvisualization solution is an end-to-endplatform that competes in the third category.

DATA-DRIVEN MARKETINGWITH ADVERITY

DEVELOPING THE DASHBOARD

Adverity is an intelligent marketing analytics platform enabling data-drivenmarketers to make better decisions and improve performance, faster andeasier. By transforming siloed data into actionable insight, Adverity reducesthe complexity involved in demonstrating ROI of marketing spend.

With the help of powerful data visualizations, this vendor-agnostic, end-to-endplatform uncovers real-time opportunities to fuel growth with augmentedanalytics. Founded in 2014, Adverity powers the marketing intelligence ofsome of the world’s leading brands and agencies, including IKEA, Red Bull,GroupM, Unilever, Omnicom, Barilla, JD Sports and Forbes. The company isheadquartered in Vienna, and has offices in London and New York.

ABOUT ADVERITY

ADVERITY.COM