KPI Examples: 40+ Marketing, Data & Growth KPIs

Marketing KPI examples

Track spend efficiency, acquisition, and channel performance. Pair every acquisition KPI with a retention KPI so growth isn't leaking out the back.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Formula: Total sales & marketing spend ÷ new customers acquired
Use when: Judging paid channels, sales-assisted funnels, or a new market entry.
Benchmark: Healthy when CAC payback is under 12 months for SaaS, under 3 months for D2C.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Formula: Revenue attributed to ads ÷ ad spend
Use when: Campaign-level optimization on Meta, Google, TikTok, retail media.
Benchmark: Break-even ROAS varies by margin — a 60% margin needs ROAS ≥ 1.67.

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) → SQL rate

Formula: SQLs ÷ MQLs
Use when: B2B funnels where sales and marketing share a pipeline target.

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

Formula: Campaign spend ÷ leads generated
Use when: Top-of-funnel campaigns, content syndication, event sponsorships.

Share of Voice (SoV)

Formula: Your brand mentions ÷ total category mentions
Use when: Brand-led categories where excess SoV predicts market share gains.

Brand Lift

Formula: Exposed group awareness/consideration − control group
Use when: Measuring upper-funnel campaigns that ROAS can't capture.

Marketing-Sourced Pipeline

Formula: Pipeline value from marketing-originated opportunities
Use when: B2B CFO conversations — proves marketing's revenue contribution.

Media Mix Efficiency

Formula: Incremental revenue ÷ incremental spend, per channel
Use when: Reallocating budget across paid, owned, and earned channels.

Growth & funnel KPI examples

Growth KPIs measure how efficiently a user moves from awareness to habit. Use them to find the weakest step in the funnel — that's where the highest ROI lives.

Activation Rate

Formula: Users hitting the 'aha moment' ÷ new signups
Use when: Product-led growth — the strongest leading indicator of retention.

Conversion Rate (step-level)

Formula: Users completing step N ÷ users entering step N
Use when: Optimizing a checkout, onboarding, or lead form.

Time to Value (TTV)

Formula: Time between signup and first meaningful outcome
Use when: Freemium and trial products — shorter TTV lifts conversion.

Viral Coefficient (K-factor)

Formula: Invites sent per user × conversion rate of invites
Use when: Products with built-in sharing loops (Notion, Figma, Calendly).

Product Qualified Leads (PQL)

Formula: Free users hitting a defined usage threshold
Use when: PLG-to-sales handoff — often 3–5x higher close rate than MQLs.

Weekly Active / Monthly Active (WAU/MAU)

Formula: Distinct users active in the period
Use when: Habit-forming products where a WAU/MAU ratio > 0.5 signals stickiness.

Retention & revenue KPI examples

The most underrated KPIs. A 5-point improvement in retention typically outperforms doubling acquisition spend.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV / CLV)

Formula: ARPU × gross margin ÷ churn rate
Use when: Judging whether CAC is worth paying — target LTV:CAC ≥ 3.

Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

Formula: (Starting MRR + expansion − churn − contraction) ÷ starting MRR
Use when: SaaS boardrooms — NRR ≥ 110% is best-in-class.

Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)

Formula: (Starting MRR − churn − contraction) ÷ starting MRR
Use when: Diagnosing whether NRR is inflated by upsells masking churn.

Logo Churn

Formula: Customers lost in period ÷ customers at start of period
Use when: Small-customer SMB SaaS — revenue churn can hide a leaky base.

Repeat Purchase Rate

Formula: Customers with ≥ 2 orders ÷ total customers
Use when: E-commerce — the truest signal of product-market fit.

Average Order Value (AOV)

Formula: Total revenue ÷ number of orders
Use when: Merchandising, bundling, and free-shipping-threshold decisions.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Formula: % Promoters − % Detractors (0–10 scale, top-2 vs bottom-7)
Use when: Long-cycle B2B or infrequent-purchase categories where retention lags.

Data & analytics KPI examples

KPIs for the data function itself — because a data team without KPIs is asking the business to trust it on faith.

Data Freshness / SLA hit rate

Formula: % of critical datasets updated within SLA window
Use when: Any org where dashboards drive daily decisions.

Data Quality Score

Formula: % of records passing completeness, uniqueness, validity checks
Use when: Customer data platforms, CRM, product analytics event schemas.

Time to Insight

Formula: Time from question raised to answer delivered
Use when: Judging self-service adoption vs. ad-hoc analyst dependency.

Model Prediction Accuracy

Formula: AUC, F1, MAPE — task-appropriate metric
Use when: ML models in production — track alongside business KPI it drives.

Data Product Adoption

Formula: Weekly active users of a dashboard or data product
Use when: Prioritizing which data assets to invest in vs. deprecate.

MarTech & CRM KPI examples

MarTech KPIs measure whether the stack is actually earning its licence fees. Most tools underdeliver because activation, not procurement, is the bottleneck.

Email Deliverability Rate

Formula: Emails delivered ÷ emails sent
Use when: Any lifecycle program — below 98% points to sender reputation issues.

CRM Data Completeness

Formula: % of records with all required fields populated
Use when: Segmentation, lead scoring, and account-based targeting.

Segmentation Coverage

Formula: % of contactable base assigned to an active segment
Use when: Ensuring the addressable audience isn't just the top 10%.

Automation Coverage

Formula: % of customer journeys triggered by automated flows
Use when: Reducing manual campaign ops as the customer base scales.

Consent Rate

Formula: Opt-ins ÷ eligible contacts (GDPR / ePrivacy scope)
Use when: EU markets — directly caps addressable audience.

KPI Examples: 40+ marketing, data & growth KPIs that actually move the P&L