Vanity Metrics: Are You Tracking the Wrong KPIs?

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• Impressive stats like page views or follower counts don’t always reflect actual business growth.
• Actionable metrics—like conversion rate or retention—directly influence and inform strategic decisions.
• A global average email CTR is about 2.3%, making opens less valuable on their own.
• App retention benchmarks range from 20–40%. It’s better to track how users actually use the app.
• Vanity metrics may inform top-of-funnel awareness but shouldn’t serve as core performance measures.

It’s easy to focus on big numbers like page views or follower counts. But if your marketing work doesn’t bring real results like leads, sales, or customers who stay, those numbers might fool you. Vanity metrics can look good but don’t show what’s really working—or failing. We’ll show you how to stop tracking numbers that don’t mean much and find marketing goals (KPIs) that help you grow.

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What Are Vanity Metrics?

Vanity metrics are numbers that look good in reports but don’t give you much help for making your plan better. They can make your results seem better than they are, giving you a false sense of success. At the same time, you might be missing chances to make things work better. These numbers often track what people do, not the actual result.

Common Vanity Metrics

Here are popular numbers marketers often rely on—by mistake:

• Page views: Doesn’t indicate user intent or time spent.
• Social media followers: Can be geographically irrelevant or inactive.
• Email open rate: Triggered by image loads; highly unreliable now that many email clients block tracking pixels.
• Ad impressions: High exposure doesn’t equal strong performance.
• App downloads: Doesn’t reflect how users engage post-download.

These numbers aren’t always bad, but they don’t connect to business results you can act on. Think of them like appetizers. They might get people interested, but they shouldn’t be the main thing you base your decisions on.

What Are Actionable Metrics?

Actionable metrics actually make a difference. These numbers connect directly to business results and help you decide what to do next. They help you see what is working, what isn’t, and what you should change.

Key Characteristics of Actionable Metrics

• Connect to goals: They tie right into marketing goals like getting new customers, growing sales leads, or stopping customers from leaving.
• Help with planning: Each piece of data can tell you what to do next or how to make things better.
• Show trends over time: Seeing how numbers change over time is more helpful than just looking at single high points.

Examples of Actionable Metrics

These are the types of marketing goals (KPIs) worth tracking:

• Conversion rate: What percentage of efforts yield intended actions?
• Click-through rate (CTR): Shows how often users click links in marketing pieces to learn more or do something else.
• Customers staying/leaving rate: Shows if customers stay or go away.
• How long people stay and how far they scroll: Shows if your content is useful or interesting.
• Money from each marketing channel: Shows which marketing types bring in money.

When you focus on numbers you can act on, your plan becomes flexible and based on facts, not just guesses.

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics: A Side-by-Side Comparison

Vanity metrics can still be useful for seeing if people know about you at the start. But they don’t help you make campaigns better or decide where to spend money.

7 Vanity Metrics to Stop Worrying About (And Better KPIs to Track)

Let’s break down common vanity traps and reveal what numbers offer better help for seeing how things are going.

1. Blog Page Views → Engagement Rate or Bounce Rate

Just looking at page views doesn’t show if people like or use your content. Instead:

• Bounce rate tells if visitors leave without interaction.
• How long people stay and how far they scroll show if they are really interested.
• Page value (in tools like Google Analytics) shows how much it helps lead to a sale or other goal.

2. Email Open Rate → Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Because of privacy rules and pixel blocking, email open rates aren’t a good way to guess if someone is interested.

• CTR indicates if the reader clicked a link.
• Split your email lists into groups to make messages more useful for them. This can help increase CTR.
• A good number to aim for is 2.3%.

Emails sent to specific groups should have one clear call to action. This helps get more people to do something.

3. Subscriber Counts → Active Engagement & Churn

Having 10,000 subscribers doesn’t help much if only 1% actually do anything with your emails.

• Use group tracking (cohort analysis) to see what new users do compared to old ones.
• Watch your churn rate (people leaving) to see when people stop reading or interacting. This helps you stop sending too many emails or improve your content.
• Split users by the device they use or where they live. This shows where people are interested and where they are not.

Use Google Analytics or CRM tools to set up actions based on what users do.

4. Social Media Followers → Engagement Rate per Post

Trying to get lots of followers just makes the numbers look big. It doesn’t bring real results unless people actually interact with you.

• Calculate engagement rate by dividing interactions by total impressions.
• Ask users to create content themselves. This helps get people talking back and forth.
• Change from campaigns that just aim to be seen to campaigns that get people to do something. For example, you could show ads again to people who clicked before.

100 engaged followers are better than 10,000 lurkers.

5. Ad Impressions → Conversion Rate or ROI

Display ads can get seen by lots of people fast, but they need to lead to results.

• Track click-to-conversion behaviors using UTM tags.
• Use models that give credit to different marketing types (multi-touch attribution) to see how each one helps lead to a sale or goal.
• Focus on Cost Per Lead (CPL), Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), or ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

If people seeing your ads doesn’t lead to them doing something, look at who you are targeting or what your message says.

6. App Downloads → Retention Rate or Daily Active Users (DAUs)

Lots of app downloads quickly can hide how few users actually keep using the app or come back.

• Retention curves show you at what point users stop using your app.
• DAUs and Monthly Active Users (MAUs) show if people keep finding the app useful and like it.

How many people keep using an app often changes based on the type of business. 20–40% of users staying for a long time is normal.

7. Video Views → Watch Time Percentage

A “view” can count after just 3 seconds. This doesn’t show if people actually watched or if it helped your brand.

• Prioritize average watch time and completion rate.
• Split long videos into short parts. Also, test different video beginnings (A/B test intros) to see which ones work best.
• Videos made for one person can make many more people watch until the end.

Connect video goals (KPIs) to clear business goals: making your brand more known, showing how a product works, or getting leads.

Signs You’re Tracking a Vanity Metric

To quickly check if a number matters, ask these questions:

• So what? If this number goes up, what will I do differently?
• Does this tie to business results?
• Do I use this stat to tweak my strategy—or just to decorate reports?

If the answer is “no” to helping your plan or making decisions, the number is probably a vanity metric.

How to Identify Vanity Metrics in Your Analytics Stack

Regularly check your tools and reports.

Steps to Uncover Vanity Data:

• Check often: Do reviews every month to find numbers not linked to business results.
• Ask “now what?”: Is there an obvious next step after seeing the stat?
• Use numbers together: Look at numbers that show how many people see something (like impressions) with numbers that show what people do (like CTR, sales).
• Use tracking models: Use tools like Google Analytics or HubSpot to see the steps people take before they convert.

Use tools that don’t just track numbers, but follow where results come from.

Align KPIs With the Buyer’s Journey

Marketing goals should match where customers are in their buying process:

Don’t just measure all campaigns by how many sales they make. How they do at different stages matters too.

Build a Culture of Actionable Data

Getting everyone on board helps you truly change. You’ll stop just liking the big vanity numbers and start making things work better.

How to Encourage Data Mindfulness:

• Do monthly reviews looking at results you can act on, not just charts that go up.
• Start a rule: if you track a number, say what you will do with that information.
• Teach your team this: a vanity number is for showing off; a number that shows how you are doing is for making things better.

As time goes on, you’ll make decisions based on facts before problems happen, instead of just reacting.

How Automated Content Platforms Support Actionable Metrics

Tools for marketing automation and content can be made to help you find useful information that tells you what to do.

Key Platform Features:

• Tracking what people do: Follows what users do after they click the first time.
• Seeing across different places: Measures your blog, email, video, and ad work all together.
• Scoring content: Rates campaigns based on what people do, not just how many views they get.

Examples: HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Marketo, or custom-built dashboards with APIs.

Strategy Insight: Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven

Many companies say they make decisions based on data (“data-driven”). But often this means they look at too much data and can’t decide what to do.

• Being data-informed means you use data from machines but also add what people know and understand.
• Try things out (experiments), don’t just guess what might happen based on numbers. Data doesn’t always show everything.
• Test changes live based on what you learn, not just feelings.

Strategy isn’t about reacting to numbers—it’s about understanding the “why” behind them.

Realistic Benchmarks: What Success Actually Looks Like

Comparing how you are doing to what is normal in your business helps you know what to expect.

Use these averages and your own past data to decide what “success” means for you.

Making Vanity Metrics Useful

Here is a simple plan to help your team think differently:

• Check your numbers: Get rid of numbers that don’t help; remove reports that just show stats.
• Match to goals: Make sure every number you track has a clear purpose for your plan.
• Write down how you’ll use them: Connect all your marketing work to numbers that show what you are trying to do.

When numbers match goals, you can always make your methods better.

Tools That Help Separate Signal From Noise

Don’t just use the reports that come with your tools. Use tools that give you more detail.

Helpful Tools Include:

• Hotjar or CrazyEgg: For heatmaps and behavioral interaction.
• HubSpot or Salesforce: CRM tools that unify marketing and sales metrics.
• Google Looker Studio: For customizable, visual dashboards.
• UTM Builders and Trackers: To trace campaign ROI across platforms.

Better tools mean less guessing and show what actually happens.

Let Insights Drive Impact

Vanity numbers feel good, but they don’t often help you grow. Real success comes from using marketing goals that give you useful ideas. These ideas lead to better campaigns, more leads that are ready to buy, and customers who stay. It’s not just about gathering data. It’s about knowing what to do with it, week after week, campaign after campaign.

Want to focus on the data that actually matters for your plan? Try our content and analytics platform. It tracks what makes people do something, not just what gets seen.

Citations

• Statista. (2022). Email marketing click-through rates worldwide average 2.3%. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/
• Nielsen. (2021). Consumer engagement with video rises sharply with personalized content. Retrieved from https://www.nielsen.com/
• Google Analytics Help Center. (n.d.). About engagement metrics. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics