SUMMARY: Marketers agree that tracking email-to-website conversions is a far more important metric than tracking open and click rates. But what exactly is a conversion? This is where marketers disagree.
In analytics, a conversion is what is known as a user-defined event. In other words, it can be anything you want it to be. The most important considerations when defining a conversion are to make sure it matches the strategic goals most important to your organization, and is realistic enough so you can receive actionable data.
Marketers targeting business channels, for example, are often tasked with generating leads to support a long and complex sales process. This is why about a third of B2B marketers define a conversion as a visitor completing a registration form.
The B2C sales cycle is often short and sweet, and driven by an ecommerce website transaction. This is the reason approximately half of all B2C marketers define a conversion as a visitor who purchased a product or service online.
Digging deeper we find that the larger the organization, the more likely it is to define a conversion as a visitor taking an action, such as downloading content or completing a registration form. Smaller organizations are more likely to use a direct marketing approach, defining a conversion as a visitor purchasing a product or service online.
