The best marketing campaigns don’t just look good—they work. Meaning: they get the audience to engage. But how do you know if they’re working? Enter: marketing data. Specifically, those metrics that tell you what’s hitting and what’s not.

You don’t have to play detective to figure this out. Tools like HubSpot Marketing Hub give you instant access to data, like email opens, clicks, form submissions, and more. These data let you know if your campaign resonates with your audience.

Let’s talk about how to use HubSpot to track these metrics, make data work for you, and create campaigns that get results.

Why Tracking Campaign Effectiveness Matters

Tracking campaign effectiveness means figuring out if all your hard work leads to results—more clicks, more leads, or just more people noticing you. 

Metrics are the breadcrumbs that show you what your audience is doing after you put something out there. Are they clicking on a call-to-action link? Are they liking your social media posts? 

When you track metrics, you reveal insights that help you take what’s working and keep using that or improve something that’s falling flat. 

Here are more reasons to track campaign effectiveness:

1. Maximize ROI

Marketing campaigns cost time, energy, and money—so you want to ensure a good return on investment. Tracking your campaigns helps you identify what’s working (so you can double down) and what’s flopping (so you can tweak or ditch it).

Marketers who proactively plan their marketing are 331% more likely to report success than their peers. Metrics like conversion rates and cost-per-lead tell you if your budget is being spent wisely or if it is time for a pivot.

2. Understand Your Audience

It’s our job to know what our audience likes, not least because we know 72% of consumers only engage with personalized messaging.

Metrics like clicks, page views, and time spent on-site are like breadcrumbs that lead you straight to their interests.If you notice a spike in clicks on your “Beginner’s Guide to Marketing” email, it’s a safe bet your audience craves approachable, educational content.

3. Continuous Optimization

No campaign is perfect out of the gate. Tracking metrics gives you the chance to refine as you go. Maybe your email open rate is solid, but no one’s clicking through. That’s a cue to rethink your CTAs or content structure.

4. Accountability

Let’s not forget the practical side: metrics are your receipts. They show stakeholders that your campaigns are moving the needle. Plus, having a data-backed story gives you confidence when presenting your results.

Key Metrics to Track for Campaign Success

There are so many metrics available—so where do you even begin? Focus on the data that matter most to your business goals. Whether email marketing, lead generation, or ad campaigns, prioritize what aligns with your objectives.

In HubSpot, you can monitor campaign performance and dive into metrics like website sessions, new contacts, and revenue attribution. 

Let’s look at a few examples of the most critical metrics you can measure with HubSpot and how they can guide your strategy:

1. Sessions

ou’ll see this metric when you analyze marketing campaigns in HubSpot. It tracks the number of visits to your website assets related to a campaign. It’s like a headcount of who’s walked through the door to check out your landing page, blog post, or case study.

Sessions help you gauge how effective your campaign is at driving traffic. If nobody’s showing up, it’s time to rethink your promotion strategy.

HubSpot tracks sessions automatically when a visitor clicks on a URL with Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters or visits content tied to your campaign. Just make sure you’re tagging your links correctly!

2. New Contacts (First Touch)

New contacts measure the number of people who became part of your audience after interacting with your campaign for the first time. 

For example, if someone lands on a blog post through a social ad, clicks a CTA, and fills out a form to download an eBook, they’re now a new contact.

Tracking new contacts helps you identify which campaigns are successfully reaching fresh audiences. If one campaign consistently generates new contacts, you know it’s a strategy worth scaling or replicating.

HubSpot automatically attributes these new contacts to your campaign when their first interaction happens on a page with your UTM parameters or an asset tied to the campaign.

3. New Contacts (Last Touch)

This metric measures the final interaction that led someone to convert and become a contact. For instance, if someone browsed your site multiple times but only filled out a form after clicking on a promotional email, that email’s campaign gets credit as the “last touch.”

Since you understand the touchpoints that close the deal, you can focus on optimizing those final interactions—whether it’s improving email CTAs, refining landing pages, or offering time-sensitive discounts. 

HubSpot tracks this by tying conversions to the campaign associated with the page or form completed during the same session.

4. Influenced Contacts

Influenced contacts show how many people—new or existing—engaged with any asset related to your campaign. This could mean opening a marketing email, clicking a social post, or submitting a form on a campaign landing page.

This metric helps you understand the broader impact of your campaign beyond direct conversions. For example, a campaign might influence hundreds of contacts who later convert through a separate initiative. 

Knowing this can help you better allocate resources and see which assets are truly driving engagement. HubSpot makes this easy by tracking all interactions with emails, ads, social posts, and more tied to your campaign.

5. Revenue

Revenue tracks how much money your campaign brought in from closed-won deals. If a contact interacted with a campaign asset before a deal was closed, that campaign gets partial credit for influencing the revenue.

This metric is the ultimate way to tie your marketing efforts to the bottom line. For example, if a campaign influenced $50,000 in revenue, you can confidently justify your budget allocation—or even make a case for more funding. 

HubSpot handles the heavy lifting by associating revenue with campaign assets like emails, CTAs, and ads.

6. Unique Marketing Influences

This metric analyzes two perspectives: the number of contacts influenced by specific campaign assets or the number of assets that influenced a single contact. For instance, one contact might click on multiple ads or interact with different blog posts within a campaign.

This review of unique marketing influences gives you a granular view of how individual assets perform and how they contribute to the campaign’s success. 

HubSpot tracks all touchpoints, including emails, ads, and social posts, so you can pinpoint exactly which assets deserve more attention (or a makeover).

Marketing Email Metrics to Track

But what about marketing email metrics? Marketing emails are often huge contributors to campaigns. The average ROI for every dollar spent on a marketing email is $36 to $40.

Here are metrics you can track in HubSpot to find out if your emails are working or not:

1. Open Rate

The open rate tells you what percentage of recipients opened your email out of the total number who received it. HubSpot counts an open when images in the email load or when a recipient clicks a link (even if the images don’t load).

Open rates give you insight into how effective your subject lines are and whether your audience is engaging at all. A low open rate? Time to test new subject lines, sender names, or email timing.

2. Click Rate vs. Click-Through Rate

Click Rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked on any link in your email out of everyone who received it.

Click-Through Rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked a link out of those who opened your email.

These metrics dive deeper than open rates by showing how engaging your email content is. A high click rate means your CTA and content are resonating, while a low click-through rate suggests your email might need more compelling links or a clearer structure.

3. Deliverability Results

This dashboard shows how your email performed in terms of successful deliveries, bounces, unsubscribes, and spam reports. Each metric can be further analyzed in the Recipients tab for detailed insights.

If you’re seeing a lot of bounces or spam reports, it might signal list quality issues or overly aggressive content. A high unsubscribe rate could mean your emails aren’t meeting audience expectations.

4. HTML Click Map

This visual tool shows you where recipients clicked in your email. It ranks links by the percentage of clicks relative to others and combines data for identical URLs, even if placed in multiple locations.

You can use this tool understand which sections of your email are most engaging. For example, if a CTA in the middle of your email outperforms the one at the top, you’ve got actionable feedback for your next campaign.

5. Top Clicked Links and Engaged Contacts

Top Clicked Links highlights which links got the most clicks, giving you clarity on what content resonated.

Top Engaged Contacts is a list of your most engaged recipients, based on opens and clicks.

These reports show which specific elements and audience segments are driving engagement. Use this data to refine your messaging or target similar audiences in future campaigns.

6. Time Spent Viewing Email

You can only get this metric if you have a HubSpot Professional or Enterprise account. But it can be quite valuable because it categorizes recipient behavior into:

• Read: Viewed for at least 8 seconds.
• Skimmed: Viewed for 2-8 seconds.
• Glanced: Viewed for less than 2 seconds.

Understanding how long recipients spend with your email helps you optimize content length and layout. A high “glance” rate? Maybe simplify your email or move the CTA higher.

7. Engagement Over Time

This metric is another one you can only get in HubSpot Professional or Enterprise. It’s a visual graph of email opens and clicks over time, helping you identify the best time of day to reach your audience.

If you notice spikes in engagement at specific times, you can schedule future emails to hit inboxes when your audience is most active.

How to Use HubSpot to Gather and Analyze Metrics

First, you should know how HubSpot tracks your numbers. When you link assets like emails or landing pages to a campaign, HubSpot only starts tracking data from that moment on. This means historical data won’t be included retroactively. 

However, if you look at reports for individual assets, you’ll see all their past performance.

Let’s go through how to access, review, and interpret your HubSpot campaign metrics step-by-step.

Step 1: Navigate to Your Campaign

Start by accessing the campaign you want to analyze. Head to your HubSpot account, go to Marketing > Campaigns, and click the campaign name. From here, you’ll be able to view a wealth of data under the Performance and Attribution tabs.

Step 2: Review Performance Metrics

HubSpot’s Performance tab offers a series of detailed reports that give insight into your campaign’s impact.

• The Overview Report is your high-level snapshot, showing metrics like sessions, new contacts, and influenced contacts. You can drill down into these metrics to uncover specifics, such as how many new contacts were created or how assets performed overall.
• The ROI Report highlights your campaign’s cost-effectiveness, displaying metrics like total spend, revenue, and attributed revenue. HubSpot also calculates ROI automatically based on your inputs, offering an easy way to gauge success.
• The Revenue Report and Revenue Attribution Report (depending on your HubSpot subscription) provide a deeper look into revenue generation, breaking down how assets contributed to closed deals and total revenue.

Spend time exploring these reports to gain a comprehensive understanding of your campaign’s results.

Step 3: Analyze Specific Reports

For a more granular view, HubSpot includes specialized reports tailored to different aspects of campaign performance:

• The Influenced Contacts Report focuses on how many contacts interacted with your campaign assets.
• The Website Traffic Report breaks down sessions and new contacts by traffic source, allowing you to pinpoint where your audience is coming from.
• If you’re testing contact engagement by lifecycle stages or cost, the Contact Lifecycle Count and Cost Reports (BETA) are useful additions to explore.

Each report is designed to answer specific questions, making it easier to hone in on what matters most to your strategy.

Step 4: Export and Share Data

If you need to share your findings, HubSpot makes it simple to export performance data. Within your campaign dashboard, click Actions > Export and choose your preferred format—CSV, XLS, or even PDF. 

You can include all available data or narrow it down to specific metrics, ensuring you present only the most relevant information to your team or stakeholders.

Step 5: Leverage Campaign Attribution

To understand how your campaign assets contributed to outcomes like new contacts, deals, and revenue, use HubSpot’s Attribution tab. 

Customize your reports by selecting a date range and attribution model—whether you’re evaluating contact creation, deal creation, or revenue generation. These tools help identify which assets are driving the most impact, enabling you to double down on what’s working.

Take Control of Your Marketing Campaign Success

Understanding your HubSpot metrics helps you make better choices for your campaigns. As we've discussed, the first thing you should do is focus on the reports that show you how your assets are performing. 

Look for metrics that highlight what's working and where adjustments are needed. Spend time analyzing your performance analytics; this will give you a clearer picture of your campaign’s effectiveness.

Start with one or two metrics that are most relevant to your goals, and gradually expand your analysis as you become more comfortable. It’s about using the data to guide your next steps and enhance your overall marketing impact.

Partner with Origin 63 to Master HubSpot Metrics

At Origin 63, we specialize in helping businesses make sense of their data, track what matters, and improve campaign performance. Let us show you how to harness HubSpot’s full potential and turn your metrics into actionable insights. 

Reach out today to make every campaign your best one yet!