Marketers can sometimes get caught up in online marketing metrics that really don't mean a darn.  Twitter followers, email list size, "website hits", and first page ranking on Google don't mean much unless there is some context around them.  Here are five metrics all marketing professionals should use in order to show real value to their online efforts.  They are also metrics that your C-suite executives will understand and appreciate as you continue to grow your digital marketing strategy.

1. Email open rate.
If your list size is 5,000 people deep but your open rate is only 4%, you're email strategy is not working.  What are those other 4,800 people doing with your message?  Are they even getting it?  Too often, we see email lists being pounded with little-to-no follow-up measurement being performed.  While growing and utilizing the list is important, making sure the people on the list engage with the medium is the whole point of an email program.  And that all starts with an open.

2. Website unique visits.
I once heard a speaker say that "hits" stands for How Idiots Track Success.  That's a bit snarky, but it's quite true.  Usually when people are about talking hits they are meaning visits.  And even more valuable are unique visits, or, the number of different people coming to a site.  If you own a candy shop and the same kid comes in and out 50 times in a single day, he's really only one customer. Same with website visits.  You want to know how many different people your online message is reaching.

3. Twitter retweets.
Followers are great, but there are numerous ways to grow your Twitter follower base with "crap follows".  However, when your message gets retweeted, that's essentially someone else giving you kudos to your messaging...so much so that they are willing to share your message with their followers.  When you think about it, it's word of mouth in the most basic sense.  Strive for retweetable content and use a tool like Retweetist to track your efforts.

4. PPC conversion rates.
The power of online marketing - and specifically, paid search - is that it is extremely trackable.  Conversion rates that are assigned a dollar value can give you real and actionable data regarding the performance of your PPC efforts.  Without a conversion tracking metric, you are simply pushing traffic to a site with no real way to measure value. Failing to show an ROI is what can get us marketing people into trouble with the beancounters.

5. Key organic search rankings.
Note the word "key".  Too often, organizations optimize for terms that they feel are business drivers, when in fact their analytics show otherwise.  Yes, it's great to rank first page for "south dakota used ford car dealers" but those aren't the queries that drive traffic.  It's important to develop a keyword glossary based on keyword effectiveness index (KEI) scores and other key factors and then use that glossary as your optimization focus.

There are obviously many more important metrics for marketers to watch, but these are a few of the key drivers in search, web, email, and social that can help show the impact your online efforts are having.  Don't agree with these top five?  Let us know what you think.