Moneyball Book Review – The Best Marketing KPI’s and Metrics for Association Management

By Chelsea McClain

“But Moneyball is about baseball,” you say? Yes, but it is also a highly regarded business book that teaches the importance of DATA, DATA, DATA. Without data you are going on gut instinct…which is a very risky way to do business.

The book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, is about how data, and the shrewd analysis of said data, trumped money in the game of baseball, making winners out of one of the poorest teams in the league. But the lessons learned from how Billy Beane ran the Oakland A’s can be applied to the business world. The big takeaway is how essential your data, and specifically data analysis, is to your business. You must back up your decisions with data, not your gut.

So, my “game” is marketing. And in marketing, you will often hear complaints about how difficult it is to calculate an ROI for marketing efforts. I beg to differ. In the digital age of marketing, there are plenty of metrics to be had. If you can’t calculate an ROI for your marketing campaigns, then maybe you aren’t asking the right questions.

First, what’s the difference between a KPI (key performance indicator) and a metric? A metric measures overall business health, while KPIs measure progress toward a specific goal. So, a metric, tied to a specific business objective, is a KPI. What might be a metric to me could be a KPI to you.

With that out of the way, here is a list of marketing KPIs/metrics that are commonly used by association management companies (AMCs). Choose those that will best measure your progress toward your company’s goals and voila! Your ROI awaits.

We would love to know what are your favorite KPIs/metrics for association management marketing? Leave them in the comments below.