Pageviews are down. Opens are noisy.
So how do you know if your audience is healthy?
You need a better dashboard — one that balances growth, engagement, monetization, and retention.
Enter: The Audience Scorecard. A framework that helps audience professionals move beyond vanity metrics and build a complete picture of performance.
🧭 Why the Scorecard Matters
In SaaS, teams use scorecards to track pipeline, churn, LTV, NPS, and more.
In media, too many teams still default to:
- Monthly uniques
- Email list size
- Social followers
- Raw open/click rates
Useful, but incomplete.
What we need is a scorecard that:
- Aligns with revenue and retention
- Flags areas of risk or opportunity
- Reflects both behavior and business value
Let’s build it.
📊 The Four Scorecard Categories
We recommend organizing your scorecard across these four pillars:
1. Acquisition Quality
Are we bringing in the right people?
Metrics to include:
- First-party email capture rate
- Cost per qualified subscriber (not just cost per lead)
- Referral rate (% of users who invite others)
- Paid vs. organic subscriber split
Why it matters: Growth without quality leads to churn and low LTV.
2. Engagement Depth
Are people actually consuming and interacting?
Metrics to include:
- Session duration or scroll depth
- Recency and frequency scores (RF models)
- Article completion or multi-visit percentage
- Community participation or reply rate (if applicable)
Why it matters: Passive audiences don’t convert or retain.
3. Monetization Potential
Is this audience contributing financially?
Metrics to include:
- % of audience behind a login or paywall
- Free-to-paid conversion rate
- Revenue per subscriber or user (ARPU)
- Upsell/cross-sell email engagement
Why it matters: Monetization isn’t just sales — it’s strategic alignment with audience behavior.
4. Retention Health
Are we keeping the people we worked hard to acquire?
Metrics to include:
- Churn rate by segment or source
- Re-engagement success rate (e.g., lapsed to active)
- Time to inactive
- NPS or qualitative satisfaction indicators
Why it matters: Sustainable growth requires keeping the right people.
🛠️ Building Your Custom Scorecard
The best scorecards aren’t static — they evolve.
Here’s how to build yours:
- Choose 2–3 metrics per category to start
- Set baselines from the past 90 days
- Assign weighted values based on business impact
- Review monthly as part of your cross-functional planning cadence
- Use red/yellow/green indicators to quickly flag movement
Tools to consider:
- Airtable, Notion, or Google Sheets for MVP versions
- Looker or Tableau for advanced visualization
- CDP/ESP/CRM integrations for data pulls
🧠 Beyond the Metrics: Use the Scorecard to Drive Action
The goal isn’t just better reporting.
It’s better decision-making.
Use the scorecard to:
- Align teams across editorial, marketing, and revenue
- Prioritize audience initiatives (what’s underperforming vs. over-resourced)
- Set OKRs or quarterly themes based on audience performance, not just output
“What’s measured gets managed. But what’s mismeasured gets ignored.”
Final Thought: Build for Clarity, Not Complexity
The most effective audience scorecards don’t overwhelm.
They clarify.
They show you where your growth is strong, where your risk is rising, and where your next move should be.
Start simple. Expand thoughtfully.
And remember — your audience isn’t just traffic. It’s a system. This is how you tune it.
✉️ Forward this to your analytics or revenue team. Or reply and tell me: what’s one metric you wish you could track better today?