Most founder dashboards track the wrong things. Daily traffic, Facebook impressions, email list size — these are activity metrics. They tell you if you're doing marketing. They don't tell you if marketing is working.
These five metrics tell you if marketing is working. I measure all of them in every audit.
1. Cost per Lead (CPL)
CPL is the top of every downstream calculation. If it's broken, every fix further down the funnel compounds on a weak base.
Formula
CPL = Monthly ad spend ÷ Leads generated
Benchmarks: Webinar $15 · Evergreen $20 · VSL $25 · Challenge $10 · Application $75
Why it matters: a 30% CPL overage on modest volume compounds to six figures a year. Most founders don't notice because they look at monthly spend, not per-unit cost. Full benchmarks in this piece.
2. Engagement rate
This is the leak between "registered" and "saw the offer." The specific metric depends on funnel type:
- Live webinar: show-up rate. Benchmark 50%.
- Evergreen: landing page opt-in. Benchmark 40%.
- VSL: landing-to-video conversion. Benchmark 45%.
- Challenge: completion rate. Benchmark 40%.
- Application: form completion. Benchmark 60%.
Engagement rate is where founders bleed the hardest because these are people they already paid to acquire. A 15-point gap on show-up rate is 15% of your acquisition budget walking away silently every month.
3. Close rate on offer-viewers
Of the people who actually see your offer, how many buy? This is the highest-leverage metric in any funnel.
A 10-point improvement in close rate isn't 50% more revenue — it's often 2–3x more revenue, because acquisition cost didn't change.
Benchmarks vary: 15% for webinar close-on-shows, 4% for evergreen conversion, 75% for VSL checkout completion, 30% for application close-on-calls. When this metric moves, everything downstream amplifies.
4. Sequence recovery rate
Of the non-buyers who went through your offer, how many eventually buy? Most founders track close rate and stop. That's a mistake. The average high-ticket buyer says no 5–7 times before saying yes — if you don't have a sequence catching them, you're leaving 20–40% of revenue on the table.
Benchmark
A healthy 7–14 day post-offer sequence recovers 8–15% of non-buyers. A 30-day win-back adds another 3–5%.
This is usually the cheapest leak to fix because the leads are already paid for. More in this piece on the 7-day sequence framework.
5. LTV:CAC ratio
LTV:CAC is the only metric that tells you if the whole funnel is profitable. Everything else is inputs — this is the output.
Formula
LTV:CAC = Lifetime customer value ÷ Customer acquisition cost
Bands: 3:1 healthy · 4:1+ strong · Below 2:1 signals unprofitable scale · Below 1:1 means you lose money per customer
If your LTV:CAC is below 3:1, the fix is almost never "get more leads." It's either raise LTV (upsells, retention, higher price) or lower CAC (the first four metrics). A funnel with bad LTV:CAC can't be fixed by pouring more traffic into it — that just amplifies the loss.
What not to track (the vanity trap)
Metrics that feel important but don't predict revenue:
- Total website traffic. Irrelevant if it doesn't convert.
- Email list size. A 50K list that never gets sequenced is worth less than a 5K list that does.
- Social followers. Brand health, not funnel health.
- Monthly ad spend. Input, not output. Judge spend by CPL × LTV:CAC.
- Webinar registrations. Means nothing if show-up rate is broken.
If you're tracking all of the above and not the five metrics above it, your dashboard is lying to you about the state of your funnel.
Where to start
Pull the five metrics for the last 90 days. Benchmark each one against the numbers above. Rank the gaps by dollar impact. That's your fix list.
If you want me to do it for you — with leaks quantified to the dollar and a prioritised action list — that's exactly what the Revenue Recovery Audit delivers.