Today we’re excited to announce a brand new beta feature in the Parse.ly dashboard: Goals. This new feature takes the pain out of reporting and tracking KPIs. For the technical walkthrough of where to find this new feature and how to use it, read the knowledge base article.

Also note that as for now, all users can see goals, but only admins can create goals within Parse.ly.

Set goals, check in on progress, and celebrate wins

Random acts of content no longer fly in today’s saturated digital landscape—it’s incredibly easy to get lost without a data-driven understanding of where you’re going and why it matters. Too frequently, teams spend a lot of time and effort doing very little because they lack a clear way to get everyone pulling in the same direction. 

It’s not enough to have a dedicated analyst (or analysts) who sets up tracking and measurement and then shares a spreadsheet with the manager who will then go over them in a meeting. 

Everyone on the team needs to be able to self-serve their check-ins towards progress. Writers and content creators need to be able to answer in seconds whether their contributions made a difference. That process needs to be painless. 

They also need to be able to remind themselves in seconds of their team’s clear objectives, so they can ask themselves “this idea I have—is it going to move the needle?”

This is exactly why we created Goals. 

With just a few clicks, you can create goals for six different KPIs and seven filter types. All of the goals you create, active and past, will be visible from one space in the Parse.ly dashboard. Here’s more on the specifics of how to create goals and what KPIs and filters you can use.

These Goals are presented in an easy, accessible manner so that everyone can understand how the goals contribute to the bottom line. Our goal was to empower our customers to forget digging through a bunch of tools to just get a quick status check, and to get them there in one click. 

If you’re ready to get started using this feature and need some inspiration, here are five common business objectives that you can track using Goals. Let’s start with the three pre-made goal templates that are available.

1. Get more conversions from email

Keep your team on track and focused on creating more conversion-worthy emails.

If you’re using the Parse.ly Content Conversions feature, use this first template to build a goal for tracking conversions to your content that come through email. 

Input your goal target with the number of conversions you hope to reach, choose the conversion attribution model and conversion type you want to track, identify whether it’s a quarterly or monthly target, and click Save. 

2. Increase organic search referrers 

Keep a pulse on your traffic coming from search.

If you’re focused on increasing organic search referrals to your content, there’s a goal template you can use to track your progress to that target as well. 

Input your goal target with the number of search referrals you hope to reach, identify whether it’s a quarterly or monthly target, and click Save. 

You can also learn more about your search performance by digging into the Referrers tab or building a weekly Top Listings report for Top Referrers by Page Views. 

3. Increase overall viewership 

Stay on top of your progress increasing overall page views to your content.

Use this third goal template to track your progress towards this common target.

Just type in the page view numbers you want to reach, specify whether it’s a monthly or quarterly goal, and select Save. 

Aside from these premade goal templates, you can also create countless other custom goals. Here are two that we recommend starting with.

4. Increase lead capture from campaigns

Align your team on creating more effective campaigns.

If you’re focused on capturing more leads through campaign efforts, you can create a custom goal to keep a pulse on the success of individual campaigns.

Input your goal target with the number of leads (conversions) you hope to reach, choose the conversion attribution model, set the conversion type to ‘Lead Capture,’ identify whether it’s a quarterly or monthly target, and click Save. 

5. Increase social interactions

Finally, if you’re making a push to increase social interactions, you can create a custom goal to keep an eye on social media engagement on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Input the number of social interactions you wish to achieve, set the ‘Metric’ to ‘Soc. Interactions,’ and identify whether it’s a quarterly or monthly goal.

Prove the value of your work to peers and managers. Celebrate your successes. Foresee and preempt your challenges. And stay curious about what the data shows you, what you can learn about your audience. Try out Goals today, and as always, let us know if you have any questions.