Must-measure marketing metrics for L&D

When it comes to Learning & Development, engagement is always a hot topic. And if you’ve found yourselves on our blog; I hope you know that marketing for learning® is the single best way to boost engagement.

But here’s the thing, doing marketing isn’t enough. You’ve got to measure it too. Because if you’re not measuring the right metrics, you’re flying blind. You could have designed a campaign that will give Apple a run for their money, but without measurement the chances are you’re just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks.

In this blog, we’re going to change that, and teach you all must-measure marketing metrics for L&D, that will help you:

• Understand audience behaviour

• Optimise your communications

• Gain stakeholder buy-in for wider L&D initiatives

So, let’s get stuck in with tier one: awareness metrics.

TIER 1: AWARENESS MARKETING METRICS FOR L&D

Before your audience can engage with anything, they need to know it exists. That’s where awareness metrics come in. These are the metrics that prove (to some extent) that people have seen your message promoting your latest learning initiative.

Here’s what to track:

• Impressions – How many people ‘saw’ your marketing? For example, if you have a banner advert on your intranet homepage, the impressions would be the number of people that went to the intranet homepage while your advert was there. You can’t guarantee that every single person actually paid attention to the ad, hence the metric being ‘impressions’ rather than ‘views’.

• Engagement – How many people interacted with your marketing? Think likes, comments and shares on a social post. Don’t dismiss engagement metrics just because you aren’t using external social media platforms – most internal social platforms (like Workplace for Business or Sharepoint) have an element of likes and comments too.

• Open rates – Are your subject lines or headings doing the job? To get people to take action off the back of your marketing; 9 times out of 10 they have to ‘open’ it first. Whether it’s an article on your intranet, an email or a video. Open rates do not prove that the marketing worked; but it does indicate awareness of your initiative.
  
  

These numbers help answer a fundamental question: Are we getting our learning offering in front of the right people? And if the answer is ‘no’, how can you ever expect them to engage?

💡 Top Tip: Low awareness = low engagement. If your numbers are lagging here, the issue probably isn’t your learning programme, it’s your distribution.

TIER 2: ENGAGEMENT METRICS FOR L&D

Once you’ve got eyeballs on your marketing, you need to know if people care. And typically your audience will take a step to indicate their interest in what we're talking about. This is where engagement metrics, which help us measure L&D campaign performance, come into play:

• Click-through rate (CTR) – Are people taking action from your comms (e.g. clicking on a call-to-action)? This can sometimes be tricky to measure for L&D teams, but tools like bit.ly really help!

• Dwell time (i.e. Video views/watch time) – Are your teasers, trailers or explainers landing? Are people actually watching them, or are they watching the first 15 seconds then bouncing? Are they spending time ‘dwelling’ on them to watch the full length?

• Event sign-ups or content downloads – Are people opting in? Are they asking for more information? Or are they reading your marketing and thinking “no thanks!”
  
  

These metrics tell you whether your marketing is piquing interest and motivating your audience to take the next step. And if they’re not? It’s a signal to rework your messaging or content format.

💡 Top tip: If you’re losing people at this stage; it’s usually because the WIIFM is missing from your message. Make sure you are always answering ‘what’s in it for me?’ on behalf of your audience!

TIER 3: CONVERSION METRICS FOR L&D

A lack of audience awareness and engagement is L&D’s biggest problem. But that doesn’t mean our job is done once we’ve ticked the awareness and engagement boxes. Conversion is where we make an actual impact.

Here’s what to measure:

• Registrations/enrolments – How many people are signing up for your learning experiences? Make sure you distinguish between forced-enrolment and voluntary-enrolment here. We can all auto-enrol employees to a course; but that doesn't prove our marketing has worked!

• Start rates – We’ve all been there, people sign up but never actually start. So make sure you measure how many people are actually sticking with it after enrolling!

• Drop-off rates – Where are people losing interest? Is it an issue with the course content? Or is it an issue with the marketing (maybe you mis-sold the content of the course, for example). Keep watch of when people are dropping off, and if you really want to know the truth – ask them!

These are the marketing metrics that prove your campaigns are moving learners from interest to action – and that your messages aren’t just noise in the inbox. Ultimately these are the metrics that start to prove the ROI of your marketing efforts, so don’t overlook them!

🚨 Reminder: This is not about forcing participation. It’s about creating demand. Marketing-led L&D means people want to engage.

TIER 4: RETENTION & ADVOCACY METRICS FOR L&D

The best marketing doesn’t just get people in the door – it keeps them coming back time and time again. And we want the same for learning, right? How often are people coming back to learn more from you? And how often are they recommending your offering?

To measure this, have a look at:

• Repeat engagement – Are people coming back to engage with other learning experiences? What’s the repeat usage percentage of your LMS?

• Loyalty – This is a little more anecdotal than the rest, but how willing are your alumni to get involved and help you promote your learning? Are they happy to give you testimonials and selfie videos?

• Referrals – Another great way of measuring advocacy for your learning offering is by measuring referrals. You could either set up a formal referral scheme, or maybe just a “how did you hear about this course” option in your sign up process.

🚨 Remember: Long-term engagement is critical in learning. These metrics help you build campaigns that sustain attention – not just grab it.

TIER 5: BUSINESS IMPACT METRICS FOR L&D

Most L&D professionals stop evaluating metrics before this point.

And that’s where most L&D professionals go wrong.

This is when L&D can come into their own, and truly prove the impact of our function – by connecting learning to the bigger picture of the organisation. And truthfully, if you’re not doing this, your marketing efforts are likely to be quite shallow.

So make sure you’re tracking:

• Performance improvement – Are learners applying what they’ve learned? Or are they just adding their certificate to their LinkedIn profile then going back to how they used to do things?

• Time to proficiency – Are people getting better, faster? Have you managed to lower the rates of tiny mistakes?

• Team or department KPIs – Are business units seeing measurable change after a learning initiative? Are they hitting their targets more often? Are they seeing a boost in productivity?

While these may go beyond traditional marketing metrics, they’re the metrics your stakeholders care about most. And by linking your marketing efforts to these outcomes, you move L&D from a “nice-to-have” to a business-critical function.

WHAT ARE THE MUST-MEASURE MARKETING METRICS FOR L&D?

In a nutshell, the must-know marketing metrics for L&D are:

• Impressions and engagement

• Open and click-through rates

• Dwell time

• Sign ups and downloads

• Enrolments

• Start and drop-off rates

• Repeat-usage and referrals

• Performance improvement

• Time to proficiency

• Business KPIs

THE REAL POWER OF MARKETING METRICS IN L&D

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about vanity stats. It’s about using marketing insights to build better learning experiences, get smarter with your campaigns, and elevate the role of L&D in your business.

When you measure what matters, you can make data-backed decisions, improve the efficacy of your marketing and prove your ROI to the business. It’s not just about tracking numbers. It’s about telling a story – about what your audience needs, how they behave, and what success really looks like.

So, if you’re still relying on completion rates alone, I hate to say it, you’re missing the full picture.

Marketing-led learning demands more. It demands insight. It demands iteration. And it demands a metrics mindset that puts the learner experience and business outcomes at the centre.