Marketing Performance Indicators

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On this page

• Executive Summary
• Key Performance Indicators
• Other PI Pages
• Legends
  • Health
  • Instrumentation
• How to work with pages like this
  • Pages
    • Helper Functions
  • Data
  • Guidelines

Executive Summary

KPI	Health	Status
Net New Business Pipeline Created	Unknown	tbd
Pipe-to-spend per marketing activity	Unknown	tbd
Marketing efficiency ratio	Unknown	tbd
Opportunities per XDR per month created	Unknown	tbd
LTV / CAC ratio	Unknown	tbd
Social Media Followers	Okay	Currently, there is no target because we are in a benchmarking year and without previous strategic data.
New Unique Web Visitors (about.gitlab.com)	Unknown	We need to define if this includes docs, about, and forum or only uses about.gitlab.com subdomain. Then we need to set a target, preferable a year over year target to account for monthly seasonality.
Total Web Sessions (about.gitlab.com)	Unknown	We need to define if this includes docs, about, and forum or only uses about.gitlab.com subdomain. Then we need to set a target, preferable a year over year target to account for monthly seasonality.
Meetups per month	Problem	GitLab is not currently supporting in-person meetups in order to encourage responsible physical distancing within our community. We have increased efforts to organize virtual events.
Wider Community merged MRs per release	Attention	There is a seasonality to wider community contributions (e.g. lower activities during holiday periods).
Community Channel Response Time	Unknown	The Marketing team is working with the Data Team to get the data into the data warehouse.
New hire location factor - Marketing	Unknown	tbd
Pipeline coverage	Unknown	tbd
Lead follow-up response time	Unknown	tbd
Qty. of Case Studies published per month	Unknown	tbd
50% or more SOV compared to most published competitor	Attention	We use TrendKite to track SOV and do not have ability to share public dashboard.
Increase partner focused media coverage by 25% in FY21	Attention	Do not have a public dashboard for coverage numbers.
Increase amount of remote work focused media coverage by 50% in FY21 over FY20	Attention	Do not have a public dashboard for coverage numbers.
Total number of MQLs by month	Unknown	tbd
Product Downloads	Unknown	tbd

Key Performance Indicators

Net New Business Pipeline Created

The combined IACV of the net "New Business" opportunities. This data comes from a sheetload file/.

Target: vs Plan > 1

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Pipe-to-spend per marketing activity

Pipeline (IACV on Opportunities) divided by the total marketing program spend, broken down by marketing activity.

Target: 5

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Marketing efficiency ratio

Marketing efficiency for a given month is calculated as the ratio of IACV from closed won opportunities for the current month and the 2 preceding months vs the Marketing Operating Expenses (IACV / Marketing Operating Expenses) for the same time period. GitLab's target is greater than 2.

Target: 2

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Opportunities per XDR per month created

The net number of unique opportunities that are created and have a "sales development representative" assigned/attached to the opportunity segmented by xDR and by month. This data comes from Salesforce.

Target: TBD

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Unknown

• tbd

LTV / CAC ratio

The customer Life-Time Value to Customer Acquisition Cost ratio LTV:CAC measures the relationship between the lifetime value of a customer and the cost of acquiring that customer. A good LTV to CAC ratio is considered to be > 3.0.

Target: greater than 3.0

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Social Media Followers

Follower growth across social channels is a good indicator or resonating with a wider audience or deeply connecting within a niche. Follower growth is defined as all net-new followers, across all GitLab-branded social media channels in a given period. This KPI is tracked by exporting reports and data from our social media management tool, Sprout Social. This data is then manually ingested into Sisense via a formatted Google Sheet. This KPI will evolve further as more data becomes available.

Target: 0

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Okay

• Currently, there is no target because we are in a benchmarking year and without previous strategic data.

New Unique Web Visitors (about.gitlab.com)

New Users in Google Analytics, or the number of first-time users during the selected date range. Note, there is ongoing work in finalizing this KPI chart in Sisense (WIP); please reference the DataStudio chart, which is also accessible by the url below

URL(s)

• https://datastudio.google.com/embed/reporting/12FyakX5mE3BTqXO3QgniMNq0KP4LjyNG/page/JcPY

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Unknown

• We need to define if this includes docs, about, and forum or only uses about.gitlab.com subdomain. Then we need to set a target, preferable a year over year target to account for monthly seasonality.

Total Web Sessions (about.gitlab.com)

Total number of sessions in Google Analytics within the selected date range. These are visits to the web site that may include multiple pages. Note,there is ongoing work in finalizing this KPI chart in Sisense (WIP); please reference the DataStudio chart, which is also accessible by the url below

URL(s)

• https://datastudio.google.com/embed/reporting/1ycD6QqPYpm1bYAYoaeDTnIPZNrXI53zw/page/JcPY

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Unknown

• We need to define if this includes docs, about, and forum or only uses about.gitlab.com subdomain. Then we need to set a target, preferable a year over year target to account for monthly seasonality.

Meetups per month

We aim to participate in at least 20 GitLab Meetups per month. A GitLab Meetup is defined as a meetup with a presentation given by a GitLab team member or a wider community member about GitLab or a tangential topic. It does not include meetups without GitLab content where GitLab only provides support. This KPI is tracked by counting the number of issues in the GitLab.com data with the Meetups label in the Marketing group. Each event should have one associated issue with the `Meetups` label. The issue due date should be set to the event date. The combination of `Meetups` label and due date will be used by our data dashboard to count the number of meetups each month. This method of tracking can results in errors when meetup issues are created in other groups or when GitLab-related presentations at meetups are not shared with the Community Relations team.

Target: 20

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Problem

• GitLab is not currently supporting in-person meetups in order to encourage responsible physical distancing within our community. We have increased efforts to organize virtual events.

Wider Community merged MRs per release

The Wider community contributions per milestone metric reflects the number of merge requests (MRs) merged from the wider GitLab community for each milestone from our GitLab.com data. To count as a contribution the MR must have been merged, have the Community contribution label, have a GitLab milestone set (e.g `11.11`, `12.0`, etc.) and be against one of the monitored gitlab-org group projects. Note, Wider community metrics are more reliable after 2015 when the Community contribution label was created, and lastly, there is ongoing work to provide deeper insights into this metric in the Wider Community Sisense dashboard. Previously, this KPI was represented by the below Bitergia chart.

Target: TBD

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Attention

• There is a seasonality to wider community contributions (e.g. lower activities during holiday periods).

Community Channel Response Time

Community Channel Response Time is the time between an inbound message and the first-reply time. The current goal is to be under 7 hours for all channels and under 5 hours for high-priority channels. This response time is currently tracked in Zendesk.

URL(s)

• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-data/analytics/-/issues/3771

Status: Unknown

• The Marketing team is working with the Data Team to get the data into the data warehouse.

New hire location factor - Marketing

This is a subset of an existing KPI. Please see the definition for the parent KPI.

The average location factor of all newly hired team members within the last rolling 3 month as of the end of the period. (eg. If the current month is 2019-09-01 then the calculation pulls months 2019-06-01 to 2019-08-31). Each division and department has their own new hire location factor target.

Target: < 0.72

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Pipeline coverage

Pipeline with close dates in a given period (quarter) divided by IACV target. Pipeline coverage should be 2X for current quarter, 1X for next quarter, and .5 for 2 QTRs out.

Target: 2X for current quarter, 1X for next quarter, and .5 for 2 QTRs out

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Lead follow-up response time

The amount of time (Days, hours, minutes) it takes for a Lead/Contact to move from MQL to another status - this indicates how long it took for a sales rep/xDR to respond to the record becoming a MQL.

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Qty. of Case Studies published per month

Status: Unknown

• tbd

50% or more SOV compared to most published competitor

The comparison of the GitLab share of voice (SOV) percentage to most published competitors’ SOV percentage. SOV is the number of media mentions compared to the media mentions received by a competitor and then the percentage is calculated out of 100%. The SOV percentages are tracked via a media service called TrendKite by our PR agency.

Target: greater than 50%

Status: Attention

• We use TrendKite to track SOV and do not have ability to share public dashboard.

Increase partner focused media coverage by 25% in FY21

The amount of media coverage/articles focused on partner and channel related topics in FY21 compared to FY20. Increasing the percentage of coverage increases GitLab’s brand awareness on the specific topic.

Target: greater than 25% in FY21

Status: Attention

• Do not have a public dashboard for coverage numbers.

Increase amount of remote work focused media coverage by 50% in FY21 over FY20

The amount of media coverage/articles focused on remote work topics in FY21 compared to FY20. Increasing the percentage of coverage increases GitLab’s brand awareness on the specific topic.

Target: greater than 50% in FY21 over FY20

Status: Attention

• Do not have a public dashboard for coverage numbers.

Total number of MQLs by month

Total number of Marketo Qualified Leads per month. This data comes from a sheetload file.

Target: TBD

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Product Downloads

Total downloads by installation method (Omnibus, Cloud native helm chart, Source, etc). This chart is populated with the versions.gitlab.com data.

Target: TBD

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Other PI Pages

• Performance Indicator Maturity Table
• Engineering Function Performance Indicators
  • Customer Support Department Performance Indicators
  • Development Department Performance Indicators
    • Growth Section Performance Indicators
  • Infrastructure Department Performance Indicators
  • Quality Department Performance Indicators
  • Security Department Performance Indicators
  • UX Department Performance Indicators
• Product Performance Indicators
  • Dev Section Performance Indicators
  • Ops Section Performance Indicators
  • Secure & Defend Section Performance Indicators
  • Enablement Section Performance Indicators
• Corporate Finance Performance Indicators
• Recruiting Performance Indicators
• People Success Indicators
• Data Team KPI Index

Legends

Health

Value	Level	Meaning
3	Okay	The KPI is at an acceptable level compared to the threshold
2	Attention	This is a blip, or we’re going to watch it, or we just need to enact a proven intervention
1	Problem	We'll prioritize our efforts here
0	Unknown	Unknown

Instrumentation

Value	Level	Meaning
3	Okay	We are correctly capturing and measuring data for GitLab.com and self-managed instances.
2	Attention	Missing one of: GitLab.com or self-managed data.
1	Problem	Missing both: GitLab.com and self-managed data.
0	Unknown	Unknown

How to work with pages like this

Pages

Pages, such as the Engineering Function Performance Indicators page are rendered by an ERB template that contains HTML code.

• Any changes to the Performance Indicator (PI) ERB template will cascade to all links under the Other PI Pages section
• To update the options for the maturity table, make changes to the Performance Indicators Maturities ERB file
• To update the way each individual (K)PI displays:
  • make changes to the Performance Indicators List ERB file for how the (K)PI is displayed on the KPI Index page
  • make changes to the Performance Indicators ERB file for any other properties and its format
• When adding a new PI page,
  • create the new PI page in the business division's handbook section (like the Engineering Division page)
  • include the relative link to the PI page in the Performance Indicators List ERB file
  • add all the (K)PI information into the Performance Indicators data file

Helper Functions

These ERB templates calls custom helper functions that extract and transform data from the Performance Indicators data file.

• The kpi_list_by_org(org) helper function takes a required string argument named org (deparment or division level) that returns all the KPIs (pi.is_key == true) for a specific organization grouping (pi.org == org) from the Performance Indicators data file.
• The pi_maturity_level(performance_indicator) helper function automatically assigns a maturity level based on the availability of certain data properties for a particular PI.
• The pi_maturity_reasons(performance_indicator) helper function returns a reason for a PI maturity based on other data properties.
• The performance_indicator_target(name) helper function returns the target value from the target property for a specific PI from the Performance Indicators data file.
• The performance_indicators(org) takes a required string argument named org (deparment or division level) that returns two lists - a list of all KPIs and a list of all PIs for a specific organization grouping (department/division).
• The signed_periscope_url(data) takes in the sisense_data property information from the Performance Indicators data file and returns a signed chart URL for embedding a Sisense chart into the handbook.

Data

The heart of pages like this is the Performance Indicators data file which is in YAML file. Each - denotes a dictionary of values for a new (K)PI. The current elements (or data properties) are:

Property	Type	Description
name	Required	String value of the name of the (K)PI
base_path	Required	Relative path to the performance indicator page that this (K)PI should live on
definition	Required	refer to Parts of a KPI
parent	Optional	should be used when a (K)PI is a subset of another PI. For example, we might care about Hiring vs Plan at the company level. The child would be the division and department levels, which would have the parent flag.
target	Required	The target or cap for the (K)PI. Please use Unknown until we reach maturity level 2 if this is not yet defined.
org	Required	the organizational grouping (Ex: Engineering Function or Development Department)
is_key	Required	boolean value (true/false) that indicates if it is a (key) performance indicator
health	Required	has two additional elements/property - level (inclusive value between 0-3) and reasons. This should be updated monthly before Key Meetings by the DRI.
urls	Optional	list of urls associated with the (K)PI
sisense_data	Optional	contains elements/properties related to Sisense, including chart (numeric Sisense widget ID), dashboard (numeric Sisense dashboard ID), shared_dashboard (Sisense shared dashboard ID), embed (v2)
public	Optional	boolean flag that can be set to false where a (K)PI does not meet the public guidelines.
instrumentation	Optional	has two additional elements/property - level (inclusive value between 0-3) and reasons. This should be updated monthly before Key Meetings by the DRI.

Guidelines

• Each KPI chart should be a timeseries chart.
  • Use Purple bars to denote values.
  • Use a single Green bar for the current month (in progress).
  • Use a Red stepped-line for timeseries target.
  • Optional: Use a Black dashed-line for rolling average.
• Each KPI should have a standalone dashboard with a single chart representing the KPI and a text box with a link back to the handbook definition.
  • In Sisense, create a shared dashboard link to get the shared dashboard ID.
  • In Sisense, use the Share Link action of the chart to get the chart (widget_id) and the dashboard ID.
  • Add the shared_dashboard, chart , and the dashboard key-value pairs to the Performance Indicators data file under the sisense_data property
• Avoid : in strings as it's an important character in YAML and will confuse the data parsing process. Put the string in "quotes" if you really need to use a :
• urls: should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one url
• Both maturity.level and health.level display a value between 0 and 3 (inclusive). The health value is a manual input while the maturity is an automated value based on other discrete (K)PI data properties.