The Metric I Care About More Than Clicks

When I started in marketing, I was obsessed with numbers. Clicks, opens, conversions, impressions, I wanted to track everything. I still do, to a degree. There’s nothing like seeing a clean upward curve in your analytics dashboard. It scratches the same part of my brain that enjoyed color-coding binders in 8th grade. But at some point, probably after launching my 500th campaign and still feeling vaguely empty after it “performed,” I started asking a different question.

Not “Did they click?”
But “Will they remember?”

Clicks are easy. You can buy them. Trick them. Guilt them. Gamify them. You can shove a CTA in someone’s face like a free sample at Costco and maybe, just maybe, they’ll bite. But that doesn’t mean they care. That doesn’t mean they felt anything.

I’ve run campaigns that crushed it in terms of reach and engagement, and still couldn’t tell you what the brand actually stood for. Worse, neither could the customer. We all just kind of vibed, clicked, scrolled, and left. There’s a reason bounce rate exists.

The older I get, and I say that as a millennial who still uses the word “algorithm” like it’s Voldemort, the more I find myself caring about something you can’t easily track. Trust. Emotional resonance. Long-term brand memory. Whatever you want to call it, it’s that moment where someone doesn’t just see your brand, they feel it. They store it somewhere. You live rent-free in their brain, not because you outbid a competitor, but because you said something real.

Like the time I chatted with Chewy to cancel a subscription after my dog passed away. They didn’t just refund the order. They told me to donate the food to a shelter. Then they sent me flowers. With a handwritten note. With my dog’s name in it. That wasn’t customer service. That was something else. Something that makes me bring them up years later in rooms they’re not even in.

That’s the metric I care about now. Did it make someone feel seen? Did it land in their chest, not just their inbox? I’ve come to believe the best marketing isn’t the kind that gets you to act fast. It’s the kind that lingers. It makes you nod slowly. Or tear up a little. Or send it to a friend with “this is exactly how I’ve been feeling.”

You can’t A/B test your way to that. You have to listen. You have to care. And yes, you probably have to rewrite it three times because the first version was trying too hard.

I still care about performance. I still run the numbers. But I no longer measure success by how fast someone clicks. I measure it by whether they come back. Whether they trust you enough to stay. Whether they feel like the brand might actually get them.

Clicks are a starting point. But meaning is the metric I’m chasing now.