Italians explore the KPIs of marketing communications

The Italian Advertisers Association (UPA) launched “The KPIs of Communication” project at a meeting with their members in July.

An UPA research found that although there is extensive literature around communication KPIs, there was no common language or industry standard in place. This has made it virtually impossible for stakeholders to consistently and meaningfully evaluate the performance of their marketing communications activities.

Through this project, UPA aims to enable and instill a culture of measurement and accountability within the marketing and communications disciplines. The project’s objectives are to:

• Build a bridge between offline and online, as well as between branding and performance indicators;


• Clearly define communication KPIs;


• Consolidate all the different types of communication KPIs into one single system; and


• Develop a dynamic, scalable system that is easy to update.

As part of the project, research was conducted in collaboration with strategic marketing expert and researcher Paola Furlanetto that identified the KPIs of 14 marketing communications objectives. These were then cross-referenced with eight communication tools including display, email, events, native and product placement, owned media, paid search, PR and social. The research aims to provide marketers with a toolkit to help them benchmark their campaigns.

UPA have published a booklet describing the project and the results of their research, accompanied with a user-friendly database that contains a mapping system of the KPIs. The association plans to translate these tools into English for international use.

For more information, please contact UPA.