uncomfortable but they show what is actually happening inside a business.
The Lean Startup defines actionable metrics simply as“ numbers that demonstrate cause and effect.” They help you understand how a decision impacts behaviour. They show you what to fix, what to change, and what to invest in and that when you change something, the onboarding flow, the pricing, the messaging, the quality, consumer behaviour changes too. That’ s how you know you’ re measuring something real.
Let’ s bring this into the real world.
Consider a streaming platform. View counts are vanity metrics, big, impressive, but often misleading. Completion rate is actionable. Churn rate is even more actionable. These metrics tell you whether people love the content enough to finish it, whether they stick around, and what drives them away.
This is a lesson platforms globally have learned. Netflix, long seen as the pioneer of data-driven entertainment, discovered that total hours watched, once their prized metric, wasn’ t enough to predict customer satisfaction or retention. When subscribers began cancelling because they didn’ t feel they had enough compelling content, Netflix shifted focus toward depth of engagement and retention-linked metrics. They realised that algorithmic popularity didn’ t always translate into emotional connection.
Telcos provide another useful window into actionable measurement. Selling millions of bundles looks good on paper, but it doesn’ t prove brand health. Metrics like churn, Net Promoter Score, minutes of dropped calls, network uptime, revenue per user, and product adoption depth are far more indicative of long-term strength.
In Safaricom’ s annual and sustainability reports, customer experience is highlighted as a strategic pillar. They say they track real customer pain points, such as the number of customers affected by outages, and monitor NPS across customer segments. Their public commitment to becoming a“ customer-obsessed tech company” shows a shift toward experience metrics that correlate with trust, loyalty, and long-term revenue. These are actionable metrics: human, behavioural, and tied to real outcomes.
Banks offer an equally instructive example. For years, many institutions fixated on the number of new accounts opened. But a dormant account has no value. The real question is: how many of those accounts are active, funded, and using multiple products?
Equity Bank, whose“ low-cost, highvolume” business model is well documented, is a perfect case study in how actionable metrics change with maturity. In the early years, Equity’ s scale came from sheer volume: many Mimi ni Member accounts, many small transactions. That was the foundation. But as the bank matured, the metrics that mattered shifted. Today, their reporting and when you listen to their leadership, emphasises deposit growth, transaction activity, cross-product usage, and earnings per customer, behavioural indicators of deepening relationships, not just raw account growth. The bank still seems to care about volume, but its strategic metrics reflect value, endurance, and customer productivity.
In FMCG, the most precise actionable metric, in my view, is the repeat purchase
If actionable metrics are the numbers that show you the heartbeat of your business, then context is the oxygen that keeps that heart alive. Without context, even the most sophisticated metric can mislead you. This is the silent trap we fall into as marketers: believing that a number, by itself, tells the whole story. It never does. Data is the map. Context is the terrain. If you sail with one and ignore the other, you get lost. rate. Sales spikes during promotions are vanity. What happens after the discount disappears is actionable. Household penetration- how many new people are entering your brand- is actionable. Share of wallet is actionable. These metrics tell whether consumers are choosing your brand because they love it, trust it, or simply because it was cheap that week.
It’ s the same story across categories. Actionable metrics almost always have three characteristics:
They are behavioural: They capture what people actually do, not what we hope they are doing.
They are tied to value: They influence revenue, retention, loyalty, or satisfaction.
They are directional: They tell us where to adjust, not just where we stand.
And perhaps most importantly, actionable metrics usually force uncomfortable questions- the kind we avoid when hiding behind vanity metrics. Why aren’ t customers returning? Why did satisfaction drop? Why is churn rising? Why is this segment not converting? Why is our premium offering underperforming?
When companies start measuring the right things( the hard things) strategy suddenly comes into focus. Teams stop chasing spikes and start building systems. Marketing becomes clearer, calmer, and more effective. The business becomes anchored in reality.
One of my favourite pieces of research from Deloitte notes that companies that consistently outperform their competitors“ anchor their decisions in behavioural data rather than exposure metrics.” Exposure metrics( like reach or impressions) are vanity-adjacent because they show potential impact, not real impact. Behavioural metrics show what actually happened. The truth, not the hope.
The Danger Of Data Without Context
If actionable metrics are the numbers that show you the heartbeat of your business, then context is the oxygen that keeps that heart alive. Without context, even the most sophisticated metric can mislead you. This is the silent trap we fall into as marketers: believing that a number, by itself, tells the whole story. It never does.
Data without context is like a photo without a caption. It captures a moment, but not the meaning behind it. And this is
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