Crypto marketing is full of noise. Everyone is chasing visibility, but very few are asking the right questions about what that visibility actually means. Views are not users. Likes are not loyalty. Follower counts don’t pay the bills. In a space that moves this fast and breaks this often, your marketing metrics need to reflect more than surface-level hype.
Traditional marketing follows a funnel. First awareness, then consideration, then conversion. In crypto, it’s different. One post can go viral, bring in thousands, and yet none of them stick. Or you run a quiet campaign in a niche Telegram group, and it brings your best contributors. So what are the metrics that actually tell the truth?
Here are a few that stand out to me
Retention over reach
You had 20,000 people flock in from your one time campaign, great, but how many stayed beyond the campaign season? How many returned after a week? Retention tells you who found value. Reach only tells you who glanced.
Conversion with context
Not all conversions are equal. Who are your new users? Are they contributors, builders, farmers, or bots? Volume without quality is a false signal. You need to understand who is showing up and why. I really liked the thoughts shared in this thread If airdrops bring users but not loyalty… what actually makes them stay?
Community activity ratio
It’s not about how many are in your Discord or Telegram. It’s about how many actually speak, share, support others, and show interest in the product. A healthy community has motion. Not just numbers.
Response to product updates
When you ship something new, how does your audience respond? Do they use it, give feedback, or ignore it completely? This is a simple but powerful way to measure engagement beyond clicks.
Wallet behaviour post-campaign
If you ran an airdrop or incentivised activity, what did users do with the tokens? Stake them? Sell them? Hold and explore your dApp further? This shows real alignment versus opportunistic behaviour.
Sentiment and speed during disruption
When something goes wrong, how fast does your team respond? What happens to sentiment before and after that moment? This tells you how solid your community trust is and how well your messaging works under pressure.
In Web3, growth metrics without retention or contribution are just noise. You can chase big numbers, but if your users don’t return, engage, or build alongside you, it’s a temporary win as many would agree from Why Web3 Marketing Needs to Shift From Hype to Meaning
I want to hear from other marketers in the Guild. What metrics do you look at regularly? What’s overrated and what’s underrated in your view? Have you found any indicators that changed the way you run campaigns or communicate progress?
Drop your thoughts. Let’s talk about what really matters.
