Platform Overview
Integration Hub
Sirius AI™
Customer Data Management
Personalization
Journey Orchestration
Reporting & Data
Behavioral Analytics
Web
Email
Site Search
Conversational CX
WhatsApp
Web Push
InStory
App
SMS & RCS
Join the $0 Migration Movement™
The Insider One Difference
Compare Vendors
Switch to Insider One
Success Story
Retail & Ecommerce
Financial Services
Travel & Hospitality
Beauty & Cosmetics
Automotive
Telecommunications
Interactive Platform Tour
Blog
E-Books & Guides
GlossaryIncremental Conversion
Incremental conversion is the extra actions, like purchases or sign-ups, that happen because of your marketing or personalization efforts. It shows the real impact of your campaigns. To calculate it, you compare a group that saw your campaign with a similar group that did not.
For example, if 200 people in the personalized group made a purchase and 160 in the control group did, the incremental conversions are 40. This means your campaign created 40 extra conversions.
Why use Incremental Conversion?
- Pinpoint the number of additional conversions caused by your marketing and filterout customers who would have converted organically, so your ROI calculations reflect a genuine increase.
- Use incremental conversion results to move budget away from low-impact activities and double down on campaigns proven to drive net-new customer actions based on statistically valid tests.
- Track which workflows, touchpoints, or messages most reliably drive extra conversions, enabling continuous data-driven improvement of all journeys.
Incremental Conversion vs. Conversion Rate vs. Raw Conversions
| Metric | What is Measured | When to Use | Limitation |
| Raw Conversions | Count of total conversions | Overall performance, reporting volume | Doesn’t reveal efficiency or incremental impact |
| Conversion Rate | Conversion efficiency | Channel/landing page effectiveness, CRO, testing | Doesn’t show which conversions were driven by the campaign |
| Incremental Conversion | Extra conversions from a campaign/test | Measuring lift from campaigns, personalization, A/B tests | Requires a control group or baseline |
FAQs
Incremental conversion is calculated by subtracting the control group’s conversion count from the test group’s. For example, if your campaign group gets 120 conversions and the control group gets 100, the incremental conversion is 20. For more precise formulas and examples see the article on incremental conversions summary metrics.
Incremental conversion measures only the conversions that your marketing actually caused, helping you avoid attributing natural or baseline conversions to your campaigns. This ensures ROI stats are accurate and actionable.
Conversion rate is the overall percentage of visitors or users completing a desired action, while incremental conversion isolates the extra conversions attributed solely to your campaign or test above baseline. If you want to compare campaign incrementality vs control groups, see the definitions in the article on Onsite Analytics: Metric Definitions.
Incremental conversion is most useful for paid media, personalization, lifecycle journeys, A/B testing, or multivariate tests, and retargeting, essentially anywhere you need to prove net-new impact.