Marketing Automation Reports – What Metrics Help You Measure Success?
To be successful in his or her job, a marketer needs data. Understanding the metrics of your marketing actions allows you to maximize its effectiveness. So, let’s have a look at the analytics that a decent marketing automation solution should provide you with.
Main Groups of Reports in Marketing Automation Platforms
The marketing analytics available in your marketing automation platform should be divided into two basic groups: real-time reports, that are constantly updated (e.g. the last message sent to your clients) and summary reports, that are available after an event (e.g. message delivery or bounces statistics).
Real-time marketing data is important for quick decisions and tweaks in the current marketing automation efforts. Historical data, on the other hand, allows marketers to evaluate their overall performance and make strategic, long-term decisions.
Types of Reports Available Marketing Automation Platforms
All the metrics collected by the marketing automation solution you’re using are presented in separate categories, that combine marketing statistics by channel used or by client reaction. These are: email message/summary reports, SMS/MMS message/summary reports, web push message/summary reports, bounce reports, complaint reports, unsubscription reports and so on.
Depending on the marketing automation software provider, you should also have access to more advanced analytics, such as split test reports, Microsoft SNDS reports, Signal Spam reports, social media reports, workflow reports etc.
When choosing your marketing automation solution, make sure it offers as many types of reports as possible. Generally speaking, it is better to have too much data than to have too little of it.
How Your Marketing Automation Reports Can Be Customized
For most of the marketing automation reporting it is possible to narrow down the time range, limit its scope and customize its grouping criteria. It allows you to extract necessary information more efficiently.
You can view your reports from e.g. today, last 7 days, last 30 days, current year, date range, specific date etc. The scope of your report can be either presented in the default mode, with no filtering of data, or narrowed down to a selected contact list/domain/message type/IP address/segment/send time optimization etc.
All data in your reporting should be easily downloaded in a *.csv or *.xlsx file for further analysis or use in external tools.
Final Thought
While on the hunt for the best marketing automation software for your eCommerce business, make sure it offers a robust reporting module. It will allow you to adjust your marketing efforts and make informed decisions, which in turn will make your marketing automation strategy much more successful.
