Summer School: Part 4 Reporting On Your Campaigns

Part 4: Reporting On Your Campaigns

1. Start with your goals.

Take a look at your overall goals and the things you care most about - then figure out how to measure them and the best source for that data. Always refer back to your measurement plan to ensure you are focusing on the right action.

2. Tailor to your audience

Meeting with the CEO? They’ll likely want to see reports that speak directly to how marketing efforts are affecting the bottom line. Discussing data from an email campaign with your digital specialist? They might be more interested in open rates and click through rates. Reporting should be relevant, valuable, and actionable to your audience. 

• Consider creating different reports - perhaps a weekly in-depth report for that email/digital meeting and a one-pager for the CEO once a quarter.

• Consider the timing of your reports. Some results are important to keep a close, regular eye on - daily or weekly. Others may just need to be reviewed once a month, once a quarter, or at the end of a campaign. Consider the action you’re likely to take or the decisions that need to be made as a result of what you’re seeing, and plan to deliver your report(s) with a frequency that reflects that. 

• Consider the best way to present the data you’ve collected: spreadsheets, graphs, infographics, supporting paragraphs. Then use these tools to lead your audience through your insights, making the data easy to understand and interpret. 

3. Automate or streamline where you can

There are many tools available to help you collect your data - including many that can be automated. Figure out how to streamline your data collection and analysis where you can, so that reporting can happen easily and consistently.

4. Tell a story with your data

The real value in reporting is what happens after the report is delivered and reviewed. Data is only valuable if you do something with it. Adding your insights, recommendations, and action items to your report (scattered throughout or as a summary) will help ensure that your effort is well worth it - and will help your next campaign or project be even more successful.

A well set up (and well maintained) analytics platform can help identify what isn’t working on your online properties by showing how users engage with your online platforms, and more specifically, your promotional efforts. These insights can be used to optimize the experience for your current users based on how they currently engage with your site.

Looking for support to help design a measurement plan that will work for you - or a partner to help develop data-driven marketing solutions? Reach out to the Metric team. We’d love to hear what you’re working on and offer our support to help you meet your goals for this year.

Read the full Summer School Series here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3