Have you ever scrambled to put together a last-minute marketing report, only to realize you are missing a crucial piece of data?
You are not alone.
Many marketing departments go through the same process every month: manually extracting marketing data from multiple sources, entering it into a spreadsheet, then spending hours fiddling with the data to create a report they can actually use to improve their sales strategy.
For most ecommerce companies, that’s a lot of data to go through - and a lot of time to waste trying to make sense of it all.
Fortunately, automated reporting is here to change all of that.
What is automated reporting?
Automated reporting refers to the process of getting the marketing data you need with no extra effort on your part after the initial setup.
Simply pick the metrics you want to track, set up automatic data extraction and start analyzing.
No more spreadsheets - and no more late nights spent at the office formatting monthly reports for tomorrow’s marketing meeting!
Sounds too good to be true?
It gets better.
Here are the top 5 ways automated reporting software can improve your ecommerce company’s marketing strategy, and make the life of your CMO much easier.
1. It’s a time-saver
Pulling data from multiple sources, manually entering it into a spreadsheet, trying to make your report look presentable…. Doing this every single week or month can be a huge time-suck.
With the help of automated reporting software, you only need to do the work once.
Connect your most important advertising and marketing automation systems are connected to the analytics software, and you will be able to track and analyze your campaign metrics with a simple click of a button.
Think of the hours you spend manually transferring marketing data to spreadsheets every month - what could you do with that time to actually improve your company’s sales strategy?
2. It’s cost-effective
Less time spent putting together monthly reports means more time to actually analyze the data - using the same resources.
Automated reporting software allows you to create better marketing and sales strategies simply by eliminating the repetitive, unnecessary tasks related to data entry and analysis.
You will be able to increase your sales numbers while spending less time on the data itself - it’s a win-win!
3. It’s easy to understand
Instead of complicated spreadsheets and presentations, you get easily-customizable dashboards that show you the exact metrics you want.
You can instantly view the results of any activity, including email campaigns, advertising and web traffic. The data is presented in a consistent format every single month, allowing your whole marketing team to focus on what the data actually represents.
Plus, the powerful visualization tools make complex marketing data accessible to every member of your organization - not just the data scientists!
As Michael Wilt from TranStar Industries puts it:
“The problem is that a typical person sees a raw data stream and runs away screaming. What’s extraordinary about conDati is that it turns that raw data into actionable intelligence that a normal person can actually understand, consume, and act on.”
4. It enables real-time decision making
The ability to set up alerts that notify you of unusual account activity is invaluable.
It allows everyone, from your new marketing analyst to your CMO, to stay up to date with what’s going on - and fix mistakes before they can cause any damage to your sales.
Seeing a dip in the campaign statistics after that last email? No problem.
With real-time insights provided by automated reporting software, you’ve got plenty of time to analyze the issue, fix it and come up with recommendations to prevent it from happening again.
5. It provides more transparency
Instead of making your management sift through complicated spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations, you can easily present the data in relation to your company’s monthly or quarterly goals.
Dashboards display key performance indicators across campaigns - revenue, goal conversions and costs - the metrics that are absolutely crucial to ecommerce companies like yours.
You will never have to answer the dreaded “So... What was the point of this?” question again - the data will do it for you.
John Miller from Discount Dance Supply uses conDati to see the exact impact of supply chain events on their monthly revenue:
“We can quantify the revenue and profit trade-offs of discounts and promotions — and for the first time ever, we’ll be able to see the impact on our revenue of events in the supply chain, and even of actions by competitors.”
Getting started with conDati
Tired of manually inputting marketing data into spreadsheets every month?
Want to experience the benefits of automated reporting for yourself?
conDati offers real-time insights, campaign ROI comparisons and actionable optimization strategies for ecommerce companies ready to take the next step - all backed by data science and the most powerful development tools available today.
