What Is Marketing Reporting Software?

Marketing reporting software helps you quickly create reports with key metrics such as website traffic, leads generated, and conversion rate. You can use this data to measure the success of your campaigns, identify improvement areas, and make data-driven decisions that lead to growth.  

On the other hand, with manual reporting, you must go through several steps before presenting the report to your clients: 

First, you need to visit each marketing platform, export data to spreadsheets or PDFs, and then manually join, clean, and normalize the data.

Then, you must add visualizations and comments to the report. 

Finally, you convert the report into a format you can share with clients, such as PDF or presentation slides. 

This reporting method leaves a huge margin for errors that can slow down decision-making.

Automated reporting software solves those problems by automating much of the marketing reporting process. 

A marketing reporting tool collects data from all your marketing channels and creates reports that give you insights into campaign performance. This way, you can quickly identify what is working and what needs attention. 

How to Choose the Best Marketing Reporting Software for Your Marketing Agency?

The quick answer — choose software that solves all your agency reporting pain points, from connecting scattered data sources to providing feedback to clients. 

Here are the features you should be looking for. 

#1. Easy to use

Would you like to spend weeks figuring out how the software works or spend hours creating each report?   

If the answer is no, get a reporting tool that has:

• Automated data connections that you can set up in a few clicks
• User-friendly interface that requires little to no training
• Drag-and-drop widgets, charts, and graphs to build reports
• Large library of reporting templates 
• Simple but capable customization options
• Ability to scale up as the volume and complexity of your data grows
• Excellent customer support to troubleshoot issues

You should be able to put the reporting process on autopilot. With Whatagraph, you can build insightful reports in less than an hour without setting up complex data integrations or hiring a data scientist.

Since no training is required, you can onboard new team members and clients faster and use the time saved to work on your marketing strategies. 

“By automating our data collection and reporting, we have not only made our own operations more efficient, but above all improved our customers' access to information. They can now benefit in real time from deeper insights presented in a clear and user-friendly way. We can now together make faster and even better decisions!”

Andreas Sandgren - CEO @ Market Solutions

#2. Highly customizable

Different clients have different channels and campaign goals, which is why you must be able to choose which metrics you want to highlight in your reports. 

For example, in Whatagraph, you can easily pick the KPIs you want to show for each channel using drag-and-drop widgets.

This way, anyone on your team can build compelling marketing reports. 

You can also create any kind of custom dimensions and metrics by blending data or channels together. 

Let’s say you want to report on total conversions from Facebook Ads (unique checkouts), the client's Instagram (website visits), and LinkedIn (form fills). 

You can set up a custom metric on Whatagraph:

Now, you have a more comprehensive and accurate picture of how your marketing campaigns drive conversions and revenue for your client.

Also, you can customize reports in different ways:

• Upload your logo or your client’s logo to the report
• Create color schemes that fit your brand colors
• Add text, headers, and footers

As a result, you get professional and white-labeled reports without complex and time-consuming customization setups. 

Which brings us to the next point. 

#3. Time-saving 

An intuitive interface makes it easier to “get things done”. But it’s always good if a reporting tool has features that let you get things done faster.

These time-savers include:

Report templates: Ready-made templates can save you a lot of time (up to 40 hours a month) creating reports.

They also help you tell a compelling story about how marketing campaigns contribute to your client’s business bottom line. 

In addition to our professional templates, in Whatagraph, you can save any custom report you create as your own team template. 

Widget templates: In Whatagraph, you can also save any custom chart or table as a widget template and use it in future reports. 

Now compare that with Looker Studio (ex-Google Data Studio), where you must create everything from scratch every time.   

Linked reports: For big agencies that manage many clients, editing reports one by one is a painstaking process. 

Changing connected sources, text widgets, cover images, or company logos for multiple reports can take up a lot of time that you can use more productively. 

Whatagraph’s Linked Reports feature comes as a lifesaver. 

How it works:

1. Choose a report that will be a master template.
2. Create any number of reports from this template. 

Any changes you make to the master template also take effect in the linked reports. 

Linked reports help you:

✅ Save hours by making changes across multiple reports in one go. 

✅ Update many reports consistently and without mistakes.

✅ Managing more reports as your client base grows.

“Having active customer support to help fix any issues was a big contributor, but we also really liked the ability to save templates and connect sources to multiple charts/widgets at once without having to edit them individually.”

Capterra verified review by Nico T., Media Planner

#4. Accurate and reliable data 

Presenting the latest metrics can be challenging — especially if you manually export data into spreadsheets or use reporting software with unreliable third-party connectors. 

These third-party connectors may cause some of your data to be inaccurate because of:

• API limitations and changes
• Data compatibility issues
• Rate limits
• Authentication problems
• Network and latency issues

That’s one of the regular complaints we’ve heard about Looker Studio. It often fails to update data evenly across all integrations. 

Look for digital marketing reporting software that pulls live or near-real data from all your platforms so all metrics are always up to date. 

Once you connect your data sources to a Whatagraph, there’s nothing to maintain or refresh on your side. 

The integrations we provide are fully managed. This means they’re more reliable, seamless, and regularly serviced by our dedicated Product team members. 

These integrations pull data from multiple sources automatically and normalize it into consistent, usable formats, ready for accurate reporting. No manual cleaning or prepping needed.

Plus, the data refreshes every 30 minutes across all your dashboards, sources, and blends, so there are no inconsistencies between reports. 

Fully-managed solutions also allow you to blend data from different sources to create custom metrics and dimensions for more comprehensive reporting.

As a result:

✅ You can always deliver up-to-date performance metrics to clients.

✅ Reduce manual workload and build reports faster. 

✅ Boost client trust as they know you can always deliver timely and accurate information.

#5. Scalable 

You should be looking for a marketing reporting solution that can scale up as your data and reporting needs grow. 

For instance, one of our power customers, Dtch. Digitals, a full-service marketing agency from the Netherlands switched to Whatagraph as they grew to 85 employees and over 250 clients. 

To meet demands of their growing team and clients, the agency realized they needed to modernize their reporting tech stack. 

The tool they used could only create tables, which lacked clarity and did little to engage clients. 

There was no option to adjust the KPIs for different clients, and the reports were static PDFs, while their clients wanted live dashboards. 

To bridge the gap, their internal teams started creating their own dashboards, which only lead to inconsistencies. Plus, the tool lacked many integrations they needed, so the whole reporting process became a mess.

With Whatagraph, Dtch. Digitals could easily standardize their reports with consistent branding, logos, and colors, which resulted in more engagement.  

They also standardized reports by creating templates for different customer segments, like eCommerce, Lead Generation, etc.

Those templates not only ensured consistency, but also made it faster to onboard new team members and clients.   

Their team also uses the Organize feature to combine data from different channels and show total results in one place. This way, their clients don’t have to jump between different sheets or reports to see the big picture. 

“Whatagraph’s reports are now our foundation for discussing results with clients,” said Stef Oosterik, Quality Manager at Dtch. Digitals. “And thanks to attractive visuals, clients can see the professionality behind our agency.”

Client satisfaction translated into retention over time. Since adopting Whatagraph, Dtch. Digitals has seen a 50% decrease in churn.

So, what reporting tool features can help you scale your operations?

Automated workflows: Your software should automate repetitive tasks like pulling data, generating reports, and scheduling updates. With such an automated process in place, it’s easy to take on more clients. 

Integration with more platforms: As your agency adds services or clients, the software should be able to connect more data sources. With Whatagraph, there’s no limit in the number of data sources you can connect. 

API access: Whatagraph offers a custom API you can use to pull data from niche platforms or systems specific to your clients' industries. This allows you to connect any data source you have.

Flexible report and dashboard templates: You should be able to build dashboards that can adjust to client needs without requiring a separate tool or manual effort. 

In Whatagraph you can create both static reports and dynamic dashboards from the same templates. Share any report you create via a link and it automatically becomes a dashboard that updates every 30 minutes. 

#6. Dedicated support

Even when you become familiar with your reporting tool, there are moments when you need a helping hand to make it work just as you want it to. 

All Whatagraph pricing plans come with a dedicated Customer Success Manager and live chat support which replies to your questions within 4 minutes.

Your dedicated CSM will help you:

• Migrate data from your current platform
• Connect to channels and data sources
• Organize your data
• Create reports
• With anything else you need

This can make the transition to Whatagraph a much smoother experience. Here’s an example.

Peak Seven is an advertising agency from Florida that saved 63 hours a month by replacing Looker Studio with Whatgraph as their reporting tool.

But that wasn’t the only benefit. 

Thanks to the accurate and reliable data they could present, Whatagraph became their “single source of truth” for both clients and internal teams. 

What’s more, increased transparency and clear insights into campaign performance helped Peak Seven strengthen client relationships and improve retention. 

Our customer support played a big role in Peak Seven’s smooth transition to Whatagraph. 

Kim Strickland, Digital Marketing Specialist at Peak Seven, said that whenever their team ran into a roadblock, our live chat support team was ready to help them move it.   

“I've joked about this often—with Whatagraph, we're not paying for a reporting system. We're paying for customer support,” Kim shared. “There's a level of dedication from the Whatagraph team that you don't often experience anywhere else.”

Now that we know what to look for in a reporting tool let's see how to create a report. 

How to Report on Marketing Performance?

The easiest way to report on marketing performance is to use dedicated reporting software. For example, in Whatagraph, you can start tracking and reporting performance in four simple steps:

Step 1. Connect your data sources.

Start by connecting the digital marketing channels from which you want to pull data. You can do this in a few clicks. 

If you want to connect data from a custom source or niche platform, you can build a custom integration easily using our Custom API. 

Step 2. Organize your data.

Once your data sources are connected, you can organize the data so it’s easy for your team and clients to digest. 

Whatagraph’s no-code Organize workflow helps you: 

• Create data blends from different sources
• Unify metric and dimension names
• Standardize campaign names 
• Segment data by specific demographics or geographics

As a result, you get standardized, unified marketing dashboards that both your teammates and clients can easily understand. The benefits are:

• More comprehensive performance view
• Fewer data discrepancies
• Fewer questions from clients or your team about the data on reports

Step 3. Visualize the data.

Once you’ve connected and organized your data, it’s time to visualize it in a report. 

There are three ways to do so:

1. Pull one of our pre-made report or dashboard templates (fastest).
2. Use a smart builder (build a report step-by-step).
3. Start from a blank template (get creative from the start).

Then, choose from the data sources you’ve connected to and set your time range. If you haven’t connected your data sources already, you can do that at this stage, too.

Next, drag-and-drop metric widgets onto the report. You can choose to build your own or use our pre-made widgets. 

At any point, you can customize your report by changing the color scheme, adding images or text, changing the logo, switching between the Portrait/Landscape view, and more. 

Step 4. Share the reports. 

The last step is to share your reports with your clients or team.

You can do this in Whatagraph in three main ways:

• Share report links with anyone you’d like.
• Send white-labeled, automated emails at a regular interval (e.g. every week or month).
• Export as Excel or CSV — a great option if you want to run the data through your business intelligence tool. 

You can also transfer data to BigQuery or push it to Looker Studio.