Reporting and analytics take what you know about your business — what you’ve sold, what you’ve spent on marketing, who your customers are — and turn it into actionable information. With the influx of data coming from your website, social media, and email list every day, you can make stronger marketing decisions and set your business up for success.

A group of business people sits at a table to review data on a laptop. Only the table, laptop, and their arms are visible.

Here, you’ll learn all you need to know about data reporting, analytics, and how to harness this critical information. 

Understanding reporting and analytics

Before we get into more detail about how to use reporting and analytics to gain insight into your marketing activity, let’s review some fundamentals.

What are reporting and analytics

Reporting involves gathering information, consolidating it into a meaningful format, and presenting it in a clear and accessible way. A simple report might show your follower growth on various social media platforms and engagement statistics such as comments, shares, and likes. 

Analytics goes more in-depth, offering insights and conclusions based on reports. Analytics reporting might conclude that your social media engagement is on an upward trend or that activity is increasing more quickly on one social media channel than another. 

Differences between reporting and data analysis

Data analysis gives meaning to the facts and figures in a report. While a report says “what it is,” analysis states “what it means.” 

The 4 types of analytics

You can gain different kinds of insights from analytics, which are divided into four main categories. 

1. Descriptive analytics

Descriptive analytics show what happened and include trends over time. You can focus on a single metric or highlight a few metrics that work in tandem. Descriptive analytics can tell you, for example, how many people viewed your web page versus how many of them clicked on your call to action.

A line chart from Pew Research tracking social media platform popularity.
This chart from Pew Research uses descriptive analytics to show trends in social media use from 2012-2024. Source: Pew Research.

2. Diagnostic analytics

Diagnostic analytics show why something happened. This involves a deeper dive into your data; it gives you the root cause of specific events and outcomes. For instance, diagnostic analysis can help you pinpoint a sudden spike in new followers that coincides with a social media post that went viral. 

Diagnostic analytics empowers you to make decisions based on the “why” of your descriptive analytics. If you look closely and discover that your website traffic comes primarily from your email marketing, you can adjust your budget to invest more in your email channel.

A snapshot of the Google Trends age for "tottenham."
Here, Google Trends shows recent news reports and search location data connected to a trending keyword. Diagnostic analytics links events with changes in social media or marketing activity. Source: Google Trends

3. Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics considers what might happen in the future. You use your past data to make an educated guess about what will happen in the upcoming periods. For example, if your website referral revenue from your email marketing has grown 10% over the last six months, you might predict that your growth will continue at the same or greater rate.

4. Prescriptive analytics

Prescriptive analytics says what you should do next. Consider a situation where you’ve tried two types of marketing: email and content marketing. Maybe you’re seeing revenue growth from email marketing, but a trend of steady decline from your content investments. Prescriptive analytics could suggest a transition away from content marketing to focus more on email. 

How reporting and analytics drive business intelligence

Analytics is closely linked to another critical marketing concept: business intelligence. Business intelligence is about using data to make strategic business decisions. When you draw upon substantive reporting and insightful analytics, you can make well-informed business decisions going forward. 

Email analytics deep dive

Your email marketing analytics tell you a lot about which strategies are working for your audience. You can use this information to plan future marketing projects.

Key email marketing metrics to track

Email marketing metrics track actions that are directly linked to your marketing goals. Keeping tabs on those metrics is the basis of your analytics and business intelligence. These critical measures are also called key performance indicators (KPIs) and include:

  • Open rate: Shows the percentage of people who received and opened your email
  • Click-through rate: Shows the percentage of people who opened your email and clicked on a conversion link in the email
  • Conversion rate: Shows the percentage of people who arrived at a conversion point, such as an ecommerce page, and completed a transaction
  • Bounce rate: Shows the percentage of your emails that do not reach their recipients

Email performance reporting strategies

To gain insight from your email marketing strategies, you can choose a few different reporting strategies. Some common options are:

  • To compare different email texts, layouts, and calls-to-action through A/B testing to find the most effective marketing strategy for a new campaign
  • To compare the performance of an email campaign to a previous one to see improvement or decline in conversions

Interpreting email analytics for business growth

Email reporting and analytics give you tremendous insight into how you can better use this channel for business growth. Here are a few steps to take based on the results from your email reporting:

  • Low open rate: Review your subject lines and the timing of your emails.
  • Low click-through rate: Optimize your emails to be mobile-friendly and have a strong call to action.
  • High bounce rate: Review your email contact list to confirm you have current information for each recipient. 

Tools and techniques for email reporting

Modern email tracking software allows you to track the critical elements of your email analytics, such as open and conversion rates, and compare the effectiveness of your campaigns. This gives you real data about which emails are the most effective at meeting your marketing goals. You can use heat maps to home in on which prompts are clicked most often by your subscribers.

Social media analytics

Social media is a must-have for every business, but to use it most effectively, you need analytics to tell you what’s working and what’s not.

Essential social media metrics

Some key elements to track in your social media campaigns are:

  • Engagement rates: These show you how many people interact with your content on social media, measured in part by likes and comments.
  • Reach and impressions: These measure how many people had the opportunity to view your content in their feeds and how many stopped to have a look.
  • Follower growth: This measures how quickly your number of social media followers has increased and by how much.
  • Click-through rates: These measure how many people who see a post with a conversion link click on it to view the content on your website.

Platform-specific analytics

The analytics you track will depend on your marketing goals for each platform. You might use Instagram for brand awareness and be most interested in your follower and impression counts. On a site like LinkedIn, you might want more conversions, with people heading to your website from links in posts or direct messages.

Social media reporting best practices

To get the most out of your social media reporting and analytics, keep these best practices in mind:

  • Define your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs).
  • Receive regular reports (daily, weekly, or monthly).
  • Consider acting on large events like a sudden spike or decline in traffic.

Understanding audience behavior through social data

Social media analytics show how your followers behave online and, therefore, provide valuable insight into how to best use your content for your marketing goals. For example, you can utilize sharing data to determine which posts people found particularly engaging.  

Event and engagement analytics

Analytics are also invaluable tools for offline marketing efforts. You can use your online data to learn more about the success of an in-person event or performance according to your chosen metrics. This information can help you gauge how well you’ve met objectives like ticket sales or overall fundraising for a charity event.

Tracking event performance metrics

If you’re holding an offline event, consider carefully tracking the following:

  • Attendance rates: How many people came
  • Participant engagement: How many people engaged with the proceedings — for example, if you held a charity auction, you could count the number of people who placed a bid
  • Conversion metrics: How many people completed your desired goal — if you held a pop-up shop, you might calculate the number of people who came into the store versus how many people made a purchase
  • Return on investment (ROI): What your business gained versus how much it cost you to run the event

Reporting and analytics tools

There are numerous tools you can use to support your business through analytics. 

Among the analytics platforms you can choose are:

All of these solutions can help measure your business success and your digital marketing impact. The essential question is which one works best for your business. 

Key features to look for in reporting tools

Here are a few questions you can ask when choosing a reporting and analytics tool:

  • Is it easy to use? Many platforms are accessible and intuitive for rookie and veteran business owners.
  • Is there automation? Some platforms allow you to generate reports from available data without much human intervention, thereby reducing your team’s workload.
  • Can it handle your data? Some platforms have more power to gather more data points. As your business grows, you’ll need a platform that can handle the increase in data.
  • Can it analyze your data? Platforms should have the technical capacity to translate data from the other solutions you use to operate your business and convert it into meaningful analytics.

Integration capabilities

You will likely use several solutions to collect your business data. The analytics solution you choose has to integrate with those data collection platforms. Before you choose a solution, make sure it’s capable of using your data.

How reporting and analytics improve business decision-making

Data gives your team concrete information you can use to make better business decisions. You can see your past successes and challenges to get the big picture and come up with sensible plans for the future.

Trends give a clear picture of where your business has been and where it’s headed. The details of trend data empower you to choose where to invest your resources. If you’re losing ground in a particular market but gaining in another, you might want to devote more attention and capital to where the trend line is pointing up. 

Making informed strategic decisions

Business always requires some trial and error, but data allows you to learn from past trials and set yourself up for future success! As a result, the choices you make come with less risk, and you are in a better position to seize opportunities.

Best practices for effective reporting and analytics

To make the most of your data, consider following a few best practices.

Data collection strategies

You should get as much information as possible from all customer touchpoints. This may include your website, your customer contact service centers, your email list, and your social media accounts. 

Ensuring data accuracy

You need correct data to have reliable insights. Get into the routine of ensuring data accuracy at the point of entry and implementing cross-checks to pick up unusual or suspicious data points. 

Creating meaningful reports

Your reports should highlight all of the relevant data for your campaign or marketing channel. You can exclude data that doesn’t contribute to your main business objectives. For example, if you’re analyzing an Instagram campaign promoting your latest product, include data from those specific posts and leave out metrics from unrelated content.

Visualizing data effectively

Use graphs and tables to present a clear picture of trends and comparisons. This allows for a quick impression of the data before readers dive in to learn the details. 

Reporting and analytics for business success

Reporting gives you a quick summary of raw data, while analytics offers actionable insight. You can continue to learn from your data and, therefore, stay agile in a competitive business environment. You can adapt your strategies and identify the resulting change in your return on investment.

Constant Contact offers in-depth reporting and analytics solutions for all aspects of your business. You can use them to derive meaning from your data and support strategic decision-making. Compare campaigns, pinpoint hot-selling features, and build upon your marketing success. Sign up for a free trial today!