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Your Guide To Modern Agency Analytics, Dashboards & Reporting Techniques

Modern agency analytics and reporting by datapine

With the exponential growth of digital businesses, so has grown the need to outsource some key processes to digital agencies. Although this is positive for the many types of agencies in the market, it has also left them facing a big challenge. With more potential clients on the lookout, agencies need to stand out from the rest with top-quality services and unique features that will make them irreplaceable for their clients.

But how do you manage all your new clients while still focusing on giving them a good service and their expected results? The answer is modern agency analytics reports and interactive dashboards.

In this article, we will cover every fundamental aspect to take advantage of agency analytics. Starting with its definition, following with the benefits of agency reports, a list of tools, and a set of agency dashboard examples. We will then finish with 8 valuable tips to achieve a successful agency reporting process.

Let’s dig in with the definition of agency analytics.

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What Are Agency Analytics?

Agency analytics is the process of taking data and transforming it into valuable insights that are then displayed with a professional agency dashboard. Agencies benefit from interactive dashboard tools to prove the success of their strategies and campaigns to clients.

Agency dashboard marketing example

As with any other business out there, agencies manage big amounts of data in the form of surveys, social media metrics, website performance, or any other information related to their client’s goals. Apart from using their data to support decision-making, agencies also use metrics as the main language in which they speak to their clients. Therefore, if their insights prove to be positive, it will remind the client that the agency is worth the investment.

We will not go into further detail about the theoretical part of agency analytics, instead, we will go straight to the point by giving you some points on how agencies can benefit from their data by creating interactive, high-quality agency reports.

Benefits Of A Modern Agency Report

Although producing unique content or a detailed market research is a fundamental point for any agency's success, the thing that will actually demonstrate your team’s value and make your clients trust you are concrete results—the ones you only achieve with a high-quality agency report.

Besides adding value from a client perspective, modern reporting techniques can also be useful to improve the internal performance of your agency. By using reports internally, the different teams can stay connected with each other and optimize processes that will make the work in your organization smooth and effective.

For a long time, agencies have developed their reports manually, making the process tedious and time-consuming. Today agencies should focus on driving valuable insights from their data and presenting them in an understandable way for stakeholders to see; in other words, crowded excel sheets or infinite PowerPoint presentations are no longer enough. This is where modern agency reports come into the picture.

Here we present you a few points to start shining a light on the benefits of modern, interactive agency reports:

  • Save time and resources: Without a doubt, one of the most significant benefits of modern agency reports is their time-saving qualities. By using a reporting software that automates the analysis process, you can spend less time reporting and more time focusing on the creative part of your job. In addition, by using reports internally to track different teams’ performance, you can optimize processes and save resources avoiding unnecessary meetings or tasks.
  • Connecting all your data sources: Extracting data from multiple marketing channels is also a time-consuming task of the client reporting process. Modern agency reporting allows you to view all the data from your relevant sources in one place. This way, you can focus your efforts on extracting relevant insights from your client’s KPIs instead of monthly preparing datasets manually.
  • Prove the success of your strategy: It might seem like an obvious benefit, but, when done correctly, an agency report can be an invaluable tool to prove the success of your strategy. By using online data visualization tools such as interactive dashboards you can tell a story with your data and extract advanced insights to support your work when presenting it to clients.
  • Integrate agency reports into your service: Many modern reporting tools include embedding features in their services. This resource is invaluable for agencies that want to offer a dashboard tool for their clients but don't want to invest in developing their own software. Integrating this kind of technology into your service adds immense extra value to your agency. We will talk more in detail about agency reporting tools soon.
  • Retain clients with better campaign insights: As we said, nowadays, clients are expecting advanced feedback from the agencies. This makes communication a critical factor for an agency’s success. If you surprise your clients with an outstanding agency report, you will not only be building a trusted relationship with them, but you will also assemble a data-driven reputation for your agency that can drive new clients in the long run.
  • Increase client satisfaction: As we said before, adopting a good reporting practice for internal processes will immediately add more value to your service and, therefore, increase client satisfaction. By using modern reporting techniques you can convey your messages more effectively, optimize internal processes to better achieve your goals, and project a more professional image to your clients.
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Essential Agency Analytics Reporting Tools

Now that we’ve uncovered the meaning of agency analytics and the benefits of modern agency reports, let’s dive a little deeper with some agency reporting tools.

Business intelligence tools allow agencies to extract data from several sources into one place with just a few clicks. datapine is an excellent BI software focused on delivering powerful online analysis features with a friendly interface, making it easy to use for anyone. Among its features, it allows you to perform cutting-edge data analysis, create live custom dashboards and interactive reporting, as well as use AI technologies to take your research to the next level. Here we go more in detail about some of its features.

  • Automated reports: One of the most beneficial agency tools is automated reporting. Like we said before, collecting the data from several sources every month is a tedious process. With the automated feature of datapine, your agency data will be updated automatically, allowing clients or team members to access it with just a few clicks. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence technology, the software can also monitor your metrics and set intelligent data alerts to let you know if anything unusual happened in your data.
  • Custom dashboard: The power of a custom dashboard lies in its interactivity. datapine offers a powerful dashboard maker to create interactive reports using historical and current data. Like this, you can tell a story with your information through dynamic charts and live metrics. In addition, thanks to the power of online reporting tools, agencies can use dashboards simultaneously, improving communication with clients and enhancing collaboration between the different teams in the agency. Finally, with customized dashboards, agency team members or managers can access all the relevant data from their clients in just a few minutes, and all in one place. We will see some interactive agency dashboard examples in a while.
  • Embedded capabilities: As we told you before, embedded analytics can prove to be a huge added value for your agency. At datapine, we offer a full embed of our software with all its features, like this you get all the benefits of a software provider while still using your own interface (as seen in the bottom image). Using embedding features will allow your agency to save time in traditional reporting, offer personalized dashboards, and even discover new revenue streams by charging clients for analytical functions without the costs of creating a software of your own.
Embbeded feature from datapine for agency reporting
  • Branded reports with white labels: Like the embedding capabilities, white labeling is another valuable opportunity for your agency. This feature allows you to implement your own logo, colors, and styling into your dashboards. This way, your reports will look consistent and more professional, improving the agency’s overall image. You can also use specific clients’ logos to give them a personalized service and make them feel part of your organization.
  • User-friendly interface: Before reporting tools appeared in the market, the analysis process was tedious and time-consuming; only professional analysts inside the teams knew how to deal with the data. Today this is different. One of the principles of any reporting software should be its user-friendly interface. With datapine, anyone in your team can manage the data and create quality agency reports without the need for advanced knowledge.
  • Predictive analytics: Unlike many other BI reporting tools in the market, datapine offers an integrated predictive analytics feature; following the line of a user-friendly interface so that anyone in the agency can use it. This type of agency reporting tool enables you to simplify complex analytics processes and make predictions about possible developments in your data. Like this, you can surprise your clients with possible future outcomes on your strategies.
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Agency Dashboard Examples & Report Templates

To continue our journey through agency analytics, in this section, we present you with six interactive agency dashboard examples focusing on three industries where agencies are mostly focusing today: Marketing, IT, and Market Research. These examples will help you visualize how your agency can benefit from modern reporting practices.

1. Social media agency dashboard

To start with our list of agency dashboard examples, we present you with this complete social media report template. It is perfect for tracking campaigns’ progress and achievements in 4 critical social media platforms for any business: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, making it the perfect marketing agency dashboard.

Marketing agency dashboard example tracking social media performance

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This dashboard works by taking a set of operational metrics such as followers, impressions, engagement rates, and avg order value and comparing them with a target value from a previous period. Like this, you can track the performance of a specific implementation in a certain time period by looking at how the data fluctuated. The red and green labels make it visually easy to understand positive or negative outcomes in the metrics.

Apart from significantly reducing the time agencies spend extracting information from social media, the indicated marketing report can also be extremely useful to present to clients as a performance report. It summarizes the main metrics that they will need to see to understand their social media performance, and as an automated tool, it will allow them to check live up-to-date data whenever they might need it.

2. Marketing KPI dashboard

Our next example is also a marketing agency dashboard, and it summarizes the most important metrics related to costs and revenues.

Agency dashboard displaying marketing KPIs

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The example above shows a set of agency analytics such as Total Revenue, Leads, ROI percentage, the Cost per Acquisition (CPA), and Profit per Acquisition (PPA), divided by channels. By analyzing these metrics, you can drive conclusions like what channels are more profitable for your client. In this case, we can see that social brings the lower CPA of €476 and also one of the highest PPA’s of €636. Like this, we see that there is an opportunity to add more budget into the social channels and, in the long run, increase the return on investment.

Among all marketing dashboards, this one is particularly handy for account coordinators. By having an overview of these metrics, they can focus on performing organizational tasks such as tracking budgets, ongoing projects, and research for new opportunities to ensure that their client’s objectives are being met. Also, it is an extremely useful tool to present to clients in progress meetings, as you can show a clear picture of where the budget is going.

3.  IT project management overview

Stepping into the development area of agency analytics, we present you our IT project management dashboard, which aims to track every necessary step and task essential for a project’s success.

Agency report example of an IT project management overview

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Like with some of our other agency dashboard examples, this one can prove helpful for both internal and external purposes. On one side, with an extensive list of clients to attend, agencies need to be careful and organized to manage time and deadlines. Here they find a complete summary of overdue tasks and upcoming deadlines, as well as the workload for each team member. Agency managers can share this report with the entire IT team and ensure that everyone is organized and up to date with all things related to the project.

On the other side, this dashboard can also be useful when presenting project updates to clients. When talking about relevant IT projects such as a site development, for example, clients want to be specifically involved and aware of all stages of the project. For this purpose, this agency report showcases a set of IT metrics like an estimation of the project’s launch day, the progress development percentage, and a detailed budget chart breaking down the used and remaining amounts, together with the over target percentage. 

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4. IT costs dashboard

Our following agency dashboard example also focuses on IT analytics, this time providing a more detailed look at costs metrics for an entire year.

Agency report template: IT cost dashboard

**click to enlarge**

When a year has passed since the implementation of a project, it is time to perform a KPI tracking to understand what worked and what didn’t. Agency managers can use this IT report template as a guideline for deeper analysis and further decision-making like redirecting budgets or implementing actions to make the client’s investment worth it. This IT dashboard displays a set of 4 cost-related KPIs: ROI of the IT department, Spend vs. budget, IT costs break down, and IT costs vs. Revenue. By tracking these metrics, you can understand the overall performance of your IT department. For example, if the investment is returning, if you controlled the expenses correctly and identify improvement opportunities for the coming year.

5. Market research brand analysis dashboard

Market research agencies have to deal with vast amounts of data when performing surveys or extensive investigations. This data then needs to be organized and presented to clients, usually resulting in infinite PowerPoint presentations with static metrics that make the process a lot more slower. With this agency dashboard example, you will understand why interactive reporting is an ideal solution for market research analytics.

Agency report example displaying the results of a market research survey

**click to enlarge**

This dashboard is the perfect market research report. It showcases a set of metrics from a brand analysis survey on the outdoor gear market. On one side, we see a column displaying the sample information divided by age group, region, and gender. And on the other side, the dashboard delivers detailed information about brand awareness through brand recall and recognition questions. It finalizes with two charts displaying public perception of brand D, which is the most popular among the survey responders, and a celebrity analysis chart to showcase which celebrities represent the values of brand D.  

The power of this agency dashboard lies in its interactivity, each of these metrics can be filtered and drilled upon to showcase only the information needed for a specific discussion. Like this, the whole presentation process can be done smoothly and on one screen, making it easier to stay focus on relevant conclusions and giving the possibility to answer any additional research questions that the clients might come up with during the presentation. Using interactive dashboards like this one to present your data will make your agency look more professional, allow you to give a better service, and optimize time by avoiding infinite static presentations that will not only confuse but bore your clients.

6. Customer satisfaction agency dashboard

Getting to the end of our agency dashboard examples list, we couldn’t leave out one of the most essential areas for any agency to track: customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction dashboard showing relevant agency data

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The above dashboard displays relevant metrics to track customer satisfaction. Starting with the monthly Net Promoter Score (NPS) and the Customer Effort Score (CES), both divided into three categories, from positive to negative numbers. Then you see a chart comparing both metrics and how they fluctuated for one year. On the bottom part, you can find satisfaction score metrics for four key areas: quality, pricing, design, and service.

Although this report can be beneficial for market research agencies to present to clients, it can also be a powerful tool for internal usage in any agency. As we mentioned through this article, quality reporting is the key to a successful client-agency relationship. After implementing new processes and features to your service, you can track if your agency’s customer satisfaction metrics improved or decreased.

Your Chance: Want to test a powerful agency analytics software?
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Top 8 Tips For Agency Reporting

Top 8 tips for agency reporting: 1.Manage your data, 2. Work with relevant data, 3. Create a complete interactive report, 4. Make a detailed reporting plan, 5. Extract insights from the data, 6.Take future and past data, 7. Share your results, 8. Learn from the process.

If you reached this point, then you already have a basic understanding of the successful way to manage your agency analytics. As the closing section of our complete guide, we leave you 8 useful tips for your agency reporting process.

1) Manage the data internally

Our first tip for agency reporting aims to improve the way agency teams internally interact with the information. By creating different reports with specific metrics for each team in your agency, you can optimize processes, as well as improve and implement results-oriented tactics.

2) Work with relevant data

When presenting your agency report to clients, you don’t want to hit them with a bunch of information that might not be interesting for them. Instead, cut right to the chase and make them a KPI dashboard based on their goals. For example, if you are a marketing agency, you can display relevant metrics like ROI or lead conversion. Another way to make sure you don’t work with irrelevant numbers is to choose the key metrics together with your clients. Ask them what their main goals and KPIs are and start a conversation about them. If you disagree with some of their points, as an expert in the field, you can propose certain areas of focus or shine a light on aspects that your client might not have been aware of.

3) Make a detailed report planning

Through this article, we’ve stated how vital agency analytics prove to be when communicating with clients. For this reason, the reporting process should not be taken lightly. When planning your tasks for the month, make sure that you always save enough time to perform detailed and high-quality analysis. You can also benefit from automated reporting tools that will make the analysis process faster and easier, as it saves you the pain of going through vast amounts of irrelevant data.

4) Create a complete & interactive agency report

Nobody wants to see a set of metrics piled up in an excel sheet anymore. That’s why another helpful tip for agency reporting is paying attention to the visual aspect of your reports. As we mentioned before, with the help of an agency reporting tool, you can make your reports interactive, branded, and use different types of charts that will make them more appealing to the eye. In addition, you can add pictures of various campaigns to your dashboards, this way you help the client visually remember which content or strategy you are analyzing.

5) Extract insights and conclusions from the data

Creating a visually appealing report is just the tip of the iceberg in agency reporting. It is not enough just to put all the available data together in one performance dashboard. The data analysis part is where the agency proves its actual value. By adding context and analysis to the information, you can extract insights and conclusions to create new strategies, find new opportunities to exploit, and of course, show clients the success of your implementations.

6) Take future and past data

Our next tip is to remind you to never dismiss the value of old data, as it can help you visualize previous actions and compare them with today's results. In addition, past data can help you prepare for future outcomes such as traffic dropping during the holiday season. When creating your reports make sure you always include some future predictions based on your past data, this way you can show your clients where your strategy is heading.

7) Share your results

Although sharing your reports via email is a key step, it is not what we mean when we talk about sharing your results. We suggest taking the time to discuss the metrics and make sure that everyone involved understands them. Another way to share your agency analytics would be to give clients permanent access to the data with the help of an online reporting tool. This way, you are transparent with the process and build a trusting relationship with your clients.

8) Learn from the process

As we mentioned before, agency reporting is not only valuable for showcasing results to clients. It can also be extremely useful from an internal perspective. After creating reports, teams can use them as learning tools to understand what processes are not working and changing them. If something worked well for a client maybe you can apply it to others.

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Key Takeaways From Agency Analytics

As we reached the end of our agency analytics journey, we hope you got a clear picture of how important reporting strategies are to improve your client's trust, communication, and retention. And also, how a good internal reporting practice can benefit teamwork and optimize the overall performance of your agency.

We went through some of the most important features of agency reporting tools, showed you some dashboards examples and gave you invaluable reporting tips to start extracting the maximum value of your agency data.

If you are ready to dive into agency analytics yourself try our powerful dashboarding software for a 14-day trial today - it’s completely free and will open you up to all of the key benefits of agency reporting. Enjoy!