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A daily marketing activity report allows your entire team to stay updated on campaign performance.
According to a recent study conducted by Databox, about 12% of companies practice daily marketing reporting.
But what should you actually include in the daily marketing report?
And more importantly, is too much information on a daily basis distracting?
We wanted to find out how experts handle the balance of understanding performance on a daily basis, without overwhelming their teams. (After all, there are hundreds of metrics you could track.)
In this guide, we’ll share the 16-point checklist of things to include in your daily marketing report, such as:
Click the links above to learn more about a specific marketing metric, or continue scrolling to see which information your daily marketing report should include.
According to Colin Mosier of JSL Marketing & Web Design, “one basic marketing metric that should be included in every daily report is your website traffic.”
“Website traffic is what drives your business and what produces revenue for your business. If you are able to show an increase in website traffic to your clients after making strategic changes, you are able to tie this increase in traffic to your efforts.”
Mosier continues: “On a different note, if you show an increase in traffic to your website but these potential customers are not converting, then there may be a bigger problem with the website in general or the sales funnel.”
Matt Tutt also thinks that “overall website traffic is an important metric to be included [because] it gives a clear insight into the number of visits to the website, so you can easily see whether your traffic is up or down vs previous days or the monthly average.”
“Using this in combination with your conversion rate will be key to determining how traffic is performing and converting,” Tutt adds.
“These two metrics cut out a lot of the noise and ultimately can help you, at a very quick glance, determine how your marketing efforts are performing.”
Related: The 17 Essential Website KPIs for Measuring Your Website’s Performance
If you want to discover how visitors engage with your website, and which content drives the most engagement and conversions, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics 4 that will get you started:
And more…
Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics 4 experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for monitoring visitor engagement on your website. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
Tracking the number of visitors on your website isn’t enough.
That’s why Vinay Amin of Eu Natural adds that you should track “the sources of traffic to your website” in a daily marketing report: “That’s the data that tells you which marketing strategies are most effective and where they’re having the greatest positive impact.”
Plus, Nate Masterson of Honeydew adds that traffic by source “is an important metric to track daily on your marketing dashboard because it illustrates which marketing campaigns are working and which need more attention.”
“For example, a high first visit metric from organic search shows that your SEO strategy is effective and may indicate that it’s time to focus your attention on paid ads, backlinking, and social media initiatives.”
ChatterSource‘s team do this by breaking it down by organic users, according to Darin Evangelista: “For every metric in our daily marketing report (users, time on site, conversions, etc.), I make it a point to separate out organic users.”
Evangelista explains: “As a content driven site, we live and die by organic traffic. While I know that we can manipulate overall users by increasing outbound expenditures, I know that inbound traffic is key to future success.”
Freshworks‘ Ganest Narayan adds: “Also, the cost incurred for organic is fractional compared to paid marketing. Hence, it is important to track organic traffic on a daily basis.
Plus, Brian Robben of Robben Media thinks that organic traffic is “one of the few metrics where Google and the market are telling you how well your business is growing.”
“Anyone can dump money into ads and get a quick spike in traffic, leads, and dollars. But stop advertising, and all of those immediately decrease the next month.”
Robben continues: “By doing organic traffic the right way, you should see a consistent growth over time that shows how healthy your business is when it comes to the more valuable inbound marketing.”
Some experts think you should dive even deeper into the people visitor your site.
Max Falb says the team at Fueled track “how many unique visitors we get on our blog each day [because] it is really important to see that the content you are creating is actually getting daily views.”
“If you’re not getting daily views then it will tell you that you’re not writing the right content or that your audience isn’t finding it,” Falb adds.
“My daily marketing activity report always includes statistics on website traffic […] for important landing pages. These are key because it tells us about user engagement from different sources, and how useful our content is for each user,” says Shufti Pro‘s Damien Martin.
One of those is session duration: “For instance, if there’s significant traffic on our blog, but people aren’t staying to read, that’s good evidence to look for possible design revisions or just revise our content calendar.”
Martin continues: “Similarly, the pricing page tells us a lot about user experience and how it can be improved if indicators like session duration are appearing weak.”
“One important piece of data to include in daily marketing reports are the pages with the highest bounce rates,” writes Jeffrey Michael of Moriarty’s Gem Art.
“Because things change so often, especially during the holidays, you could have an issue with a product page that you wouldn’t otherwise know. Maybe out of stock? Or technical issue? This way you can resolve it that day.”
Alan Gruntz of BarkleyREI adds that this can be great for advertising teams: “Conversion data can take a few days to accurately populate depending on your conversion window settings. Looking at the delivery metrics (clicks, impr. ctr, cpc) and bounce rate gives an idea of how your ad is being received by your audience.”
“One thing to include in every daily marketing activity report is an SEO overview,” says Maxburst‘s Andrew Ruditser. “It is important to share what has increased/decreased over time and what were the strategies used to get this result.”
“Seeing constant reports of what has made your site metrics increase and decrease will help you be more aware of those that benefit your company on the web and those that do not. It is also important to include a review of your monthly back links and site audits.”
Related: 12 Obvious SEO Tips That Almost No One Is Following
“One thing that is good to include in a every daily marketing activity report are the keyword rankings,” Powerphrase‘s Newaz Chowdhury adds.
“Keywords rankings fluctuate every single day. Keyword rankings for us are the most important thing to watch out for. We need to make sure our clients are going up and not down.”
“If they go down, then less traffic and sales. We need to make sure what strategy we are doing is appropriate. If it goes down, we need to reevaluate our strategy.”
Tudor Lodge Consultants‘ Daniel Tannenbaum also tracks this metric, along with “how they have gone up or down in the last day, week or month. We are looking specifically at their position on Google which is 1 to 100, and also the competitiveness of that keyword.”
The best part? Finding your keyword rankings only takes a few minutes, which fits in with the time that 37% of our experts spend creating a daily marketing report:
Smile Marketing‘s Brian Koenig thinks that any daily marketing report should include “the number of new leads generated from your marketing efforts.”
“This could include email subscribers, asset downloads and, most importantly, sales qualified leads. This will tell you whether or not the marketing campaigns you’ve been running are effective – which, in turn, tells you whether or not you need to adjust your strategy.”
“For example, you run an email campaign that promotes a free consultation. It only leads to two new appointments. Typically, your campaigns generate at least five new appointments. The results indicate that you might need to tweak your offer,” Koenig adds.
Use this marketing automation dashboard to gain valuable insights about the number of leads generated from your marketing campaigns.
Chances are, you have forms on your website–whether they’re to sign-up to a webinar, download a piece of content, or contact your team.
Luke Wester says the team at Miva, Inc track “form fills and form fill quality [because] I want to make sure we are continually earning form fills on a daily basis.”
“Next is assessing these form fills for quality. Are they from a Nigerian Prince or are they from someone who has a genuine need for our product or service?”
Harrison Stevens says that “main part of [Bambino Sitters‘] marketing is growth and spend accountability. Driving revenue and reducing the CAC (cost to acquire a customer) is critical.”
That’s why “the amount spent and the amount of new customers we received is what I make sure is in every daily marketing report.”
Corey Haines of Mental Models For Marketing advises tracking how many new customers you’ve acquired, since “this is what every business is founded on.”
“It doesn’t matter how many leads or subscribers you generated if they don’t convert into customers!”
“Marketers usually really focus on things like clicks, likes, and visitors,” Michiel Koers of Topic CC explains. “But we tend to forget our main goals is finding clients and growing revenue.”
“If you track your stats in a clever way, you can see the total revenue you gained via every channel you use and every campaign you run. Keep an eye on it and use the insights to gain even more revenue.”
Plus, Kuri Khailo of BestPriceNutrition.com thinks you should break down your revenue by product “so we can monitor spikes of products, and see where people are interested in.”
Tasmin Lockwood of Radial Path adds: “Let’s face it, that’s what your clients want to know! They want to make sure they’re getting good value for money and your marketing is paying off, which is sometimes hard to measure with inbound in particular.”
According to Irene Liakos of Kadee Botanicals, one “key thing to keep track of in a daily marketing report is ROI.”
“Keeping track of the cost of the marketing activity along with the return – whether that is number of signups, subscribers, purchases. It should link back to the purpose of the campaign, the original intention, what success looks like.”
“Keep the daily report on tracking the key measures of success (which will be dependant on the original purpose of the campaign)”–which Liakos adds could be:
301 Digital Media‘s Andrew Becks explains that this applies to advertising spend, too: “Simply put, for every $1 you spend on marketing, how much revenue do you generate? Using ROAS as a success metric can be a quick and easy way to measure a campaign’s overall effectiveness.”
Related: The Best Tools, Methods, and Metrics for Measuring Content Marketing ROI
The team at Text Request doesn’t necessarily track a metric every day; instead “what you did the day before, and what you are doing today that isn’t a daily task but that you think can help with the overall growth of the company,” according to Ramey Miller.
“This keeps you thinking about the future and becoming the best you can be.”
Emod Vafa of The Sleep Judge thinks that “daily marketing activity reports should tell a quick story,” by answering questions like: “How are we doing compared to before/last year?”
“Having enough information on a daily basis to show the year-over-year trends and return on investment is a quick indication of how well we are doing,” Vafa says.
360quoteLLC‘s Melanie Musson advises doing this by adding “a chart showing how yesterday’s activity fits into the monthly trend.”
“Seeing instantly – or rather the next day – if a day was good or bad can help people gain a better idea of what’s working. Seeing it in a chart form makes it understandable more quickly than seeing it in written form.”PRO TIP: Marketing reporting software such as Databox, enables businesses to track progress and compare data effectively. By providing daily marketing activity reports that showcase year-over-year trends and return on investment, Databox helps businesses gain valuable insights into their performance and measure their success compared to previous periods or benchmarks.
The team at ActiveCampaign adds a section called “where the team can help” in their daily marketing reports, according to Ernie Santeralli.
“Oftentimes we’re working on a project that someone in the department has past experience, assets, or knowledge on. Asking for and getting input from other team members and helps to save time and improve collaboration efforts. It’s also an opportunity to build off of another team member’s efforts rather than repeating work.”
This is a great way to involve other teams with your daily marketing reports–especially since 18% of marketers share their report with the entire company:
“In terms of the “one” thing, […] the answer would be that the most important thing is to get what we need from them to do our best work,” writes ScaleMath‘s Alex Panagis. “This includes approval on website changes, general questions about partnerships and so forth.”
Growth Hackers‘ Jonathan Aufray agrees: “The daily marketing activity report should be short and only include the main actions the department/staff has been working on.”
“Just write a few bullet points showing work done, results, main metrics, and KPIs,” Aufray adds.
As you can see, the process of creating a daily marketing report isn’t as complex as you might think.
Start by including these key metrics, and adding sections that give context to your KPIs. Additionally, leverage the great help that a marketing dashboard software offers, It’s the best way to see whether you’re on track to meet your goals.
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Elise Dopson is a freelance B2B writer for SaaS and marketing companies. With a focus on data-driven ideas that truly provide value, she helps brands to get noticed online--and drive targeted website visitors that transform into raving fans.
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