How Agencies Can Remove Admin Time With Automated Client Reporting

Many agency owners and their team need to spend at least a few hours per week on client reporting. It’s not their most favorite task, but a necessary one. Instead of treating it as a necessity, why not making the reporting easier for everyone involved?

The crux of agency client reporting is that many of those involved manually generate reports. This task that takes away countless hours per month they could’ve spent on more important work. Luckily, it’s easier than ever to make use of automated client reporting.

What is automated client reporting?

Automated client reporting is the process of using software and systems to collect, analyze, and generate reports on marketing campaign data without manual intervention. This technology allows agencies and businesses to efficiently provide clients with detailed, accurate, and timely insights into their marketing efforts.

By leveraging automated client reporting, agencies can enhance transparency and enable better decision-making through real-time data and analytics. This not only saves time but also ensures that clients receive consistent and reliable information about their campaigns.

Why agencies have to automate client reporting

Generating reports is an essential task most agencies will have to do. After all, they want to show their clients that their money is well spent.

The biggest issue is that many rely on manual client reporting, be it in Google Sheets, Excel, or Airtable. They use Google Analytics to gather data, copy it into a spreadsheet, and use the data sources to generate charts and diagrams that clients can understand. This manual reporting process is time-consuming and prone to errors.

But generating reports on a weekly, monthly, or even quarterly basis is too much manual work once you have to do it for dozens of clients.

Here are three key reasons why agencies should automate their reporting:

1. Reduce costs: Copy-pasting isn’t the most efficient way to get things done, nor is it accurate. One little mistake and your reporting is wrong. Automation cuts down on costs and ensures fewer human mistakes.

2. Scale up: Once work picks up, agencies can quickly run out of available hands to handle it. By automating the reporting, they can focus on tasks that require a human touch.

3. Be consistent: Generating the same type of report for every client ensures that every team member is familiar with them. This makes it easy to set up processes, and ensure that data is delivered accurately.

The cost of manual reporting

Manual reporting is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process that can be costly for agencies and businesses. The cost of manual reporting includes the time spent collecting and analyzing data, creating reports, and distributing them to clients.

Let’s assume you need to spend two hours per month on manual reporting for each client. You’re paying a VA $20 per hour to get the job done. If you have 60 clients, your costs are $2,400.

In contrast, automated reporting systems can cost anywhere from $50 to $500+ per month, making them a more cost-effective solution the more clients you serve. By switching to automated reporting, agencies can significantly reduce their operational costs and allocate resources more efficiently.

Automating your client reporting in 3 steps

I’m sure I don’t have to convince you that client reporting should be automated at this point, the question is: how do I do it?

Let me guide you through the process step-by-step.

1. Choosing KPIs

What is it that you want to display in your reports? To answer that question, we need to know what kind of client report we’re building, for example:

• SEO client report

• email marketing report

• social media management report

Depending on the report type, the metrics you’ll display, and therefore the data sources, will be different. Effective data analysis is crucial in determining the right KPIs for these reports, enabling informed decisions and deeper insights.

Generally speaking, all of them should have the following characteristics:

• Understandable: Charts and graphs are nice, but what do they mean? The main idea of client reporting is not to display data, but to do conclusion from them. Create a summary section showing improvements/losses compared to the previous reporting period.

• Accessible: If you’re one of those agencies who send reports on certain dates should reconsider if that is the best approach. Not everyone has the time to look at them right then. Modern reporting platforms provide access to a dashboard where they could look at their reports whenever they want.

• White-labeled: If you want to impress your clients with your reporting capabilities, your reports should be white-labeled. That means they feature your branding, not that of the developer behind the reporting tool.

2. Selecting a reporting tool

Automating client reporting has never been easier thanks to the many reporting software tools available today. Here are four we think are worth a closer look.

AgencyAnalytics

AgencyAnalytics helps marketing agencies save time by automating their client reporting through the use of automated reports. The main benefit of this tool is that it allows you to connect your data and create custom dashboards that your clients can log into.

To help agencies get started, there are a variety of different templates available (both for dashboards and reports). Furthermore, 70+ integrations are at your disposal to ensure that all your data can be funneled into AgencyAnalytics.

Databox

Databox allows agencies to connect all their data points and build dashboards to track performance. It streamlines data collection and integration from various platforms, resulting in faster and more accurate reports. In addition to the 70+ supported integrations, you can even send data from SQL databases and via API.

One feature other tools lack is the benchmarking feature. It allows an agency to show their clients how they compare to similar companies. Databox can also calculate metrics such as ROI based on the data at hand.

Looker Studio

Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is the most popular tool to generate all kinds of reports. It’s free as long as you connect to the provided Google platforms (Google Sheets, Google Search Console). Extra connectors come at a hefty price tag, though.

For those on a tight budget and agencies who heavily rely on Google’s products, Looker Studio is a good solution to sort out their reporting. Additionally, it can integrate data from various social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, allowing users to track performance metrics alongside other business metrics for a comprehensive view of overall business performance.

Whatagraph

Whatagraph positions itself as a reporting solution for marketing agencies. As the other options mentioned, templates are available to help you get started as quickly as possible.

A handy feature is that you can set up reports based on team templates. Each report can be fine-tuned within seconds, making it easy to launch reports tailored to each client. Reports can also be shared via a live link—and it updates data constantly.

3. Embedding into your client portal

Some reporting solutions allow you to send the reports via email. While that isn’t a bad option, I think it’s outdated. Let me put it this way: what does your inbox look like right now? Is it full of unread emails? I bet your client’s inbox is the same.

Instead of upsetting them because they didn’t see your reporting email, why not give them access to the report in a client portal? The biggest benefit is that they can log in at any time and visualize your reports.

Overcoming common challenges

Common challenges in client reporting include data accuracy, data integration, and report customization. To overcome these challenges, agencies can use automated reporting tools that integrate with multiple data sources, provide real-time data, and offer customizable dashboards.

These tools ensure that data is accurate and up-to-date, reducing the risk of errors. Agencies can also establish clear communication channels with clients to ensure that reports meet their needs and expectations. By addressing these challenges, agencies can deliver more effective and reliable client reports.

Measuring success with automated reporting

Measuring the success of automated reporting involves tracking key metrics such as report accuracy, report frequency, and client satisfaction. Agencies can also track the time saved by using automated reporting tools and the cost savings compared to manual reporting.

Additionally, agencies can use data analytics to measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and make data-driven decisions to improve client outcomes. By regularly evaluating these metrics, agencies can ensure that their reporting processes are efficient and continue to meet client needs.

Automating client reports has never been easier

Agencies have more tools than ever to choose from when it comes to generating and automating reports. Do keep in mind that they all look very similar. But the devil is in the details, as they say. Take your time when you check the different integrations the tools support natively, and if you can connect to the data sources you need.

Lastly, ensure that the reporting can also be connected to other tools you use, for instance a CRM. If you’re not using such a software yet, check out this post about the best CRMs for agencies.