How great marketers create insightful and actionable reports (with steps + tools)

Any great marketer knows that reporting isn’t just about rattling off numbers. It’s about telling the full story behind your performance—what’s working, what’s broken, and most importantly, why.

When you bring qualitative data into the mix, you’re not just sharing metrics—you’re spotlighting the actual experiences behind them. That kind of storytelling helps teams prioritize what matters and gives stakeholders a clearer picture of what your customers need and expect.

Don’t worry—it’s not as intimidating as it sounds. This guide breaks the process down step-by-step and shows you how to combine hard numbers with meaningful user insights from real feedback, behavior tracking, and in-the-moment observation.

This guide shows you how to

1. Discover what’s happening on your website or product

2. Analyze how a channel or campaign performs

3. Understand why you get those numbers

1. Discover what’s happening on your website or product

You just overhauled your outdated website—an effort that involved cross-functional teams and a significant chunk of the company budget. It’s now time to track and report on the changes’ impact: do they delight customers, align with their needs, and improve your bottom line? Why or why not?

Delve into these key performance metrics to learn the answers to those questions:

• Website performance: pull up numeric data to determine whether your redesign pays off. Examples of quantitative data include cart abandonment rate, conversion rate, drop-off rate, total clicks, and number of rage clicks.

• Customer satisfaction: connect user behavior to site performance to understand why the metrics are what they are. Gather qualitative data derived from surveys like Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score® (NPS®), and Customer Effort Score (CES), and see if there’s a decline in support and ticket volume.

🛠 Which tools to use: Contentsquare, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Adobe Analytics.

💡 Did you know? Contentsquare integrates with Google Analytics and Mixpanel, combining insights from your favorite website traffic analytics platforms and our experience intelligence tools. Easily connect the what to the why and build actionable reports for your decision-makers with one quick setup.

Quickly learn what’s happening using quantitative analytics tools

Website analytics tools are the most common and reliable sources of measurable information about site performance. They tell you what’s happening on your website or in your product.

That’s where Contentsquare’s powerful Web Analytics come in.

They go far beyond basic pageviews and bounce rates. For example, the Contentsquare Dashboard gives you an instant, visual overview of key metrics like traffic, conversions, and even frustration—all without needing to dig through reports. It’s your control center for spotting trends, uncovering issues, and making smarter product decisions fast.

The Contentsquare Dashboard in action

Whether you’re tracking a new feature rollout or diagnosing a sudden drop in clicks, the Dashboard helps you turn user behavior into clear, actionable insights.

However, quantitative data reveals just one aspect of the user experience (UX)—you’ll need to pair it up with qualitative insights to get the full picture.

Enter behavior analytics tools.

See how people use your site post-redesign via behavior analytics tools

Experience intelligence platforms like Contentsquare take you beyond the what to uncover the why.

While web analytics tools show you what users are doing—pageviews, drop-off points, conversions—behavior analytics fills in the gaps to explain why it's happening.

Contentsquare’s all-in-one platform combines both to give you a complete, rounded picture of your user experience. It shows you not just where users click or leave, but what’s driving their decisions and emotions in the moment. With its suite of powerful tools, you can:

• Visualize quant data: explain the click-through rate on a call-to-action (CTA) by sharing visual insights from heatmaps. A scroll map—a type of heatmap available in the Contentsquare Heatmaps tool—shows the percentage of users who reached your CTA’s location on the page, while a click map reveals the number of clicks your CTA received.

 👉 Learn more about Contentsquare Heatmaps

• Provide proof something isn’t working: analyze low conversions on vital pages with tools like Contentsquare’s Session Replay. Use the ‘clicked element’ filter to find relevant session recordings (such as those of users who rage clicked on a button to download a free white paper) and watch them together with your team or manager.

👉 Learn more about Session Replay

• Evaluate customer satisfaction over time: launch an NPS® or CSAT survey after a redesign. By including the voice of the customer in your report, you help everyone involved understand how users perceive the changes you made to your site or product.

👉 Learn more about Contentsquare Surveys

💡 Pro tip: generate a survey in seconds with Contentsquare’s AI-powered Surveys. This feature lets you craft any survey based on a goal, including NPS®, CSAT, and CES.

Also, save more time when you automate the creation of summary reports. Instantly highlight the findings, quotes, and key insights you need to build your case.

Launch a survey in seconds with Contentsquare’s AI-powered Surveys tool

2. Analyze how a channel or campaign performs

You have an ongoing campaign across different channels, including pay-per-click (PPC), email, and social media. In your mid-campaign report, you want to present how each channel compares with the rest, so you can optimize spend and enhance your company’s return on investment (ROI).

There’s no shortage of quantitative data to collect from these multiple sources. The challenge, however, is to seamlessly bring all the data together and effectively evaluate the success of your marketing campaigns. 

Don't feel overwhelmed just yet. Combining analytics tools makes it possible to craft an in-depth, actionable marketing campaign report.

🛠 Which tools to use: Contentsquare, Mixpanel, GA4, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads 

Choose between two powerful website analytics tools

GA4 is a good place to start if you want to learn how end-users got to a landing page: did they click on a Google ad, respond to a Facebook campaign, or find you via a LinkedIn ad? But that in itself doesn’t reveal an entire channel’s performance. You have to know what people did after going deeper into your marketing funnel to become qualified leads.

Some traffic channel-related data points you can consolidate in Mixpanel

Mixpanel fills the gap by enabling you to track thousands of events like clicking the sign-up button or playing a video in real time. But while Mixpanel reports show where users get stuck, they can’t tell you why. Don’t worry—your friendly neighborhood behavior analytics tools are here to help you venture further down.

Enrich your reporting through Contentsquare’s tools and features

Marketing performance reporting should be comprehensive. You can start by outlining the top-performing and worst-performing channels. Add context by identifying their role in the user journey and suggest how to maximize or resolve the issues linked to these channels.

Here’s a sample workflow you can apply within Contentsquare:

• Integrate Contentsquare with Mixpanel: send your Mixpanel events to Contentsquare to further deepen your understanding of user behavior

• Leverage Funnel Analysis to get a glimpse of the user journey (including how visitors enter and leave): create up to 5 comparisons, segmenting by channel, UTM parameters—for example, source, medium, campaign—and Mixpanel events. Or, filter by ‘clicked element’ for anything that has no corresponding event in Mixpanel

• Glean more insights through Heatmaps: filter heatmaps by traffic channel to find opportunities to optimize landing pages for different channels

• Watch users in the wild with Session Replay: find the replays of your low-converting channels; select the traffic channel filter, enter your UTM campaign and source (for example, email or paid social), and get a front-row view of the user experience

3. Understand why you get those numbers

Go beyond comparing each channel’s performance metrics to uncover why you get low conversions, high CTRs, or decreased organic traffic. Delve deeper using visualized user insights and the voice of the customer. 

Weaving a narrative into your reporting with qualitative data enhances empathy, reassuring users you have their best interests at heart—and, in turn, helping grow your bottom line.

🛠 Which tools to use: Contentsquare Heatmaps, Session Replay, Surveys, and Interviews.

Add more qualitative data points to secure buy-in from stakeholders

Whether you need a bigger budget or support for your bold marketing idea, a storified marketing report boosts your chances of convincing execs or your teammates. Contentsquare allows you to communicate user needs to your audience through these intuitive tools:

• Session Replay: see what users see when they use your product or site, including what they click on and where they navigate to next. This enables you to quickly identify conversion blockers and pain points, fix the issues, and improve the user experience.

• Surveys: let the customer's voice guide your content marketing reporting and decision-making. Launch a targeted survey to discover and collect opinions about your ideas, campaigns, and even content.

• Feedback widget: think of it as a real-time suggestion box where users can express how they feel about your site or product. If they feel happy or frustrated about a feature or element, they can instantly share whatever’s on their mind.

Contentsquare’s unobtrusive feedback widget fits seamlessly onto any website

Instantly weave a story highlighting user insights

Marketing reporting isn’t about crunching numbers alone. Remember: reports are stories that dive deep into the heart of customer behavior. And with tools like GA4, Mixpanel, and, of course, Contentsquare, you'll blend quantitative facts with rich, qualitative insights that give your audience the full picture.

So, when you craft a report, don’t simply cite website performance metrics. Take advantage of Contentsquare’s tools and features to help stakeholders not just know that a user clicked on your site but also understand why they did. Empower your bosses, teammates, and collaborators to make better decisions while ensuring everyone is truly connecting with customers. 

FAQs about marketing reporting