Analytics in Product & Marketing: Tools & Platforms
Analyzing and interpreting data to uncover insights, and make informed decisions.
Building on my previous article on the key metrics that matter in product and marketing, this piece explores the various analytics tools and platforms available to aid businesses in analyzing and interpreting data, uncovering insights, and making informed decisions. These tools come with a variety of features, pricing options, and integrations to suit the needs of various teams and organizations.
Business Intelligence
Metabase
Business intelligence for everyone.
Team doesn’t need to speak SQL
Metabase is the easy, open-source way to help everyone in your company work with data like an analyst.
Dashboards are easy to build, share, and explore.
When the questions get more complicated, SQL and notebook editor are there for the data savvy.
$85/month, then $5 per user/month
Tableau
Tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way we use data to solve problems.
Tableau empowers people and organizations to make the most of their data.
Tableau manages the data flow and turns data into actionable information.
It can create a wide range of different visualization to present the data and showcase insights interactively.
$35 per month per user.
PowerBI
Power BI is a business analytics service provided by Microsoft that can analyze and visualize data, extract insights, and share it across various departments within your organization.
$14 per month per user.
Product Analytics
Mixpanel
Powerful, self-serve product analytics to help you convert, engage, and retain more users.
Build funnels, see top user flows, create cohorts, and more with just a few clicks.
No need to invest hours writing SQL or waiting on someone to do it for you.
See popular features and power users (how is my product used?)
Build funnels and analyze conversion rates (where and how do users drop off?
See user stickiness (which users retain best?)
$25/month, $100k monthly tracked users on free plan to find PMF
Heap
A single snippet automatically captures the entire digital experience of every user on your product or site — no engineering needed.
Data science to remove blindspots.
Session replay for complete understanding.
1 product/website on the free plan to find PMF.
Amplitude
Know and predict which combination of features and customer actions in the product translate to business outcomes — revenue, loyalty and lifetime value.
100M events per month on the free plan.
Web & Marketing Analytics
AppsFlyer
Mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform which assists app marketers with campaign management and conversion tracking. Its key features include customer journey mapping, attribution modeling, audience segmentation, social media metrics and retention tracking.
For marketing and product teams to power predictable app growth, protect customer privacy and deliver exceptional mobile experiences.
AppsFlyer open platform provides measurement, analytics, engagement, and fraud protection technologies.
Incremental lift testing makes it easy to make good choices for your marketing budget through accurate, unbiased insights into the true value of your marketing outcomes.
Customer experience and engagement suite, powered by a reliable deep linking engine, lets you create personalized journeys that increase conversions and return on experience.
$6 on Growth plan, free plan comes with a 30-day trial of premium add ons.
Adjust
Measure and maximize your return on ad spend.
Mobile app attribution, App analytics, Fraud prevention, CTV AdVision, Audience builder and Automation.
Free with email support and up to 1,500 monthly attributions.
Google Stack
Google Analytics
Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications.
Firebase + GA
To see the app reports (whether in Google Analytics or the Firebase console), you need to use the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK in your app.
The Firebase SDK collects basic app-usage data automatically, without the need to write any additional code.
Understand basic interactions such as: how many times your app was opened, how often in-app purchases were made, and how many users were active during a certain period of time. You can also see user demographics and interests.
Comes up with an array of advanced features; Crashlytics, Performance Monitoring, App distributions, Analytics, Test Lab, Real-time databases, A/B testing, Dynamic links, Predictions
Google Data Studio
Data visualization platform that makes reports easier to create and understand.
If you’re looking to fetch data from non-Google platforms, you may have to pay for a third-party connector provider.
Free Connectors:
Google products: Google Sheets, Google Analytics, Google Ads, YouTube.
Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift.
Paid Connectors:
Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.
Web Analytics: Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics.
From the connector gallery in Data Studio, Supermetrics helps to get all your marketing data into Data Studio. Has paid plans for different amounts of data sources.
Google Tag Manager
Manage and deploy marketing tags (snippets of code or tracking pixels) on your website (or mobile app) without having to modify the code.
Simply, GTM works like this; Information from one data source (your website) is shared with another data source (Google Analytics) through GTM.
Once you get over the learning curve, what you can do in Google Tag Manager is pretty amazing. You can customize the data that is sent to Analytics.
You can set up and track basic events like PDF downloads, outbound link clicks or button clicks. Or, complex enhanced ecommerce product and promotion tracking.
There are three main parts to Google Tag Manager:
Tags: Snippets of Javascript or tracking pixels
Triggers: This tells Google Tag Manager when, where or how to fire a tag
Variables: Additional information GTM may need for the tag and trigger to work.
Google Optimize
Increase conversion rates by building and running a huge variety of A/B test experiments.
Use Optimize to build and create experiments.
Test your hypothesis by running the experiment.
Evaluate the results of the experiments by the reports it creates.
Deploy the winning variant on the site permanently.
Optimize it again if necessary.
Run up to five tests at a time for free.
A/B Test, Multivariate Test, Split URL Testing, Server-Side Experiment, Personalization.
Google 360 is the pro version.
Paid competitors:
Optimizely,
VWO,
A/B Tasty
Behavioral Analytics
Hotjar
Understand how users behave on your site, what they need, and how they feel, fast.
$39 starter, Free plan allows 300 recordings and 3 heatmaps.
Recordings and playbacks
Customer surveys
Diverse heatmaps
Feedback collection
Unlimited team members
Fullstory
Digital Experience Intelligence — Combine quantitative and qualitative data.
Identify revenue-impacting issues for engineers to troubleshoot.
Free plan gives 3 seats, 1 month of data storage and 1,000 sessions per month.
Available for mobile
Customer support features
Plentiful integrations
Generous free plan
Mouseflow
Know what’s happening at every touchpoint of your users’ journey.
$29 starter, Free tier gives 500 recordings and 1 month of storage
Superb heatmaps
Advanced funnel optimization
Surveys
Form analytics
Crazy Egg
Understand the customer journey with Snapshots, Heatmaps and Recordings
$24, no free plan
Each subsequent plan brings more session replays, snapshots (heatmaps), and page-views.
A/B testing
Confetti reports
Integrated conversion funnel analysis
Full Session
$39, free trial available
5,000 monthly sessions, 45 Days Data Retention
Session Replay & sharing
Interactive heat maps
Customer Feedback
Page Clicks & Error Clicks
Segments, filters, Widgets & Recording Rules
SEO/SEM
Use case for SEO tools:
The opportunity to analyze a website for keywords.
Optimize your website by removing issues.
Spy on competitors’ backlinks.
Find keyword opportunities.
Track your top keywords.
View competitors most visited posts.
Semrush
$120 per month for 5 whole projects (websites).
500 keywords to track on a daily basis.
Keyword, domain and link analytics — which let you see how the keyword, domain or a link is performing.
10,000 keyword results per search.
3000 reports per day.
5 different PDF reports per day.
Ahrefs
$99 per website for a month
500 keywords per website and find unlimited keyword opportunities.
Mobile ranking results
A track of 175 competitor domains per week
700 URLs tracked per week
Link inspection tool
Top 20 keyword positions for you or competitors
Top 10 competing pages or domains
Reports on content gap on your website or competitors
350 reports per week on their content explorer
Monthly alerts for acquired or lost backlinks
Opportunity to track competitor backlinks
Keyword suggestion tool with filters to find easy to rank keywords.
Moz
$99 per month and it can hold up to 3 projects.
Limited free plan.
300 keyword rankings per website (1200 keywords in total).
Mobile ranking results
5 crawls per month.
10,000 keyword rows per month.
5 keyword lists with 100 keywords per list and 100 links per list.
On-Page grader reports — simply check your on-page SEO and highlight the missing factors to rank your website higher.
200 rank checking queries per day.
Unlimited on page grader reports — get unlimited reports on how your on-page SEO is performing.
Ubersuggest
$12 per month, limited free plan.
All the features from the free plan.
A full step-by-step SEO training course.
Biweekly coaching and Q&A call
Email support
100 website reports per day
3 website projects
100 keywords tracked per project
Free mobile rank tracking
20 country rankings — check your keywords in a country
1000 pages crawled per report
20,000 top keywords per data exporting
Marketing Automation, Sales & CRM
ActiveCampaign
Basic features like automating email responses, creating calendars, and automated sending.
Segment your audience, personalize emails, and manage deliverability.
Mobile optimization
A/B testing
Analytics for revenue, ROI, and keywords
Landing page creation
Tracking online behavior and search
CRM and lead scoring
Subscriptions starting as low as $29 a month.
Mailchimp
Automate a variety of tasks, including sending automatic emails whenever you update your blog, thanks to the RSS-to-email function.
The platform also has basic analytics about open, click-through, and other rate, and you can integrate it with many other platforms, such as WordPress, Magento, and Shopify.
Free account lets you send 12,000 emails a month to 2,000 contacts.
Marketo
Automated responses, segmentation, and email personalization, and basic reporting and analytics.
The tool also allows you to set up automated emails that can be triggered by more than 40 different subscriber behaviors, and it allows for the creation of dynamic content.
A/B testing
Automated alerts
CRM lead integration options, lead nurturing, and lead scoring
Event and webinar marketing
Social integration for ads, sharing, engagement, and listening.
Subscriptions start at $895 a month.
GetResponse
Automated responses, segmentation, personalization, dynamic content, and reporting and analytics.
Create landing pages and responsive forms, and there are integration options for CRM and third-party lead-generation tools.
Advanced A/B testing options, tracking functionality, and you can set up automated emails based on various subscriber behaviors.
Other features include lead filtering, scoring, and tagging.
For $10 a month, you can get access to all the basic automation features) plus, it offers a free 30-day trial.
HubSpot
Email scheduling, live chat, reporting, predictive lead scoring, salesforce integration.
Optimize documents and personalize pitches.
Meeting links with Google Calendar, Office 365, and HubSpot CRM.
Queue up sales calls and make them from your browser, log calls to CRM automatically and record.
Sales automation with workflows to rotate leads, create deals and tasks etc.
$50/month for Marketing Hub, $50/month for CRM Suite, and $6,000/mo for 50 paid users on Sales Hub.
Salesforce
CRM with applications for sales, service, marketing and more that help bring customers and companies together.
Salesforce may present a steeper learning curve and require more admin resources or more budget to get systems working together.
Sales Cloud is an all-in-one sales CRM that brings together sales automation tools, reporting, deal management, and more.
Sales Cloud enables businesses to manage leads, track progress, and automate sales processes.
$25/user/month billed annually for Sales Cloud, $7,500/mo for 50 users on Sales Cloud Enterprise.
Conclusion
There are many analytics tools and platforms available to businesses of all sizes. These tools can assist in analyzing and visualizing data, extracting insights, and making data-driven decisions.
Some popular options include Metabase, Tableau, PowerBI, Mixpanel, Heap, Amplitude, AppsFlyer, Adjust, and Google Stack. Each tool offers a range of features, pricing plans, and integrations to meet the needs of different teams and organizations.
It’s important to evaluate the specific needs of your business and choose the tool that best fits your requirements.
If you need to see a more detailed implementation of these, you could connect with me and pick my brain. Cheers 🍹