Announcing, The Flow: your SaaS growth bible  

Best 7 Marketing Analytics Tools and Software for 2022

Customers today are more informed than they ever were before. Add to that the fact that all major players in every industry these days are investing heavily in inbound marketing, and you’ve got yourself tons of competition.

This is just one of the many reasons why companies need to invest in marketing analytics.

With a marketing analytics tool by your side, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are as fruitful as you’d like them to be, and giving you the returns you’re looking for. A marketing analytics tool can also help you identify the top channels and understand which campaigns drive the most revenue.

In this article, I will talk about what marketing analytics is, why it is important, and some of the top tools you can utilize to keep track of your marketing analytics metrics.

What is Marketing Analytics?

Marketing analytics is the study of marketing patterns to understand better how your marketing campaigns affect your potential customers’ habits. Marketing analytics software achieves this by measuring your important business metrics like ROI.

Think of this process as accounting. You have positive and negative factors that affect your marketing process.

Marketing analytics tools help flush out your experience and make your entire analysis process more manageable.

Why Is Marketing Analytics Important?

Marketing analytics is important because it allows you to follow your users’ patterns and plan your business plan accordingly. By understanding your customers’ process while interacting with your product, you can identify your shortcomings and increase your marketing efficiency.

HockeyStack

HockeyStack is an end-to-end analytics tool for SaaS companies. With HockeyStack, you can track and analyze data from the marketing, product, sales, revenue, and marketing in one tool and get access to hidden insights, such as the LTV of a piece of content, or the churn rate of each marketing channel along with users’ reasons for churn.

HockeyStack allows you to build dashboards with no code using any metric you need from any department! You are also free to choose from a number of templates for dashboards, making the entire process even smoother.

HockeyStack’s Features

HockeyStack offers these features with no code:

  • Step-by-step user journey
  • Custom dashboards
  • Funnels and goals
  • Attribution analysis
  • Insights
  • Surveys
  • Revenue analytics
  • Segments

and more.

Let’s take a look at what some of HockeyStack’s dashboards look like in action.

Here’s a report on blog posts that drive revenue:

Revenue + Marketing Dashboard
from HockeyStack

A marketing to expansion funnel mapped out:

marketing to expansion funnel in HockeyStack
from HockeyStack

And a funnel showing how many signups can be attributed to internal links:

from HockeyStack

HockeyStack Pricing

HockeyStack has two plans, both of which have a 14-day trial with a 30-day refund guarantee.

HockeyStack pricing
from HockeyStack

You can check out the pricing page here.

HockeyStack Integrations

  • Paddle
  • Stripe
  • Hubspot
  • Crisp Chat
  • Mailchimp
  • Salesforce (coming soon)
  • Zapier (coming soon)

HockeyStack Pros and Cons

HockeyStack Pros

The unique benefit of HockeyStack is its ability to unify your marketing, revenue, sales, and product data using no code. This allows you to uncover unique insights that you wouldn’t be able to by using multiple tools as they cause you to have fragmented data.

  1. You can integrate with Stripe, Paddle, and Hubspot and build every single dashboard that you can think of, using all sales, marketing, revenue, and product metrics.
  2. You can create funnels, goals, and surveys, which are rare to get with other tools on this list.
  3. You don’t need any developers, tracking is cookieless, and the script is small, so it doesn’t increase your site loading time.
  4. Has a free plan.

HockeyStack Cons

HockeyStack generally lacks reporting features as it’s not focused on agencies and other reporting-based businesses.

  • The tool lacks some integrations, such as Salesforce and Zapier. (on the roadmap)

Google Analytics

What is it?

Google Analytics is a Javascript-based tool designed to improve your customers’ experience. It was launched in November 2005 after Google bought web analytics software Urchin. Google Analytics is one of the most widely known Marketing Analytics software in the market due to its quality and its connection to the Google brand.

Google Analytics aims to improve your customers’ experience by giving you insight into your website, customers, and ad patterns. You can access audience reports, advertising reports, behavior reports, acquisition reports, and other important SaaS Marketing Metrics.

Why is it good for Marketing Analytics?

We are used to anything carrying the brand name Google to be good. But what makes Google Analytics suitable? Here is a shortlist of features Google Analytics has:

1. Compatibility with Other Google Products

One of the most fundamental benefits of Google Analytics is that it connects with other Google products. This benefit is handy for small to medium-scale businesses that use G-Suite softwares since it connects with Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Meet, etc. This benefit is essential if you want to use Google Analytics with other departments of yours.

2. Compare Your Metric with Competitors

However, the relation with G-Suite products is not limited, as mentioned above. Google Analytics stores and compares your data in Google servers with other data obtained from other customers.
This method will allow you to compare your marketing data with the median statistics in the field. This factor is beneficial when you consider Google Analytics is most commonly picked marketing analytics tool in the field.
However, utilizing Google Analytics also means that your product will allow your competitors to check your metrics. So it is a give and take situation both on your and Google’s part.

3. Real-Time Updates

Google Analytics also provides its users with real-time updates. This means that you will no longer have to wait for daily or weekly updates to see how your marketing campaigns are going. This feature is handy for companies that experience increased reception from their target audience in a particular period.

4. Easy to Setup

Another critical factor helping Google Analytics’ image is how it is easy to set up. Combined with the pricing model employed by Google, this makes Google Analytics one of the more user-friendly softwares in the market. In addition to this, Google provides Google Analytics users with free instructional videos that help you use Google Analytics.

5. Compatible BOTH for PC and Mobile

There is also a slight advantage of Google Analytics that it is suitable for mobile and computer use. Google Analytics being cross-platform, will enable you to keep track of your marketing metrics, no matter where you are.

Pricing:

Google Analytics offers two different packages. One is a free version called “Analytics,” Another is called “Analytics 360,” which requires a payment according to your package. For further information on this topic, you can get into contact with the Google Support team to determine what kind of package would be most suitable for your company. 


From Google Analytics

Reviews:

Here are some reviews for Google Analytics:


From Capterra Review Page

“Primarily we use Google Analytics to track user interaction within our websites and mobile apps. This provides us with data that allows us to focus our energy on those areas used most by our customers. It also helps us determine which features might be difficult to find or hard to use. Additionally, we use some of the ecommerce metrics like customer lifetime value and average order on websites with an ecommerce component.”

From G2 Review Page

“Google Analytics is ideal for start-ups/small businesses that use the G-suite software because it connects with all of the other tools used to integrate the company (mail, calendar, chat, meet). All of Google’s tools are intuitive and easy to use and have easy add on features. Google Analytics is the perfect software to use in lieu of a data analyst and is user-friendly to employees of all skill levels.”

From Capterra Review Page

“The feature I like the most is that it gives a real time view of the users who accessed m website in the last 30 minutes, it helps me to know the real-time traffics”

  • Important Point

Do not forget to check out for user reviews before using a Saas software.

SEMRush

What is it?

SEMRush is a marketing analytics software founded by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov in 2007. It currently is one of the most popular marketing analysis software in the field with one of the most crowded customer bases.
To help you with the marketing analysis process, SEMRush provides you with your target audience’s searches, optimizes your website for search engines, and identifies link-building opportunities. These are only some of the features SEMRush has.

Why is it good for Marketing Analytics?

There are some certain features that differentiate SEMRush from other softwares. Here is a shortlist of them:

1. Keyword Support Tool

One of the crucial features is the keyword support tool. By helping you to link your article to other related websites, SEMRush increases your potential to get in better places in the search engine, thus increasing your website’s reach.

2. Checking out for Improvements

Another important feature of SEMRush is that it inspects your website for improvements. It can suggest you to use different sections, pick a different color palette and help you with linking your company’s social media account. An Inbound Marketing Strategy like this one is bound to attract you some extra users.

3. Keep Track of Your Target Audience

Also, SEMRush helps you with understanding the demographic stats of your data. Knowing your target audience’s age, gender and region will help you make better decisions regarding your marketing strategy.
SEMRush might be a solid tool with loads of features. However, it is far from perfect.
There are some shortcomings of SEMRush that I must talk about now. The most important one, as mentioned by the customer base often, is the setup process. Compared to Google Analytics, SEMRush requires more knowledge regarding the subject you are dealing with, making it a more complex software.
Another problem with SEMRush is its user interface. It can be complex for software of its proportion due to the features. The way the interface is built does not help either. It is not easy to keep track of metrics you would like to consider while planning your marketing strategy.

Pricing

SemRush offers three different packages. These are the pro version, guru version, and business version. You can have a 17% discount if you decide to subscribe to SemRush for a year. Here is the price chart:


From SemRush
From SemRush

Reviews:

Here are some reviews for SEMRush:

From Capterra Review Page

“When it comes to search engine optimization, digital marketing, and business intelligence, Semrush is the one-stop solution for all of your requirements. Semrush allows me to get a better understanding of my customers or targets’ demographics, such as their age, gender, and location, so that I can provide them with the most appropriate products and services.”

From Capterra Review Page

“The keyword magic tool is so useful and much easier to use that Google’s keyword planner. The quick access of keyword variations and having themes grouped allows you to quickly develop insight into useful terms and where you may have the best opportunity to rank.”

From G2 Review Page

“SEM Rush has been a part of my digital marketing toolbox for at least six or seven years. The amazing thing to me is that during that time, many other platforms that base what they do on data aggregation have fallen entirely or at least stumbled significantly but not SEM RUSH. Other than Moz, who are good in their own right, no one can even compete with SEM RUSH.”

The overall feedback for SEMRush is pretty good. Many users compare it to other tools they have utilized in the past and are happy with it. These comments show themselves in the user score as well. SEMRush has a score of 4.5 out of 5 in G2 and a 4.7 out of 5 in Capterra.
Some mild complaints of the software include the possible confusions users can have due to the complexity of the product.

BuzzSumo

What is it?

BuzzSumo is a cloud-based marketing analytics software founded in 2014 that aims to help you smooth out the process of advertising. It allows you to track your engagements, check out your competitors’ websites and design your website accordingly.

Why is it good for Marketing Analytics?

The most significant advantage BuzzSumo has over its competitors is the number of features. Here is a shortlist of them followed by their explanations:

1. Filters, a lot of them.

BuzzSumo allows you to filter out your target audience according to the metrics of your liking. This feature is vital if you are trying to appeal to a particular audience. Here is a shortlist of the metrics you can use with BuzzSumo.

  • Date
  • Country
  • Language
  • Domain
  • Content-Type
  • Word Count

2. Analyze Your Search Results

BuzzSumo also filters out your searches and inspects them according to the metrics of your choosing. This will allow you to track which sorts of features draw customers while eliminating the opposite effects.
Here is a shortlist of the options you can use to analyze your data:

  • Headlines
  • Content Lenght
  • Day Published
  • Most Shared Domains

3. Search for Questions

Buzzsome has a feature that allows you to list out questions in a given topic and their rating compared to the other questions in the field. This feature will enable you to check out where your questions stand in the grander scale of things and which kind of questions draw customers.

Pricing

BuzzSumo offers four distinct packages: the Free, Pro, Plus, and the Large. As you can imagine, the free version is completely free, as you can deduct from the name. Other versions, however, require a payment. If you decide to make a yearly subscription to BuzzSumo, you can have a 20% discount.

From BuzzSumo
From BuzzSumo

Reviews:

Here are some reviews for BuzzSumo:

From G2 Review Page

“Buzzsumo has various stunning tools, such as a content analyzer that assists us in identifying top-performing content throughout the web and a content ideas generator that helps us produce fantastic content ideas for our websites. Also, this software is quite helpful in building backlinks of the web application for a better digital presence that contributes to the overall search engine optimization.”

From G2 Review Page

“There is this deep longing for more and more features, the more information you provide the more ways of features are desired. There is a lot already and when there is more added to it more room for insights.”

From Capterra Review Page

“Developing good content means you need to do a lot of research and sometimes that can be a dubious process even if you have all the tools. Hopefuly, BuzzSumo is one of those tools that makes the process of content research much easier and much more insightful in just a couple of clicks.”

The majority of reviews for Buzzsumo talk about how many features it has. However, Buzzsumo does not stick with features only. Many users also talk about what a beautiful interface BuzzSumo has. Combining the best of two worlds is a rare sight to be seen.
However, Buzzsumo has its shortcomings as well. Many users talk about how its learning steep could be too steep for beginners. This aspect is something you should take into account before trying out Buzzsumo.
Buzzsumo has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 both in G2 and Capterra.

Databox

What is it?

Databox is a company founded in 2012. It is based in Boston, Massatutches. Databox allows you to keep track of your advertising and user metrics and use them accordingly in your marketing campaigns.

Although Databox has its alternatives, it is one of the most reliable tools in the field. It has plenty of integrations and smooths out your entire data analyzing and planning process. This benefit is supported by the in-depth customization options Databox provides.

Why is it good for Marketing Analytics?

Of course, Databox has not achieved this respect in its respective sector by doing nothing. Here are some of the features of Databox that distinguish it from its competitors.

1. Highly Customizable

Databox allows you to customer whatever you want, whenever you want. An overwhelming majority of the reviews for Databox talk about how they could create their specific data sets and compare them to their other metrics and metrics belonging to other companies.

2. Notifications for everyone

Databox allows you to get specific notifications about the metrics you choose. You can get a notification, for example, when your marketing reach surpasses X in a month. You can also design who will get these notifications. These sorts of customization options allow you to manage your team more easily.
Here are some metrics you can get notifications for if you use Databox:

  • New Contacts
  • New Deals
  • All Deals

Pricing

The pricing system of the Databox is slightly different from that of other softwares mentioned in this article. Although Databox has three different packages called the Starter, Professional, and the performer, the payment you will make depends on how extensive you want your features to be in that package.
In addition to this, you can get a discount of 20% if you decide to make a yearly subscription.

From Databox
From Databox

Reviews

Here are some reviews for Databox:

From G2 Review Page

“While using Databox, sometimes data sources don’t stay connected and historical data can be lost. It is also somewhat difficult to create custom reporting since an external spreadsheet may be needed to calculate the data.”

From G2 Review Page

“Love how we can build boards to showcase data, track it over time, show comparisons, etc. So much easier to use than Google Data Studio. Also love the Slack notifications and scorecards. There were also a lot of problems early on with outages and integrations not working. But, these seem to have been resolved and not been seen again for many months now”

From Capterra Review Page

“I love being able to have complete customizable control of my key metrics dashboard. It allows me a daily snapshot of how we’re performing. Plus, being able to schedule snapshots be sent to Slack and email, etc. is great. I also love the goals feature, being able to put our metrics into context like this is great.”

Most of the customer base of the Databox talk about how customizable it is. Although there might be some shortcomings in specific customization options, Databox provides an overall positive experience for its users regarding customization.
There are also some complaints regarding data not being accurate all the time, which is a complaint that should be taken seriously. Whether the data provided by your software is legit or not is an important matter that surpasses any other advantage or disadvantage.

Databox has a score of 4.4 out of 5 in G2 and a 4.7 out of 5 according to the capterra.

Improvado

What is it?

Improvado aims to help your marketing teams determine what advertisement campaigns are beneficial. Improvado achieves this by allowing you to measure and compare your advertising campaigns. By utilizing the database Improvado provides, you will be able to compare your active campaigns and the prior ones you have had.
Improvado markets itself as a tool that is specifically made for small to medium-scale businesses.

Why is it good for Marketing Analytics?

But what does it have besides allowing you to compare your advertisement campaigns? What makes Improvado different from its competitors? To understand that, I need to talk about some of its features:

1. Great Support Team

There is a reason why Improvado is received well by small and medium scale businesses. This phenomenon is mainly because their support team is one of the best in the field. This element helps to smoothen out the integration process for small businesses that might be unable to hire a big marketing team to deal with transition problems.

2. A Good Interface

Many user reviews talk about how good the user interface of Improvado is. It not only provides you with endless opportunities to edit it, but it is also user-friendly. These advantages mean that you will be able to edit your interface to your liking. If you are a small company owner who wants to see a few relevant metrics, this is the software for you.

Pricing

Improvado’s pricing information is not available on its website. You need to contact their customer support to get information regarding their pricing.

From Improvado

Reviews:

From G2 Review Page

“I like how the use of Improvado really opens up the possibilities of what we can do with our data. When you collect the data directly from the API and can manipulate it within Improvado, you can do data transformations and manipulations that were out of the question when using direct data connectors like SuperMetrics. It also allows us to combine data across platforms–which is something we would only be able to do through manual exporting and reporting.”

From G2 Review Page

“Improvado offers a great solution to unify marketing data that otherwise sits in silos. Viewing the metrics holistically allows advertisers to make more informed and data-driven decisions. Additionally, the team at Improvado is fantastic. I’ve worked with teams across the org and everyone is very competent and positive. Marat is an excellent AM and has done a great job bridging the gap from “vendor” to “partner” and is someone I now consider a friend.”

From Capterra Review Page

“Would love to get some data preparation and transformation functionality to take things to the next level.”

The most talked-about feature of Improvado is how good their marketing team is. Many small and medium-scale businesses talk about how their problems are solved without needing an IT team with the help of Improvado’s customer service. These actions constitute an excellent step taken by Improvado by utilizing one of the fundamental basics of inbound marketing.

Improvado has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 in G2 and 4.5 out of 5 in Capterra.

Ahrefs

What is it?

Ahrefs is a market analysis tool that aims to help you with your advertising campaigns. You can track your competitors’ stats, compare them to your own. Ahrefs is an outward tool that aims to get the most amount of information from your competitors.

Why is it good for Marketing Analytics?

Here are some of the features that make Ahrefs such a good tool:

1. Rank Tracking

Ahrefs allows you to keep track of your website and how well it does compared to other websites. You can compare your website with others according to how many clicks you get, the number of references, the number of links, and the many other metrics.
Ahrefs also allows you to rank the websites you like according to the metrics you want. This option is beneficial for making a cross-sectional analysis of your website.

2. Keyword Tracking

Ahrefs allows you to determine which words are used often to determine your website strategy. This feature allows you to track the overall terminology of your sector. By using this feature, you will find it easier to link your articles with one another.

Pricing:

Ahrefs has four different package options: lite, standard, advanced, and agency. Ahrefs does not offer free trials; however, you can get two months free if you decide to make an annual subscription.

From Ahrefs

Reviews

Here are some reviews for Ahrefs:

From G2 Review Page

“I have been using Ahrefs since 2015 and the product has developed tremendously over time. They offer an incredibly fresh and extensive index when it comes to keyword ranking data, and truly useful reporting features.”

From G2 Review Page

“Although Ahref has multiple SEO Tools, but I frequently use its Backlink Checker tool to check the backlinks of my & my competitor’s websites, and I like the backlink checker tool the most as it provides me accurate & recent data of backlinks.”

From Capterra Review Page

“Ahrefs is a complete SEO tool that holds multiple tools like Link building Keyword research Competitor analysis Rank tracking Site audits I usually use Ahref for keyword Research which is important to grab the traffic to your site as well as analyze the top rank keywords

The overwhelming majority of the reviewers talk about how complex Ahrefs is. This situation is partly due to how many features Ahrefs provides, especially when you consider the main aim of this software is to compare your product with your competitors.
However, many users talk about how solid Ahrefs is despite this shortcoming. Such comments from a customer base should be taken seriously. It is known that Ahrefs has a solid customer base that helps to constitute brand loyalty.

Ahrefs has a 4.6 out of 5 in G2 and a 4.8 out of 5 in Capterra.

Conclusion

In this article, I have explained what marketing analytics is, why it is important, and multiple softwares that you can utilize to better calculate your metrics. If you are interested in learning more about SaaS softwares, I would suggest checking out HockeyStack blog for other articles.

FAQ

Is marketing analytics important for SaaS?

Yes, marketing analytics is quite important for SaaS businesses. They constitute the basis of your marketing strategy and should be considered while making a move.

Subscribe to the The Flow's weekly issues Sharing everything we know about growth, with real playbooks we use, interviews with top growth leaders, and research & opinion pieces.

🚀

Uncover What Drives Revenue

💸