Data is the underlying force that drives modern marketing campaigns. But if you're an agency running multiple promotions across platforms, the data aggregation process is sometimes a nightmare.
To avoid regularly spending 20+ hours extracting data and uploading it into tools like Excel or Tableau, you probably use data connectors like Supermetrics.
This data connector makes it easy to move data from leading platforms (like Facebook, Google Ads, and HubSpot) to your BigQuery, Google Sheets, Google Data Studio, or leading BI tools.
So, it's no surprise that Supermetrics has helped over half a million users make data-driven decisions over the last seven years. Today, they’ve become so popular that the President of Finland gave them an award.
But even with the best data connectors, building a robust analytics stack isn't easy. With oceans of data generated every second, syncing, storing, and enabling seamless access still proves to be a challenge.
In some use cases, other tools make this process much easier. But identifying the differences takes some effort. To help, we compared some of the different characteristics like price, features, and ease of use. Here are the top 5 tools you should consider if you’re considering a move away from Supermetrics:
1. Panoply
While Supermetrics helps extract analytics data and delivers it to reporting and visualization platforms, Panoply is a robust code-free ETL tool and data warehouse with pre-built technologies that enable seamless access, syncing, and storing.
Panoply is user-friendly, meaning it's easy to set up, maintain, and access the information you need on-demand without worrying about a learning curve. To really get the platform’s value, you need to know the ins and outs of SQL or have a BI tool ready to go so you can start finding insights as soon as your data is synced.
While analysts and marketers can get a full data pipeline up and running in both Panoply and Supermetrics, the latter has to be paired with tools like BigQuery to realize the full benefits of your data, which adds another level of complexity and cost.
Panoply pricing: see all pricing options; a free trial is available.
2. Funnel
Funnel is a data platform that collects advertising and marketing data from multiple sources and transforms it into automated marketing reports. If you're running ad campaigns across channels with at least a $100,000 monthly ad spend, Funnel might be the right tool for you.
With direct integrations to over 500 data sources out-of-the-box, Funnel extracts, processes, and maps your marketing data with little effort. Funnel incorporates data visualization into its platform, but the options are fairly limited and don’t allow users to write SQL, which can be frustrating for analysts.
As Funnel is mostly self-serve, it's also reasonably easy to use without any need for extensive technical expertise. However, Funnel doesn't come cheap. The costs are directly connected to your ad spend, and as your spending grows, the platform may become too expensive.
Funnel pricing: plans start at $499/month (with an option of a free trial).
3. Klipfolio
The cloud-based BI tool, Klipfolio, was developed for small and medium-sized businesses. It helps connect multiple data sources to discover metrics and visualize the findings. There are plenty of pre-built charts and templates to choose from, so you can be sure to deliver visually striking reports quite quickly.
When it comes to pre-built connectors, Klipfolio’s data integrations are simple. Integrations that Klipfolio doesn’t support, however, require expert technical knowledge as users have to manage their own API connections. But unlike the other technologies mentioned in this post, this isn't a tool for complex data analytics projects, in part because data is imported in JSON instead of a more traditional tabular format that makes for easy querying with SQL.
For almost two decades, Klipfolio has been popular among freelancers and small business owners because it's cost-effective. However, like most things in life, you get what you pay for.
Klipfolio pricing: plans start at $49/month (and offer a 14-day free trial).
4. Domo
Domo is a cloud-native seven-system platform with more than 1,000 data connectors built for seamless data management, collaboration, and monetization. This industry-agnostic BI tool not only stores all your data in one place but helps visualize raw data in real-time.
Domo also lets you effortlessly combine both business and customer data to improve collaboration, efficiency, and manage your whole operation through one centralized platform. This means that companies can solve problems like operational inefficiencies and cash flow problems while identifying new opportunities to boost revenue.
Domo's pre-built functions make prepping data and building predictive models and alerts easy. The drop-and-drag feature makes this tool accessible to non-programmers. You can also share the Domo dashboard across departments to help teams access the (real-time) information they need.
However, Domo isn't for everyone. All those features and connectors come with a steep price that’s especially prohibitive for small or growing businesses.
Domo pricing: plans are based on requirements (and come with an option of a 30-day free trial).
5. Improvado
Improvado is an integration and visualization platform built by marketers for marketers, which means no SQL knowledge or developers are needed.
With over 200 integrations (Facebook, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Mailchimp, Salesforce, and more), you can pull and aggregate granular data (from keyword to ad level) in one place. You can view the data on the dashboard or extract it and push it to the data warehouse or BI tool.
You don't need to hire any developers to deploy any changes. But some of the more granular features are complex, and you'll often depend on customer support to get over the learning curve. Likewise, some users find themselves frustrated by limited visualization options and find themselves in need of a more robust BI platform to create the analyses they need.
Improvado pricing: plans follow a custom pricing model (and don't offer a free trial).
ETL tools for marketing data
Today, marketing without analytics is (almost) extinct. Choosing the right tool to extract, process, clean, and analyze your data depends on your company’s unique needs and resources. While price is an obvious factor, keeping required expertise and implementation time in mind is also important as bandwidth and opportunity costs are important considerations.
Sign up for Panoply's 14-day free trial (no credit card needed), or request a personalized demo.
