This week we were tasked with selecting a Google Analytics application and explain how this application can be useful to marketers. I selected Quill Engage, because as a new marketer, the ability to use an application to create incisive, natural language reports is very appealing to me.
Below is Quill Engage's promotional video that explains the basic premise and functions of the service.
My Experience
I wanted to get firsthand experience with Quill Engage, so I downloaded the free version of the app from their website. I was able to quickly and easily connect this blog to Quill Engage. I was able to choose which View from my Google Analytics account to connect, which is an attractive feature for organizations wishing to create separate reports for separate View groupings.
Unfortunately, because Quill Engage automatically creates weekly and monthly reports, I will not be able to get a report for at least a week. However, it will likely be longer, as the service requires a minimum of 20 visitor sessions in order to generate a report; if your domain falls below that threshold you will not receive a report for that period. This is a low threshold that should not pose a problem for commercial websites or organizations that use social media and paid advertising to draw traffic to their domain.
Quill Engage Sample Report
Because I had no personal report to available to share, I found a sample report shared by Douglas Karr of Marketing TechBlog.
Unfortunately, because Quill Engage automatically creates weekly and monthly reports, I will not be able to get a report for at least a week. However, it will likely be longer, as the service requires a minimum of 20 visitor sessions in order to generate a report; if your domain falls below that threshold you will not receive a report for that period. This is a low threshold that should not pose a problem for commercial websites or organizations that use social media and paid advertising to draw traffic to their domain.
Quill Engage Sample Report
Because I had no personal report to available to share, I found a sample report shared by Douglas Karr of Marketing TechBlog.
As you can see from the sample report above, Quill Engage aggregates your website's data into a plain language report that explains the relationships between the changes in your data and the contributing factors (such as stronger referrers, more paid search traffic, etc.). This can help marketing teams connect the "what" to the "why," making it faster and easier to find the cause of positive and negative trends.
This sample monthly report compared the most recent month's numbers to the average of the previous 12 months, which uses a larger window of time for comparison in order to account for months that performed as outliers. The report succinctly provides information about number of sessions and page views, referrer performance, paid search, device type, visitor location, and ecommerce performance. While this report might be convenient for its clear organization alone, the natural language descriptions below the infographics provide quick and clear explanations for data trends that can help guide marketers to the strengths and weaknesses of their current marketing tactics. This natural language report is also valuable because it can help non-marketers who are involved with the organization to easily understand traffic and ecommerce trends with less jargon and frustration.
If your organization is an ecommerce organization, the bottom line and the ROI might often be the most important reports to management teams. The final page of the sample report, melds an insightful pie chart with succinct explanations that outline (1) change in revenue, (2) change in number of transactions, (3) change in average transaction total, in addition to (4) conversion rate, (5) referrer performance, and (6) the highest grossing product.
Quill Engage Free vs. Basic and Premium Options
While this report would likely be a strong tool for many organizations to avail themselves, larger brands might need more targeted insights. In this case, investing in the Basic or Premium versions of the application might be a worthy investment.
Quill Engage Basic costs $19.99 per month and increases the amount of reports generated from weekly and monthly reports for 1 Google Analytics view or website to 3 Google Analytics views or websites. This would allow a user to generate different reports for 3 separate views, which could be valuable if those views were created to pinpoint different, but equally valuable insights. The Basic version also allows access to Events, Goals, and ecommerce report elements, which are not available in reports generated for Free version users. It also enables 5 recipients for email reports, KPI settings, and links for PDF downloads of reports.
As you might imagine, Quill Engage increases the maximum allotments for many of the aforementioned functions for the cost of $49.99 per month. Users can use up to 10 views or websites and receive separate reports for all of them. They also can select 10 email recipients and have access to custom branding, colors, and segment analyses.
These costs are still modest compared to many other analytics services, but it should be noted that this service is a supplementary application with an added cost on top of whatever your organization pays for Google Analytics (unless only the free version of Google Analytics is enabled). Additionally, for any ecommerce organization, the Free version of Quill Engage would likely not be as attractive an option, due to no ecommerce insight in the free reports.
Final Summary
Quill Engage is highly rated on the Google Analytics Partners website and appears to provide useful insights into Google Analytics data. I predict that it could be useful for new and self-taught marketers, organizations without a designated e-marketer or marketing team, or even just marketers who are looking for clearer, quicker ways to report web marketing trends to their co-workers. As a student who is relatively new to the world of digital marketing, Quill Engage's reports provide me with a strong example of how to organize and report marketing data using natural language and a succinct approach.
References
Karr, D. (2015, August 24). Quill Engage: Transform Google Analytics into natural language reports. Retrieved from https://marketingtechblog.com/quill-engage/
Narrative Science [username]. (2014, August 5). Quill Engage: Google Analytics Partners - Apps. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/analytics/partners/company/4812220005351424/gadp/5741031244955648/app/5649050225344512/listing/5639274879778816
Narrative Science [username] (2015, August 18). Quill Engage for Google Analytics [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8iL_zjW340#action=share
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