Get Started with Datorama (Intelligence) Reports for Marketing Cloud

Marketing Cloud Discover Reports were retired on April 1st, 2022 – you can no longer use the Discover Reporting tool in Analytics Builder.

Of course, Salesforce Marketing Cloud didn’t leave us in the lurch. In this guide, I’ll give my perspective on Datorama Reports (now known as Intelligence Reports for Engagement) and the Datorama (Marketing Cloud Intelligence) suite itself, and finish up with which option you should use going forward.

Datorama (Intelligence) Reports for Marketing Cloud

The good news is that you may already have Intelligence Reports enabled (if you purchased Salesforce Marketing Cloud on or after September 1st, 2021, and are using Pro, Corporate, or Enterprise editions).

If you purchased before that date, you will have Datorama Reports enabled in line with your contract renewal period (reach out to your Account Executive (AE) for more information).

First things first, there’s a difference between Datorama, Datorama Reports, and Datorama Advanced Reports.

• Datorama (Marketing Cloud Intelligence): The marketing intelligence platform that provides its users with the capability of connecting their entire MarTech stack (standalone from the main SFMC platform).
• Datorama Reports (Intelligence Reports for Engagement): Create and share a detailed analysis of emails, push notifications, and journey data at a campaign level.
• Datorama Advanced Reports (Intelligence Reports For Engagement Advanced): A more advanced version of the above. If you’re considering upgrading to Datorama Advanced (or considering the full suite) then the following sections will highlight what’s included with each option.

What are Datorama Reports (Intelligence Reports for Engagement)?

Datorama Reports enable you to create and share a detailed analysis of emails, push notifications, and journey data at a campaign level. They can be accessed via the Analytics Builder. Consider these as like-for-like replacements for Discover Reports. The Datorama report builder is broken down into three main parts:

1. Datorama (Intelligence) Dashboards

Datorama Reports offer out-of-the-box dashboards that can be easily manipulated using predefined filters. Datorama dashboard examples include engagement and deliverability metrics such as opens, clicks, CTRs, bounces, unsubscribes, etc.

Unfortunately, one drawback currently is the inability to customize the dashboards (which you can do when using Datorama Advanced Reports).

2. Pivot Tables

Dissect data using pivot tables. Select the dimensions (fields) and measurements (metrics) you’d like to see, then select any filters. The pivot tables can even be saved for future use and exported to .csv. Here’s an example below:

3. Reports

Create .csv or .pdf files based on any measurement and dimension within Marketing Cloud.

While the UI is not the most user-friendly it does have a lot more flexibility than the standard Salesforce Marketing Cloud Reports. You can email, file transfer, or upload reports to cloud storage, such as Google or Azure, using the report scheduler.

Bonus: thanks to Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack, Slack customers can now share reports and dashboards directly in Slack using the Slack ​​Incoming WebHooks App.

Datorama Advanced Reports (Intelligence Reports for Engagement Advanced)

If you’re looking for more flexibility, Datorama Advanced Reports (Intelligence Reports for Engagement Advanced) can offer that. Available as an upgrade for customers using Pro editions and higher, Datorama Advanced Reports provides the following features in addition:

1. Custom Dashboards

Customize dashboards so that you’re not confined to out-of-the-box dashboards that can only be modified using predefined filters.

2. Custom Data

Edit calculated measurements (metrics) and dimensions (attributes) to better match how you track performance.

On top of this, with Advanced you can create custom KPIs and data extracts through the Data Lake Query feature. For example, retrieve the email delivery rate per subscriber per weekday, as shown in this example, by querying the engagement_data table.

3. Data Sources

You’re no longer limited to single-channel dashboards! Using the cross-channel section of Datorama Advanced customers can use the out-of-the-box apps to enrich their analytics across multiple marketing channels, a full list can be seen here.

What is Datorama (Marketing Cloud Intelligence)?

Datorama is the marketing intelligence platform that provides its users with the capability of connecting their entire MarTech stack (standalone from the main SFMC platform).

This offers even more flexibility. The platform is broken down into three areas: Connect and Mix, Analyze & Act, and Visualize.

1. Connect & Mix

Connect & Mix is where Datorama excels, offering a vast number of connectors designed to enrich marketing analytics with external marketing tools (eg. Google Adwords, Google Analytics, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even TikTok!)

Datorama also offers the option to consume data through ingesting flat files like .xls, .csv, .json or even use technical vendors such as MySQL, MongoDB, Amazon, and many more.

Once ingested, Datorama’s Harmonization Center can harmonize all your data feeds using a variety of tools such as:

• Classification Files: Which create patterns in inconsistent naming conventions,
• Naming Patterns: Which break up the separators in your naming convention into fields,
• Calculated measurements and dimensions (similar to Datorama Advanced Reports).

2. Analyze & Act

This is where users can create pivot tables, goals, thresholds, and automate how reports are distributed through various channels (all now embedded with Salesforce’s AI).

The Analyse & Act section of Datorama comes with two main features

• Pivot tables (similar to Datorama Reports for Marketing Cloud).
• Goals: This can be used to set minimum, maximum, and range goals for any marketing metric stored – useful for tracking revenue and impressions.

3. Visualize

The marketer’s playground! Create completely custom dashboards using the intuitive canvas, the drag and drop functionality and a wide range of reusable visualizations. With the right analytical prowess, there are unlimited possibilities for custom visualizations.

Similar to Marketing Cloud’s Business Units, Datorama also offers Workspaces that can be used to silo your visualization efforts as per your organizational hierarchy and access requirements.

Datorama (Marketing Cloud Intelligence) Limitations

Getting familiar with Datorama Reports is clearly worth your time, as they’ve replaced Discover Reporting (and will be included for Pro, Corporate, and Enterprise editions). It’s also important to understand the limitations before expecting Datorama to be the answer to all your analytics needs.

Datorama Reports (Intelligence Reports of Engagement) Limitations:

1. Data Refresh: The dashboards are not real-time, and refresh once every 24 hours. For most marketers, this cadence is expected, but if you’re anticipating real-time marketing dashboards then Datorama won’t be the tool to provide them.
2. Marketing Channels: At the time of writing, Datorama Reports only offer email and push data. Additional channels, like social, web, etc., are only possible when are available only via the apps in Datorama Advanced Reports (i.e. you can’t mix that data in with email, mobile, journey data, etc.). Although, I expect Salesforce will include more channels as Datorama becomes more interlinked with the core SFMC platform.
3. Flexibility: As it stands, using Datorama Reports allows no dashboard, dimensions, measurement, or filter customization. If you’re used to diving more granularly into your reporting, then Datorama Advanced might be more valuable to you.

Datorama Advanced Reports (Intelligence Reports for Engagement Advanced) Limitations:

1. Marketing Channels: Although Datorama Advanced Reports offers a more holistic cross-channel approach than the standard Datorama reports, it’s still limited to only four ready-to-use cross-channel apps (Email to Web Conversion, Audience Insights for Advertising Studio, Cross-Channel Marketing Insights and Marketing Insights for Sales Cloud).
2. Data Refresh: Similar to Datorama Reports, the dashboards are not real-time and only refresh once every 24 hours. If you’re looking to have a live feed of metrics feeding into your dashboards, Datorama Advanced is not going to fill that gap.
3. Cost: As expected, the Advanced version does not come included in any of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud packages – plus, the pricing is kept under wraps (not publicly available). It’s worth reaching out to your Account Executive for a better idea of how much Datorama Advanced Reporting will set you back.

Datorama (Marketing Cloud Intelligence) Limitations:

1. Cost: As a powerful platform, Datorama can be beyond some teams’ budgets. The licensing for Datorama is largely based on data rows (unique lines of data) which means the more data sources you connect, the more you’ll need to pay.
2. User licenses: The standalone product comes with three licenses (Admin, Full User, and Viewer). Viewer is by far the cheapest but is somewhat redundant; it allows users to view the dashboards only. Full User and Admin come at a higher cost but are worth it. It is important to point out that live dashboards can be exported and embedded on websites or Slack/MS Teams channels which could sweeten the deal for you.
3. Connection Issues: There is a chance that a feed from SFMC will fail (in my experience, around once a week). It’s easy to re-run without issues but it’s still a nuisance to regularly re-run manually.

Which Should You Choose?

• If you’re looking for simple campaign-level marketing statistics, Datorama reports are intuitive, easy to use, and will probably cover your needs. Datorama Reports is more than enough if you’re simply interested in marketing efforts from within SFMC or perhaps already have another visualization tool.
• If you’re already creating omnichannel marketing experiences in Marketing Cloud then you should look at the Datorama Advanced reporting, which will allow you to analyze across email, mobile, and journeys from Marketing Cloud.
• If you’re looking for a comprehensive tool to incorporate omnichannel marketing experiences (including outside of SFMC) and revenue/ROI data, then it might be worth looking at the Datorama standalone product. Datorama’s data model provides ready-made template data sets to ingest this data.
• If you’re looking beyond just marketing analytics (the ability to be able to dissect and drill down), it might be worth looking into Tableau – or better yet, use the Tableau-Datorama Connector to bring your pre-prepared marketing data into Tableau.