If you’re the person responsible for showing the value of your marketing campaigns to executives, you know the drill: high expectations, low attention spans, and a lot of questions about pipeline. This guide’s for you. We’ll walk through, step by step, how to build detailed reports in Influ2 that answer what executives actually care about—without wasting your time on fluff.
Why Reporting in Influ2 Actually Matters (and What to Avoid)
Influ2 is all about person-based advertising. That means you can see who’s engaging, not just which companies. It’s powerful, but the raw data doesn’t magically impress stakeholders. Reports have to:
- Show business impact, not just clicks and impressions
- Be dead simple to digest
- Stand up to hard questions (like “so what?” and “why does this matter?”)
Most default dashboards won’t cut it. Custom reports are where you’ll actually get buy-in—if you do them right.
Step 1: Nail Down What Executives Want to See
Before you open up Influ2, press pause. If you don’t know exactly what your execs are after, you’ll waste hours building reports no one reads.
What most execs care about:
- Pipeline impact: Are we getting meetings, opportunities, or revenue?
- Account-level activity: Are our target accounts actually engaging?
- Trends: What’s working, what’s not, and what’s changed since last quarter?
- Money: Are we making progress relative to spend?
What to skip (unless asked):
- Ad creative performance in detail
- Micro-level clickthrough rates
- Vanity metrics (“impressions served to HR Managers in Nebraska”)
Pro tip: Ask your execs for one or two key questions they want answered before you start. Saves you headaches later.
Step 2: Gather the Right Data Inside Influ2
Once you know what matters, log in and start pulling the data that supports those questions. Influ2 gives you several data sources:
- Person-level engagement: Who at target accounts is seeing and clicking your ads?
- Account-level summaries: Roll up engagement by company.
- Journey mapping: Are engaged people moving to meetings, pipeline, or closed-won?
- Channel and creative performance: How are campaigns performing, at a high level?
How to find this data:
- Go to the Analytics or Reports section.
- Use filters to zero in on your target accounts and date ranges.
- Export key tables as CSV for further analysis (don’t rely just on screenshots).
What to ignore:
Exported raw logs with endless rows of every impression or click—no one’s reading those. Focus on summary tables and anything that maps to pipeline.
Step 3: Map Influ2 Data to Your Existing Funnel
Here’s where a lot of folks get tripped up: Influ2’s data is powerful, but unless you tie it to your CRM (like Salesforce or HubSpot), it’s just digital noise. Executives want to see a line from ad engagement to pipeline.
Ways to do this:
- Use Influ2’s CRM integrations if you have them configured. This lets you map ad engagement to contacts, opportunities, and revenue.
- Manual matching: If integrations aren’t set up, export Influ2 data and cross-reference emails or account names with your CRM.
- Highlight account journey: Show a few example accounts—who saw the ad, who clicked, who booked a meeting.
Don’t overcomplicate it:
If you can show a handful of “hero” accounts that went from ad engagement to sales meeting, that’s often more powerful than 10 pages of charts.
Step 4: Build a Clear, No-Nonsense Report
Now it’s time to actually build the report. You can use Influ2’s built-in dashboards for speed, but for execs, a custom slide deck or a simple PDF that tells a story usually lands better.
What to Include
- Executive summary slide: 2-3 bullet points on what happened and why it matters.
- Pipeline impact: Show meetings, opps, or revenue tied (even loosely) to Influ2 campaigns.
- Account engagement heatmap: Which target accounts are hot, warm, or cold?
- Trends: What’s up, what’s down, and where you’re focusing next.
- Short “hero” stories: A couple of accounts where engagement led to real conversations or deals.
What to Leave Out
- Endless data tables—summarize or use visuals
- Unfiltered lists of every click or view
- Charts with too many colors or fine print
How to present it:
- One idea per slide/page
- Use big, legible visuals (bar charts, simple heatmaps)
- Annotate key takeaways directly on the chart (“This spike = new campaign launch”)
- Keep the whole thing under 10 slides/pages if you can
Pro tip: If it’s not absolutely clear in 10 seconds why a chart matters, cut it or add a one-sentence explanation.
Step 5: Automate What You Can, But Don’t Trust It Blindly
Influ2 has some automation options—scheduled reports, API exports, CRM sync. Use them to save time, but don’t just forward raw exports to execs.
- Always sanity-check automated reports for accuracy
- Double-check that data isn’t double-counted (especially with CRM integrations)
- Update your report template as execs’ questions change
Skip: Setting up endless automated emails to stakeholders. They’ll just ignore them if the info isn’t relevant.
Step 6: Prep for Questions (and Pushback)
If your report is any good, you’ll get questions. Here’s how to be ready:
- Know your data sources (and their limits). If something’s an estimate, say so.
- Be clear about attribution. Influ2 is great for showing influence, but rarely delivers 100% direct attribution.
- Bring backup examples: Have a couple of extra charts or raw data exports handy for the data-obsessed exec.
Honest take:
If someone asks for a metric that makes no sense (“How many VPs of Marketing in Ohio saw our ad last week?”) — don’t panic. Politely explain what’s possible and what’s useful.
Step 7: Iterate and Get Feedback
Your first report won’t be perfect. After presenting it, ask your execs what helped and what didn’t. If they’re confused by a graphic, change it. If they ignore a section, drop it next time.
- Keep a simple template you can update monthly or quarterly
- Collect feedback after every major presentation
- Don’t chase every new metric—stick to what drives action
Pro tip: Less is almost always more. Executives want clarity, not a data dump.
Keep It Simple, Tweak as You Go
Detailed reporting in Influ2 is totally doable, but don’t let the tool or the data overwhelm you. Focus on the business story, tie engagement to pipeline, and keep your reports as short and sharp as possible. The best reports don’t try to answer everything—they answer the right questions, clearly. Get feedback, adjust, and remember: you’re the translator between marketing data and business outcomes. That’s what gets noticed.