A sample Venngage report
Crunching data for client reports is a major time suck for agencies. Venngage, a Toronto-based startup, has created a new product that aims to ease the process. Launching Feb. 4, the company’s new platform creates reports automatically by pulling data from a number of sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter and Radian6.
Lucas Walker, the company’s chief marketing officer, explained that once Venngage users have connected their data sources to the platform, it will continue to create reports automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis without further input.
The service is currently being beta-tested by three ad agencies, and Walker said the company conducted interviews with an additional 20 agencies about the reporting process. Two U.S. agencies – Momentum Worldwide and New Media Strategies – have already signed up for the service, which costs $1,000 a month to create reports for up to 20 clients.
Venngage is the rebirth of another startup, Visualize.me, which created infographics for a roster of clients including Facebook, theScore and several marketing agencies. After learning that several of its early users were using Visualize.me to create data visualizations for internal purposes, Walker and his business partner, CEO Eugene Woo, decided to shift its focus. In July 2012, a year after launching Visualize.me, the pair enacted a new business model based on analytics and reporting.
Having worked as an account coordinator at High Road Communications and as an account manager and sales consultant at Sysomos, Walker knew first hand that crunching social data was a pain for many agencies.
“We think we’re solving much a bigger problem with the data play, as opposed to just infographics and visualization,” said Woo. “It’s a much bigger, much more interesting problem and it’s something we see marketers struggling with.”
