Act-On Analytics Walkthrough

A step-by-step guided tour of Act-On Analytics. Work through the parts in order to get comfortable navigating Answers and Liveboards, modify an existing Answer and Liveboard, and build new Answers from scratch. Plan for about 30 to 40 minutes, and open the walkthrough in a separate tab so you can see the instructions while you work in Analytics.

Goals by the end of the walkthrough:

1. Navigate Answers (reports, tiles, charts) and Liveboards (dashboards).
2. Modify an existing Answer and an existing Liveboard.
3. Add new Answers to your Liveboards.

Part 1 - Access Act-On Analytics

When signed in to Act-On, go to Reports > Analytics. The Analytics Home tab opens.

The Home page contains: the natural language Question bar, your Watchlist KPIs, your Favorites (Answers and Liveboards), and the Library of reporting assets (both Answers, which are reports/tiles/charts, and Liveboards, which are dashboards).

Part 2 - View an Answer or Liveboard

From the Home tab, open any Answer or Liveboard by clicking its name. Let's start by filtering the Library to find one quickly.

1. In the Library area, on the right, click All Liveboards.
2. Click the Author column header. In the Filter author dialog, select only Act-On Software, then click Apply.
3. In the Name column, click Email Performance to open the Liveboard.

Part 3 - Working with Liveboards

The Liveboard opens with several tiles focused on email performance. Just below the title are the filters (the grey pills). They apply to every tile. You can filter by send date, message title, sender, and so on. Let's try it.

1. Note the number of sent messages on the top-left tile.
2. Under the Liveboard title (Email Performance), click the Send date filter. Change the timeframe from "Last 90 Day(s)" to "This Month(s)" and click Apply.

3. The tiles refresh. The number of sent messages is likely lower than before (this month versus the default last 90 days).

Take a closer look at a tile by hovering and clicking the ellipsis > Explore. The tile expands to fill more of the screen and lets you adjust the data without changing the tile or Liveboard.

Try it with the Open Rate (Unique) tile (second column, second row).

1. Hover over the Open Rate (Unique) Answer tile and click the ellipsis > Explore.
2. On the right are suggestions based on the data. Choose one of the suggested send dates to filter to a different time period.
3. Go to the Add tab.

4. In Add your own column, start typing "Click" and choose Click Rate (Unique).
5. The table now shows both open rate and click rate by week.
6. From the suggested attributes on the right (Add tab), add Message Title.
7. You now see a breakdown of messages with their open and click rates.
8. Click the Open Rate (Unique) column to sort so the worst-performing email is at the top.
9. Add the Sent column from the suggested attributes.
10. Click the Total Sent column to sort so the largest-volume message is at the top.

You can save a copy of the updated Answer if you want. We'll cover that later. For now, discard the updates using Close in the lower-right corner.

Part 4 - Modify a Liveboard

You can update a Liveboard to focus it on a specific business purpose. Maybe you want to track how email is performing for a specific part of the business, a quarterly campaign, or a weekly metrics meeting. It's usually easiest to begin from an existing board.

1. Still on the Email Performance board, click the three dots in the top-right corner and choose Make a copy.

2. Enter a Name and Description. For this walkthrough, use "{Your Name}'s Analytics Training Example" and "Learning how Liveboards work".
3. Click Save. The board reloads with the new name at the top.

Let's adjust this board for a metrics meeting on the first week of each month, showing email performance for the previous month.

1. In the upper-right corner, across from the Liveboard title, click the ellipsis > Edit.
2. Under the title and description, click the existing Send date filter. Change Default values to "Last 1 Month" and click Apply.

3. Remove the Message title filter by hovering and clicking the "x". Do the same for the Sender filter.
4. We won't use every Answer for this meeting. Keep the small KPIs in the first row and the rate charts in the second row. For the other charts, click the ellipsis at the top right of each > Delete.
5. Rename the first tab. Under the Liveboard filters, click the down arrow next to Email Performance and choose Rename. Change it to "Monthly Metrics".
6. Your board should look something like this:

7. Save the Liveboard with Save at the top right.

Part 5 - Build new tiles by exploring data

For our monthly meeting, we need two more data points: the number of people who opted out of emails, and the number of new leads.

Click the Explore Data tab at the top left. Explore lets you build a new tile from scratch.

How many contacts opted out?

1. Click Select a data source in the top-left corner and select Act-On Email Data. Click Select at the bottom of the dialog.
2. Add your data points. In the Search bar, type "opt outs" and select the option that appears. Keep typing "this month" and select the option described as Send date in Act-On Email Data.

3. On the right, click Go. Because it's a single data point, the default visualisation is a KPI.
4. Add it to the Liveboard. At the top right, click Pin.
5. Select "{Your Name}'s Analytics Training Example", then the Monthly Metrics tab, then click Pin in the lower-right corner.

Which form generates the most new leads?

Now let's add a tile showing which form has generated the most new leads over the past month.

1. Switch from email data to Forms data. Still in Explore Data, click Act-On Email Data (upper left), select Act-On Forms Data, and click Select.
2. You'll be asked to confirm clearing the query. Click Replace.
3. This time use the Data column on the left. In the search box type "Form Name" and check Form Name.
4. Type "first" and select the First Submission Count measure. Both fields appear in the horizontal bar across the top.
5. On the right, click Go.
6. Click the Y-axis label Total First Submission Count and select Sort > Descending.

7. Add a time filter. Type "activity" in the search box, hover over Activity date, and click the filter icon on the right.

8. Select a Rolling time frame for "Last 1 month" and click Apply.
9. Click Go to run the updated query. Your Answer should look something like this:

10. Pin to the Liveboard. Because Monthly Metrics is already shown next to the Pin button, just click Pin.

Part 6 - Organise the Liveboard and add to favourites

Let's arrange the updated Liveboard for the monthly meeting.

1. At the top left, click the Home tab.

2. In the Library, find your Liveboard and open it. The two new tiles are at the bottom.
3. At the top right, click the ellipsis > Edit.
4. Move and resize tiles using the handles at the top (move) and bottom right (resize). Aim for something like this:

5. Click Save when you're done.
6. To the right of the title, click the star so it's solid (not hollow). You can now open this Liveboard quickly from the Favorites section of the Analytics Home tab.

Part 7 - A more complicated visualisation

So far we've done simple charts. Let's go back to Explore Data and build something more involved to show more of what's possible. Most techniques are ones you've already used.

1. From the Analytics Explore Data tab, select Act-On Email Data as your data source (top left).
2. From the Data column on the left, check these fields (use the search bar): Subscription Category, Send Date, and Open Rate (Unique).
3. Click Go. You should see a line chart.
4. Click the gear icon at the upper right to edit the chart. On the Settings tab, under Display, check All labels. Explore the other options if you want.

5. We want open rates as whole percentages with no decimals. Right-click one of the open rate values in the graph and click Edit Open Rate (Unique).
6. Under Category choose Percentage, change Decimals to 0, and press Enter.
7. Try a different chart style. Click the change visualisation icon at the top right and select Heatmap. You see open rates over time by subscription category.

8. Click the gear icon to access chart settings. Confirm X-axis is Monthly Send date, Y-axis is Subscription category, and value is Open Rate (Unique).
9. There may be a lot of data. Narrow to the current quarter. In the search bar at the top of the chart, type "this". Several options appear. Type a space and then "q" and you'll see two options for "this quarter". One is for Send date, the other for Click Date. Use Send date. Select it and press Enter.

10. Your Answer now looks something like this, with your own subscription categories:

11. Instead of pinning, save as a standalone Answer. To the left of the Pin button, click the ellipsis > Save.
12. Give the Answer a Name and Description. To let others in your organisation find and use it, leave Make this answer discoverable checked.
13. Click Save answer.
14. The Answer is now available in the Library list on the Analytics Home tab.

Part 8 - Use AI to ask a business question

The Question bar is another way to generate an Answer. Type a question in plain language, pick the data source, and AI drafts a chart for you as a starting point to refine. If AI isn't available, it searches the existing Answers instead.

Two questions to try:

1. Which Forms have received the most submissions over the last 6 months?
2. What is my average open rate, send date Tuesday vs Friday?

Paste either into the Question bar to try it.

The result won't always look the way you want. Use the techniques you've already learned to adjust.

1. On the left of the "Ask a business question..." bar, click the down arrow, select Act-On Email Data, and click Select.
2. Ask: "What is my average open rate send date Tuesday vs Friday?"
3. AI returns a table showing the average open rates for messages sent on Tuesday and on Friday.

4. Add more detail to the Tuesday/Friday comparison. At the bottom of the AI-generated Answer, click the pencil icon > Edit.
5. In the search bar on the left, add Click Rate (Unique) and Delivered Rate, then click Go.
6. Switch to a chart. Hover over the Send date = tuesday vs Send date = friday block in the search bar and click the "x" to delete it.

7. In the search bar at the top, type "day of week", select the one described as "Send date...", and click Go.

8. At the upper right, click the chart icon and select Column.
9. There are three separate y-axes, one per measure. All three are rates, so they can share one axis for easier comparison.
10. Click any of the three y-axis labels (written sideways), select Group, and check one of the other two. The chart refreshes with two y-axes, one listing both data points.
11. Click the combined y-axis label (it has the "&" symbol), select Group, and check the name of the third axis. The chart refreshes with a single combined y-axis.
12. Click the combined y-axis label once more and select Edit. On the right, change Category to Percentage and Decimals to 0, then press Enter.
13. Reorder the data series in the standard order (delivery, open, click). Click the gear icon (top right), under Y-axis drag into order, then click Apply.

14. Click Done editing and Save the Answer to your account.