Taking data-driven decisions is the key to successful marketing. Choosing the right marketing analytics tools, measuring your data correctly and optimizing your marketing efforts by it, will make the difference between failing to reach your marketing goals and completely crushing them.

In this post, we will review a variety of marketing tools with different goals, features, strengths, and weaknesses. Make sure to choose the right set of tools that will help you understand your data and use it to boost your marketing results.

Events Based Tools

These tools will help you track events, conversions, and your users’ behavior.

1. MixPanel

Mixpanel’s main goal is to track events on your website, product or mobile app. MixPanel helps you track actions that users are performing on your site or mobile app (both Android and iOS). For events you’ve added to MixPanel, you’ll be able to see count, trends, which users used them and in which order.

MixPanel’s main features are funnels, A/B testing of different variations of your mobile app and tracking their results, tracking individual users by their sessions and viewing trends of selected events, among others.

MixPanel requires you to define the actions you wish to track and focus on. This can be done either by adding code annotations or using a visual selector. Once selected, the events you wish to track will add up to your dashboard, with the metrics of your choice presented.

Who is it for?

MixPanel was built for product managers, its features are therefore more product oriented than marketing. However, it’s also used by marketing teams, especially to identify user behavior and optimize funnels.

Pricing

MixPanel offers several levels of pricing, segmented by the number of tracked events and available features. The basic package starts at $99 a month, but the actual cost to most websites will likely be much higher since it’s events based, regardless of the size of the company and the generated revenue. This pricing method might not be cost-effective for many users, especially small and medium-size companies, which might end up paying a high price, discouraging you from collecting optimal data and tracking enough events, leading to you missing out on vital information.

2. Heap Analytics

One of the “youngest” web and mobile analytics tools out there, with very similar functionalities to MixPanel. Heap analytics will automatically track any action taken by your website visitors and allows you to manually select the events you wish to analyze and preview in your dashboard. Heap also track individual user’s behavior and allows you to segment users according to behaviors. You can also use Heap to create funnels.

Heap’s automatically collected data makes it possible to view each event’s data retroactively all the way back to the day the Heap code was installed, even if it wasn’t an event you initially chose to track and display on your dashboard.

Who is it for?

Heap’s target audience is pretty similar to MixPanel’s. If an Android app is a part of your marketing strategy, then this is definitely not the tool for you! Heap doesn’t yet support Android apps. Heap can be a suitable tool for marketers wanting data on events and conversions of their website, product or iOS app.

Pricing

Heap’s pricing is flexible and varies according to given features and volumes. The problem with this pricing method is that websites with many visits but not many events and revenues may find themselves paying Heap Analytics plenty while generating very little revenue. The price ranges from a free plan with very limited abilities, and a custom pricing is given to you by Heap.

3. Oribi

Oribi enables everyone to make smarter and faster data-driven decisions. With its simple user interface and results focused features it’s really easy, and there’s really no need endless reports or analysts. Oribi automatically collects 100% of your website events and conversions, without the need to manually define them or make code changes. Any change on your website will automatically be tracked by Oribi and highlighted as a new event, along with any trend, change in results or anything you need to pay attention to.

Who is it for?

Oribi is basically for any marketer who wishes to focus on getting better marketing results, without relying on developers or analysts.

Pricing

Oribi offers one simple plan, with all the features included at $79 per month, or $799 for a yearly plan.

4. KissMetrics

A behavioral analytics tool, designed to access information about your customers and how they interact with your website or product. Knowing how users interact with every feature can help you increase your user’s engagement and improve your pages’ conversion rates. KissMetrics also enables you to create A/B tests to see how changes you are making on your website or product can affect your results, and make sure you are choosing the right variations to help you reach your goals.

Who is it for?

Kissmetrics is a good fit for marketers aiming to create an effective marketing dashboard to better understand their users. The data provided by KissMetrics can be used to increase conversions, get a higher customer engagement and perhaps improve the overall marketing results.

Pricing

KissMetric pricing is based on the number of events you wish to track, features used and given support by KissMetrics. It ranges between $220 – $1,400, or higher should you need to track more than 10M events.

Traffic oriented tools

These tools will mainly help you focus on measuring your site traffic and where it comes from.

5. Google Analytics

Google’s basic, free and widely used website analytics tool. Google Analytics allows you to track the traffic on your website, see where your visitors are coming from, how they were referred to your website, how much time they spend on it, and more. In addition to that, Google Analytics also has an integration with Google AdWords to help you analyze your campaign with deeper data.

The main downside of Google Analytics is the complexity of defining and tracking new conversions, as well as no option to track individual user sessions and understand how users actually use your site.

Who is it for?

Google Analytics fits any marketer wanting to track the traffic his marketing efforts are generating. If events, conversions, growth or sales are your main focus, Google Analytics will not be enough for you, and you’ll probably get better results with one of the events based tools mentioned above.

Pricing

The basic version of Google Analytics is free and contains a wide set of capabilities which fits most companies. There’s a premium version for large enterprises that costs about a $100K a year, and enables increased data analysis abilities with full support from Google.

6. Piwik

A completely free, open source alternative to Google Analytics. Piwik tracks your website visits and allows you to create customized reports that segments data by traffic source, user’s geo-location, browsers and operating systems, and most importantly how users engaged with your website.

Piwik is loaded with many features including goals to track your marketing campaigns success, page overlay analytics, keeping notes on data analysis and custom variables. Piwik also offers a premium version which is a self-hosted website analytics suite made especially for governments and enterprises requiring full privacy compliance and 100% data ownership.

Who is it for?

Piwik can fit individuals, small businesses, large enterprises, and even governments provided basic analytics abilities will suffice.

Pricing

Piwik is completely free.

Search engine analytics

Analyze your traffic from search engines to boost your SEO and SEM originated traffic.

7. Google search console

The Google search console enables you to analyze your organic search traffic from Google. The search console shows you which search terms direct users to your website following their Google search and clicking on an organic link to your website (meaning not an ad from AdWords). The search console actually provides more information than just clicks. You can also see how many impressions each search term had, its CTR, and the average position it presented your website in as a search result.

Who is it for?

The Google search console is a great tool for any marketer looking to gain more traffic from search engines, organic or paid. The data presented on the search console can be a huge help to achieve that. Knowing which search terms deliver traffic to your website can help you extend your SEM efforts and multiply your traffic from related keywords. Of course, it can also be used to improve your content and organic traffic.

FYI – The Google search console can also be integrated with your Google Analytics account and display extra data.

Pricing

The Google Search console is completely free.

8. Moz Pro

A search engine analytics tool. Moz Pro provides data that can help you with your SEO efforts and increase traffic from search engines. Moz Pro provides data on both your and your competitors’ rankings on search results, along with links analysis, keywords rankings and their trends over time.

Who is it for?

Moz Pro is a tool for digital marketers and SEO professionals aiming to improve results by getting more search-generated traffic. Moz Pro can fit both beginners and experienced professionals.

Pricing

As with most analytics tools, MozPro pricing is flexible according to your needs. There’s a standard plan with limited abilities for $99 a month, and the plans gradually escalate in price and added features and abilities up to $599 a month.

9. SEMrush

A marketing analytics tool that shows you what your competitors are doing online. SEMrush can help you outrank your competitors in search results and offers a simple way to monitor your competitors’ brands, social media accounts and more. Of course, you can also use it to keep track of your own brand. A main feature of SEMrush is an analytics reports tool that displays data concerning the keywords your competitors are using in their AdWords campaigns, enabling you to learn more about their search engine traffic. SEMrush also enables you to analyze potential keywords and allows you to assess whether other advertisers are bidding on them and how competitive the bids are.

Who is it for?

SEMrush can be useful for those marketers wishing to increase search engine traffic and spy on his competitors. Using SEMrush can improve your efficiency and stop the wasting of time and resources on ineffective search engine strategies.

Pricing

SEMrush offers three main plans. The most basic plan is the Pro with limited features for $99 a month. The highest plan is the “Business” for $399 a month, packed with all available features.

Marketing dashboards tools

These tools will enable you to aggregate data from different marketing channels and create your own unique dashboard.

10. Cyfe

An all-in-one dashboard that allows marketers to integrate data from different marketing tools, and makes it possible to see it all in one place.

With Cyfe, you can track data from all your social media platforms, pay per click marketing channels, sales platforms and more. For example, you can use Cyfe’s pre-built widgets to connect to your Google AdWords, Google Analytics, or SalesForce accounts, and let Cyfe collect all the data you need from those tools and display it in one dashboard.

Who is it for?

Cyfe can serve any marketer who works with multiple marketing channels and likes to see all the essential data he needs in one place.

Pricing

Basically, Cyfe is a free tool, but also offers a premium version for $19 per month that gives you access to unlimited dashboards and widgets, historical data, exporting reports and more powerful features.

11. Klipfolio

Klipfolio is a dashboard software, that enables you to build your own interactive dashboard containing all your marketing related data from various channels and tools. Klipfolio allows you to pull data from tools such as Google Analytics or Facebook, allowing you to track your performance and see the data in a single integrated dashboard.

The pre-built templates of dashboards for you to use mean you don’t even have to build your own, like a Facebook ads monitoring dashboard, or a social media focused dashboard, but you can, of course, build your own dashboard according to your own needs.

Who is it for?

Klipfolio is a good fit for any digital marketer with multiple channels who wish to monitor them in one simple screen. Klipfolio also offers features more suitable for marketing agencies that can build dashboards to share their performance with their clients.

Pricing

Klipfolio offers various pricing levels for different amounts of users. There’s a “Starter” price of $24 a month for small teams with just a few users, going all the way up to a “team” price of $199 a month for teams who need to build and share many dashboards.

Visual behavior tools

Use these tools to see how users behave on your website with Heatmaps.

12. Hotjar

HotJar has a few effective analytics features such as conversion funnel analysis, registration form analysis, feedback polls, and surveys, but it is renowned mainly as a heat maps tool.

HotJar’s heat maps can help you understand how your website visitors are interacting with your website, their scrolling behavior, and where they click on. For example, if you upload a new landing page and you don’t yet know its performance, with HotJar you can easily understand how the users that lands on it are interacting with it, where they get confused, and what makes them convert (or not convert).

Who is it for?

Hotjar is a very good fit for new or frequently changing websites. HotJar can help you understand the strong and weak points of your web pages without waiting for substantial data in order to understand it.

Pricing

HotJar’s price range varies according to a number of page views being analyzed. Prices range from $89 a month for 20K pageviews a day up to $989 a month for 800K page views a day, with even higher custom plans for heavier users.

13. Crazyegg

A Heatmap tool that helps you understand how your website design affects your conversions. Crazyegg lets you see exactly what people are doing on your website. It shows you where they are clicking, how many of them actually scroll down your pages, and where they stop. This valuable user behavior data can help you optimize your website to reach the best variations that serve your goal.

The data on Crazyegg can also be segmented allowing you to see how users from different sources are behaving and create a custom page for them.

Who is it for?

Basically, Crazyegg is a very useful tool for new or frequently changing websites. Similar to HotJar, Crazyegg can help you understand your visitors’ behavior and how they use your website or product.

Pricing

Prices range from $9 per month for the basic package with very limited abilities to $99 a month for the Pro package that affords you all Crazyegg has to offer.

A/B testing tools

Create multiple variations to conduct A/B tests to increase conversions.

14. Optimizely

Optimizely makes it possible to test different variations of any page or element on your website or product and measure their results so you can decide which variation is the best for reaching your goals. The experiments can be textual or visual, and it’s actually very easy to completely change the design of your pages without making any changes in your code.

For example, you can run a test on your homepage and change the main text, so that the first variation includes a certain title while the second variation has a different title. Now define what you are optimizing for, like a sign-up, download, your desired achievement on this page, to enable Optimizely to measure how each of the variations was successful to achieve that.

Optimizely also offers integrations with other analytics tools including Google Analytics, Bizble and Clicktale. These integrations allow you to track your Optimizely experiments results in other dashboards along with additional data segmentation.

Who is it for?

Optimizely is a useful tool for the marketer who cares about the performance of its website and online marketing results. Optimizely A/B testing abilities can easily tell you how to better convert users along your sales funnel and eventually increase your ROI.

Pricing

Optimizely pricing is based on the number of impressions you are activating your tests on. Several pricing ranges exist according to your traffic needs. For example, paying $100 a month will enable you to run tests on about 2,000 impressions. The free trial period allows you to test its effectiveness.

15. VWO

A very similar tool to Optimizely. VWO stands for visual website optimizer, and that’s what it does. This A/B testing tool allows you to create variations of your web pages, and gauge which of the variations serves you best in getting users to take your desired action like a sign-up, download, subscription, etc.

VWO offers a visual editor enabling you to easily create visual changes and test them one against the other. Of course, the changes can also be simple like a different call to action on a button. For example, use “Sign up” in one variation and test it against “Create an account”. The variation that will convert better is your winner and the one you should use, then go on to test the third variation against it. In addition to that, VWO offers a heat map tool, so you can understand what attracts your users’ attention and see where they click on.

Who is it for?

Basically, any website owner can use this tool, especially digital marketers who send traffic to landing pages and can use anything that will help increase conversion rates.

Pricing

VWO offers a standard plan to optimize up to 10,000 visits for 59$ a month. Their highest plan for $155 will enable you to optimize up to 30,000 visitors.

Final words

Each of these tools has its advantages and strengths. It remains up to you to choose the right marketing analytics tools for your needs and make the right data-driven decisions to assist you with your marketing efforts.