Improvado vs. Parse.ly

This solution helped us when we were stuck trying to explore data deeper and didn’t have enough resources to prepare data for further analysis. The software solves data integrity problems bringing more granularity to all insights. Integration with data visualization tools and well-arranged insights shows how each of the company’s marketing channels performs in real-time. Improvado is also useful for risk mitigation when launching or adjusting marketing strategies. It may also become a valuable tool for businesses, who are aiming at automation and the elimination of routine processes. ETL processes automation unleashes marketing analysts’ potential granting them more time for research of marketing reports.

Parse.ly is a great tool for publishers who want to track engagement and audience behaviour across websites. With Parse.ly, we can easily track metrics like pageviews, time spent on page, and scroll depth to see which content is resonating with our audience and optimize our content strategy accordingly. Our marketers found Parse.ly to be an excellent tool for tracking the effectiveness of our campaigns. We can use Parse.ly to track metrics like referral sources, conversion rates, and engagement by audience segment to see which channels and tactics are driving the most engagement and conversions.

Incentivized

• ETL processes. Once adjusted, Improvado never fails to streamline data from our advertisement platforms to the data warehouse.
• Variety of data sources. Improvado extracts data from over 200 sources, including both well-established platforms and the ones that are rapidly gaining momentum.
• Full-cycle support. Improvado provided us with a dedicated manager available 24/7. Any issues that arose during the product integration were settled in a matter of minutes.
• Flexibility and client-focused approach. After the integration, we adjusted our marketing campaign and needed new ad platforms to be integrated. The vendor allocated the development team ASAP to add new connectors to our existing network.
• Professional services package. The company doesn't provide dashboard views by default. However, we had no time to figure out how to do it ourselves, so we hired a team of Improvado's analysts that set everything up for us.

• Firstly, the platform is super easy to use, it is user-friendly and easy to navigate through.
• Secondly, the platform also provides you the option to use filters to your best fit and adjust the filters according to what data you want to look at.
• Thirdly, it enables the user to have live feedback on their articles and see what can be improved going forward to address the need of the readers.

Incentivized

• Improvado didn’t have all the integrations that we needed. However, they offered full coverage and quickly found ways to extract data from the sources we required.
• The user interface for BI tools may be confusing to inexperienced users. Personally, I didn't have any problems. However, some of the junior marketing specialists from my department needed more time to adapt to the UI. Otherwise, the interface is great.

• A more readily understandable visual guide to a visitor's pathway through your site would help understand what keeps a reader on-site.
• The total page view number for the day should be more readily visible--on the overview page, not just by going to Posts>Historical.
• Maintain the archive for longer than a year under all plans--it's a shame to lose year-on-year data quickly.

Incentivized

As an employee, this is difficult for me to comment as I am not directly funding or making these business decisions. However, it is a tool many get on with for surface level data that is useful to editorial teams.

Incentivized

The Parse.ly platform is very user-friendly and easy to use. User management is simple, and reporting setup only takes a few minutes. They provide very helpful documentation for implementing the scripts on your site and have great customer support to help with custom development such as implementing their content recommendation engine.

Incentivized

I rate this question this way solely because I haven't requested any support. I feel where I will eventually get support would be when we take Parse.ly up on some training that is being offered. We are looking to do that at some point after the first of the year and when our schedules support it.

Incentivized

We chose Improvado for the following reasons:

• Their data transformation framework cleans, normalizes and prepares data for loading into our data visualization tool;
• We connected our CRM to our analytics tool and as ad account;
• Extensive social media reports - the marketing team can view our ads, posts, comments right from the dashboard.
• Scheduled reports and immediate data sync options help us to get the reports with the most accurate data at the time we need them;
• Google Ads auto-connect new ad accounts.

Our marketing team evaluated Funnel.io and has opted for Improvado because of the following drawbacks:

• With Funnel we’d have to set up an extraction process for each campaign and account manually;
• The more accounts you need to connect or integrations to use, the more you’ll pay;
• Limited data storage options;
• Complicated account export. We had to filter accounts to export through the custom filter rules.

Parse.ly does pretty well compared to Chartbeat, particularly when it comes to historical information and analysis options that are easy for employees to use after some short training. The onboarding for Parse.ly is intuitive, and the scheduled reports take away basically all of the inconvenience associated with regular metrics reviewing. But Chartbeat wins in its social audience tracking because it can source traffic to a specific social post, which can show you exactly how your audience is coming to your content and where you need to put your content to be sure you get that audience.

Incentivized

• Increased ROI
• Improved cost of acquisition analysis
• Improved CPA, CPI, CPL report drawing process

• Sometimes in meetings our editorial director will point out stories that didn't perform well. To us, that means readers don't really care about the topic, so we'll pivot away from writing about that in the future. That might not be "business objectives" though.

Incentivized