Automated Reporting - What use cases could AI help with, and which need humans?

One of the most critical yet overlooked tasks in marketing is reporting. Obviously, reporting aligns teams and leadership, increasing the chances of spotting a new opportunity or catching an issue early. But beyond that, it builds your credibility. We often work with incomplete data, so educating internal stakeholders on what is actually working is essential. The more we automate and share that information, the stronger that alignment becomes.

One of the best use cases for automated reporting I’ve experienced was back in the "olden days" (early 2010s) at REVOLVE. My manager created an automated report that emailed the daily sales results to everyone each morning. This didn't just provide data—and eliminate those annoying "how did we do yesterday?" questions—it gave the entire team a North Star and a sense of achievement, even for those not directly connected to sales.

Here are five things that would be great to automate that are associated with marketing in most businesses:

1. Digital Marketing Performance: Instead of manually pulling reports, have them formatted and emailed to the team daily or weekly.

   • Benefit: Saves time and keeps the team aligned on KPIs.

2. Customer Service Tickets: A tracker for customer sentiment that emails out the top issues.

   • Benefit: Prioritizes the "voice of the customer."

   • Watchout: These reports should be viewed as directional, not literal, since AI isn't always a 100% reliable witness.

3. Creative Ad Performance: A weekly report on top creative performers that parses the characteristics of winning ads. (This is trickier, as AI can struggle with nuanced visual analysis).

   • Benefit: Saves time and stops your manager from constantly asking, "But what is REALLY working? What if we tried X?" (insert annoying creative idea that will never work).

4. Daily Sales: An email with total daily sales, noting trends or top-performing products.

   • Benefit: Helps everyone feel like they are on the same team and quickly identifies outlier days or stock issues.

5. Brand Pulse: Monitors search terms, social mentions, and big boosts in visibility.

   • Benefit: Helps the team track ongoing trends and catch viral moments early.

So the big question is: Can AI do it? And if so, can we build these tools internally in a lightweight way, or do we need vendors? In the next post, I'll explore trying to build some of these tools myself—we'll see how it turns out!