The Compound SystemClient reporting: what to send the morning after results drop.
A paid media client report is a decision document. It says which number matters this week, what changed and why, what you are doing about it, and what you need from the client. A dashboard export says none of that, which is why the client reads it and phones you.
The checks before you send anything
Run these on the morning the numbers moved. Most bad reports are not wrong about the campaign; they are wrong about what the numbers mean, and all five of these are findable in ten minutes.
| Check | The question | Why it changes the report |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Did any event, window or audience definition change this week? | A conversion that tripled the week its definition changed is not a result. The series broke, and the report has to say so first. |
| Two systems | What does the client’s own system say against the platform? | Platform 800 and backend 520 are both true. Reporting one as if it were the other is how trust goes. |
| Pacing | Did the money actually go out as planned? | A line that under-delivered by 40% has not “performed badly”. It has not run. |
| Mix | Did the result move because the mix did? | Cheaper leads from a new placement are a different product, not a better price on the old one. |
| Ownership | Was any of it our mistake? | If it was, it leads. The client finding it later costs more than saying it now. |
The structure that survives being forwarded
Assume the email will be forwarded to someone who has never seen the account. Four parts, in this order, and nothing before the first one.
- The number that leads, and its movement. One line. The number the client is judged on, this week against last, in units they recognise.
- What changed, in order of what you know. Facts first (a definition changed on Tuesday; a line stopped spending on Thursday), then your reading of them, labelled as your reading.
- What you are doing. Already done, happening today, and proposed. Three different tenses, kept apart.
- What you need from them. One decision, with the options and what each costs. Or the sentence “nothing needed from you this week”, which is a service in itself.
A full example reply
Fictional. An illustrative account with invented figures. The situation: a lead generation campaign, two platforms, week six of twelve. Enquiries fell from 212 to 161 week on week. The client’s marketing manager has the dashboard open and has already sent “what happened?”.
Hi Rania,
Enquiries this week: 161, down from 212, on the same spend. Cost per enquiry $47 against $36 last week.
Two things happened, and only one of them is a performance problem.
First, the facts. On Tuesday your web team moved the enquiry form behind the new consent banner. From Tuesday our Meta line’s form completions fell by half while clicks held, and your own CRM shows the same drop at the same hour, so this is the form, not the audience. Second, the Search line under-delivered by $1,100 because the daily cap we agreed in week one was never raised when you approved the top-up; that is ours, and it is fixed as of this morning.
My reading, which you should treat as a reading: if the form had behaved, the week would have landed near 195 enquiries at about $39. The underlying campaign has not moved much. The report looks worse than the campaign is.
Done: Search cap raised, budget re-paced to catch up by Sunday. Today: I have sent your web team a two-line test for the form on phones, where the drop is largest. Proposed: nothing on targeting or creative this week. Changing them now would make next week’s numbers unreadable against this one.
One decision from you: if the form fix slips past Friday, do you want us to hold Meta spend until it lands, or keep running and accept a week of expensive enquiries while we wait? Holding saves roughly $2,800 and costs about 60 enquiries we would otherwise get late. Either is defensible; I would hold.
Full numbers attached, with the Tuesday change marked on every chart.
Tarek
Notice what it does not do. It does not lead with clicks, which rose. It does not say “performance was impacted by external factors”. It does not hide the cap mistake inside paragraph four. It names a decision and says which way the writer would go, which is what the client is paying for.
Which number leads
The hardest reporting decision is not what to include. It is which number goes in the first line, because that is the only line most clients read. The rule: the number the client is paid on leads, the number the platform optimises toward comes second, and where the two disagree the report says so in the first paragraph. When the platform says conversions tripled and the client’s orders barely moved, the report that leads with the platform’s number has one good week and a very bad quarter.
Practise it on a case
Three of the 38 cases in Media, 2027 Edition are reporting decisions: the week platform conversions jumped because the purchase event changed definition; the three systems that have to become one board slide; the month that was bad, and part of it was your mistake. In each one you commit to what you send before the reasoning opens. The free case is a different decision, a budget cut two days before launch, and it runs the same loop.
About four minutes. No signup.
Related
- Budget reallocation without breaking the plan: the decision that usually comes the week after a report like the one above.
- A media plan example: the plan this kind of report is measured against, every calculation shown, including the reconciliation at the end.
- The Platform and Placement Guide: free, with email signup.