People who type "marketing cloud dashboard marketing cloud" are usually looking for one thing: a single screen showing how their email, SMS and messaging programmes perform, from send to revenue. Enterprise marketing clouds sell that view to large teams. This article answers how a company of 10 to 250 people gets the same messaging performance dashboard on the levelpartner.ai platform, where the sends, the contacts and the pipeline already live together.
What a messaging dashboard should show
A messaging dashboard has a narrower job than a full marketing dashboard. It covers the messages you send: email campaigns, SMS, WhatsApp, automated sequences and newsletters. The question it answers is whether those messages move contacts towards a sale or a renewal.
Most messaging reports stop at opens and clicks. Those tell you whether a subject line worked. They do not tell you whether the message produced a booked call or a won deal. The dashboard should go further, because the platform already connects each message to the contact who received it and the opportunity that contact sits in.
The layers to report on
- Deliverability: sent, delivered, bounced, unsubscribed.
- Engagement: opened, clicked, replied.
- Action: booked a call, submitted a form, paid an invoice.
- Outcome: opportunity created or won after the message.
Read top to bottom. A drop at the deliverability layer makes every lower layer look worse, so check it first.
Before you start
- Sending domain set up and verified in Settings for email.
- SMS and WhatsApp numbers connected.
- Campaigns and sequences built in Marketing and Automation.
- Calendars and forms linked to the pages your messages point at.
How to set it up
- List the messaging programmes you run, such as newsletter and nurture.
- Give each programme a tag and a UTM campaign value.
- Add the UTM value to every link in that programme's messages.
- Make sure the destination pages have a booking calendar or form.
- Go to Dashboard, click + Add Dashboard and name it messaging performance.
- Add Delivered Emails and Unsubscribed Emails from the Emails section.
- Add Opened Emails, Clicked Emails and Replied Emails.
- Add SMS by Status and Incoming SMS Count from the SMS section.
- Add Opportunity Count and Won Opportunity Value filtered by programme tag.
- Click Save Changes and add last month as the comparison range.
What it is for in a stalled business
When revenue stalls, the cheapest growth is usually in the list you already have. Past enquiries, lost deals and former clients cost nothing to reach. A messaging dashboard shows which programmes actually bring those people back into conversation, so you can do more of what works without buying traffic.
Picture a quarter like this. The monthly newsletter goes to 4,000 contacts and produces 6 booked calls. A lost-deal reactivation sequence goes to 300 contacts and produces 18 booked calls and 5 won deals. A post-webinar SMS follow-up goes to 220 contacts and produces 24 booked calls. If your own numbers resembled these, the small, targeted programmes would be doing most of the work and would deserve more attention than list size suggests.
What it replaces
It replaces separate reports from an email tool, an SMS tool and the CRM, each with its own idea of a contact. It also replaces judging messages by open rate alone, which has become less reliable as mail clients change how opens are counted.
Time it takes
Setup takes two to four hours, mostly tagging programmes and adding UTMs to existing messages. Monthly review takes 20 minutes. If a programme falls at the deliverability layer, fixing it takes priority over any other change.
The mistake most people make
Measuring a nurture sequence by the open rate of its first email. Nurture works over weeks. Measure it by booked calls and opportunities from contacts who were in the sequence, over a 60 to 90 day window.
When not to use it
If you send one newsletter a month and nothing else, a separate messaging dashboard is overkill. Add one widget to your main marketing dashboard. The dashboard is also unhelpful while your sending domain has delivery problems. Fix deliverability first, or every layer below it is unreliable.
For campaign-level tracking, see the marketing campaign dashboard. The journey these messages support is covered in customer journey marketing. For crediting a deal to a message among other touches, read about multi-touch attribution.
Troubleshooting
Bounces are high. The list includes old or purchased addresses. Clean the list and re-verify the sending domain settings.
Clicks show but no bookings. Links lead to pages without a clear next step. Point them at a page with a calendar.
SMS replies are not counted. Replies land in Conversations but are not linked to the programme. Add a workflow that tags replies to programme messages.
Opportunities show no programme tag. The tag is applied after the opportunity is created. Apply tags when the contact enters the programme instead.
Frequently asked questions
How does this compare with Salesforce's marketing cloud reporting?
In general terms, enterprise marketing clouds suit large teams with dedicated administrators. For a firm of this size, having messages, contacts and pipeline in one place matters more than the depth of any single report.
Should WhatsApp be in the same dashboard as email?
Yes, as its own widgets. Comparing channels side by side shows which one your contacts respond to.
Are open rates still worth tracking?
As a rough signal for subject lines, yes. Do not use them to judge whether a programme works.
How long is the right window for measuring outcomes?
For service businesses, 60 to 90 days after the message for nurture and reactivation, and two weeks for event follow-ups.