A marketing data dashboard checks the inputs, not the results. It tells you whether the records feeding every other report are complete: whether contacts carry a source, whether opportunities have values, whether duplicates are creeping in. This article answers how to build that data health view in Reporting on the levelpartner.ai platform, which six checks belong on it, and how to fix each one when it turns red, so your marketing figures can be trusted before anyone argues about them.
Why the data needs its own dashboard
Every marketing report rests on a few fields being filled in correctly. If a third of new contacts have no source, the channel report is wrong. If deals are marked won with no value, the revenue figure is wrong. Nobody notices, because a report with missing data still shows a tidy chart.
A data dashboard makes the gaps visible. It does not answer whether marketing is working. It answers whether you can believe the reports that claim to.
The six checks
- New contacts this month with no source recorded.
- New contacts this month with no email address and no phone number.
- Opportunities created this month with no value.
- Won opportunities this month with no original source.
- Open opportunities with no owner assigned.
- Contacts created this month that look like duplicates of an existing record.
Each check is a count that should be close to zero. When one rises, something upstream has broken: a form, a workflow, a habit.
Before you start
- A working pipeline in Opportunities that sales uses day to day.
- Source captured on forms, calendars, chat and inbound calls, or the intention to fix it.
- Duplicate handling settings reviewed in Settings, so you know how the platform matches existing contacts.
- Access to Reporting, Contacts and Opportunities.
- One person who will look at the dashboard every Monday and chase the fixes.
How to set it up
- Go to Contacts and filter for contacts with no source.
- Save the filter as a smart list named for the check.
- Save a second smart list for contacts with neither email nor phone.
- Go to Dashboard, click + Add Dashboard and name it marketing data health.
- Add Lead Source Report and read the N/A row each week.
- Add Contacts without Email and Contacts without Phone Number.
- Add Contacts by Assigned User to spot records with no owner.
- Click Save Changes and set last month as the comparison range.
- Name the matching smart list in each widget's Description.
- Agree a threshold per check that triggers action within the week.
What it is for in a company of 10 to 250 people
In a 60-person firm with flat revenue, leadership usually wants to know which channel to back. That decision rests on source data. If the data is incomplete, the firm backs the channel that happens to record its source most reliably, which is rarely the one producing the best clients.
The data dashboard protects that decision. It costs a few minutes a week and stops the marketing budget from moving on the strength of a broken form.
Imagine the first month of the data dashboard shows 312 new contacts, 96 of them with no source. The saved list then reveals that 81 of the 96 came through one landing page form, copied from an old template without its hidden source field. Fix that form and the following month might show single figures. It would also mean the earlier channel report undercounted that campaign by 81 contacts, roughly a quarter of the month's volume.
What it replaces
It replaces the quarterly data clean-up where someone spends two days in a spreadsheet tagging old contacts by hand. It also replaces the uneasy moment in a leadership meeting when someone asks why the channel totals do not add up to the total number of new contacts. The gap is already on screen, with a list of the records behind it.
Weekly time cost
Setup takes one to two hours. The Monday check takes five minutes when everything is green and up to an hour when a check has turned red and needs tracing. Most firms find that after the first two months, red checks become rare, because each one leads to a permanent fix upstream.
The mistake most people make
Cleaning the records instead of fixing the source of the problem. When contacts arrive without a source, the instinct is to fill in the blanks by hand. That fixes last month and guarantees the same gap next month. Always find the form, workflow or import that created the bad records, fix it first, and only then decide whether the old records are worth correcting.
When not to use it
If you add fewer than 50 contacts a month, a separate data dashboard is more structure than you need. Add a single "contacts with no source" widget to your main marketing dashboard instead. It is also premature if you have not yet decided which fields matter. Agree the six checks first, then build.
Troubleshooting
The no-source count includes contacts you added by hand. Manual entries and imports carry no source unless someone sets one. Ask the team to choose a source when they create a contact, and set one on every import.
Won deals show a value but no original source. The opportunity was created by hand without being linked to the contact's first touch. Create opportunities from the contact record, or from a workflow, so attribution carries over. The marketing attribution guide explains how first and latest source are recorded.
Duplicates keep appearing. One entry point matches on email and another on phone. Check duplicate settings and make every form ask for the field the platform matches on.
The checks go green but the reports still look wrong. The fields are filled in with a default value, such as "website", that hides the true source. Look at the top values in the source field, not just whether it is empty.
Frequently asked questions
Is a marketing data dashboard the same as a marketing analytics dashboard?
No. The marketing analytics dashboard explains why a result moved. The data dashboard checks whether the records behind that result are complete enough to trust.
Which check matters most?
Contacts with no source. Almost every marketing decision depends on it, and it is the one that breaks most often when a new form or landing page goes live.
Who should own the data dashboard?
Whoever builds and changes forms and workflows, usually the marketing operations person or the marketing manager. The owner needs the access to fix problems, not just see them.
How do I stop data problems before they start?
Add a short check to your launch list for every new form or campaign: submit a test entry and confirm source, owner and tags on the new contact. The automated marketing reporting article covers sending the dashboard to the owner each week.