Engagement analytics: Turn data into winning presentations

Anyone involved in winning new clients, projects, or funding is reliant on data. Just think about how indispensable web analytics and email tracking have become. But when sharing slide decks, flying blind is surprisingly still the norm. Pitch has fixed this with the launch of engagement analytics. You can now send rich, interactive presentations to anyone, then access slide-by-slide insights into how your audience views your decks.

Like with websites and emails, having data about presentations leads to better choices that increase the win rate for your pitches. If a deck isn’t convincing someone, it’s either because your offer isn’t the right fit or your content doesn’t resonate. Now, you can use analytics to understand which one it is. You’ll see when people visit a link to your deck and — with the introduction of engagement analytics for custom links — where they spend their time. 

Let’s look at how Pitch helps you focus your time on the right opportunities and capture people’s attention.

The evolution of link analytics in Pitch

There’s a slide deck behind almost every new client, project, or funding round. While all Pitch users can create public links, Pitch Pro users can also create custom links for any deck, adding optional passcodes to limit access. Once you’ve shared your presentation with specific groups or channels, you’ll be able to see when someone opens it.

“Custom links have been a game-changer. Pitch has definitely had a positive impact on our sales process,” says Jimmy Gordon, the Business Development Director at Myth — an animation house that has won over clients like Budweiser, Fanta, and Mars.

While presentation visits are a useful indicator of general interest, we’ve learned that teams need more insights to understand exactly how their audience engages with decks and what catches their attention. That’s why we’ve added engagement analytics to custom links, so you can see which slides people have viewed, and for how long.

According to Jimmy, “Engagement analytics means we’re no longer left guessing if a prospect has finished reading one of our decks or gave up on it halfway through. Before we arrange a follow-up call, we can see who’s a cold, warm, or hot lead, and which parts of a deck they care about most.”

Unlike document-sharing tools like Docsend, presentations shared from Pitch support videos, recordings, and animations. Interactive elements like these help you tell a richer story — no matter when and where recipients view your slides. With Pitch, you no longer have to choose between the most engaging format and the insights into what’s working.

Discover what captures attention and what’s ignored

As we all know, time and attention are scarce resources — people skip the content they consider boring or irrelevant. So when they actually take the time to read and fully grasp everything on a slide, you know they’re genuinely interested. You can use these insights to front-load your deck with the most attention-grabbing slides. Plus, you can shape your follow-up conversations based on your audience’s interest in a certain topic, or the information they never got to in the pre-read.

For example, if people spent two seconds or less on a slide, they just glanced at it and probably didn’t process a lot of information. Anything up to ten seconds means they’ve at least skimmed the slide content. And if they’ve spent even more time on a slide, something has definitely caught their attention.

E-commerce logistics startup Hive was among the first to field-test engagement analytics. “I love how straightforward it is to configure analytics,” says Benita Schmidt, their Business Development Lead for Germany. Seeing metrics like time spent on slides has already helped them work smarter: “By analyzing the engagement data, we can tailor our presentations more precisely to our customers’ needs.”

Beyond telling you which slides get the most traction, engagement analytics also reveals which ones get ignored. With slide views, you’ll know what content your visitors have missed and if there’s a spot where they frequently drop off. Use these insights to follow up with essential information, prepare for your next call, and tweak your deck’s length and structure.

Help us build the future of presentation analytics

Engagement analytics opens up new opportunities for anyone using presentations to win work, but there’s even more to come. We’ll continue to expand Pitch’s analytics capabilities based on user feedback. By equipping teams with actionable data on presentations, every pitch will be more likely to succeed. We’ll also explore ways to seamlessly integrate analytics into existing workflows.

Which other metrics would you like to see in Pitch? And how can presentation analytics best support your work? Drop us a note in our Slack community, or tag us on Twitter to help shape this feature.