White-label client reporting: what 'on your own domain' should actually mean
The checklist for reports that look like they came from your agency: domain, fonts, colours, footer, email identity, and the metrics that must never be overwritten.
The checklist
Clients judge the agency by the report. Anything that reveals the tool behind it is a small leak of credibility; a stale or wrong number is a large one.
- Custom domain (reports.youragency.com), not a vendor subdomain.
- Your fonts, palette, logo, favicon and footer.
- Emails sent from your address, with your name.
- A client portal that matches the report.
- Platform branding hidden, or shown only by your choice.
- Manual values are sacred: an automated refresh never overwrites a number a person entered.
Contrast is part of branding
A brand palette that fails contrast on a chart is a report the client cannot read. Check the palette against WCAG when the theme is set, not when the client complains.
The same goes for fonts: a display face that looks right on the agency's homepage may be unreadable at eleven points in a data table. Pick a body font for the report separately from the headline font, and let the theme carry both.
The email is part of the report
Most clients meet the report in their inbox before they open it. If the email arrives from a vendor's address with a vendor's header image, the white label is broken before the first chart loads. Send from the agency's own verified address, with the agency's header, and make the link land on the agency's domain.
Scheduled delivery matters too: a report that goes out on the first working day of every month, without anyone remembering to send it, is what makes the agency look organised rather than busy.
What must never change
Automated refreshes are the point of a reporting tool, but they have one hard rule: a value someone typed by hand is final. A manual correction to a traffic figure, a reach estimate agreed with the client or a coverage piece added from a screenshot must never be overwritten by tonight's fetch. Treat manual entries as sacred and log every automated change next to them.
Questions this article answers
- Does white labelling include the client portal?
- It should. The portal is where the client sees invoices, statements and payments as well as reports; if it carries a different brand from the report, the white label is only half done.
- How to price a marketing agency retainer (and stop giving work away)
A practical method for pricing drawdown retainers by department, setting the overage rule, and measuring the servicing gap so the retainer stays profitable.
- Time tracking that agency teams actually do
Why time tracking fails in agencies, and the six settings that make it stick: rounding, notes, approvals, locks, targets and visibility.
- Agency profitability: hours × rate is lying to you
Why the standard profitability report overstates revenue and hides idle time, and how to compute real margin from contracted revenue and absorbed cost.
Put the numbers to work.
Verbial computes the retainer pacing, servicing gap and real margin these articles describe using your own data, on day one.