So, the Chimp Charts are here! You could just skim the page and see a bunch of charts, but if you look very, very closely you’ll see valuable information to help you better understand how to engage your subscribers and track your newsletters. You can even mouse over the chart for detailed performance.

So let’s take a look. The first two charts in our “Quick Insights” shows the email opens based on time of day and day in the week. The ‘y’ axis displays the percentage of opens on our tested data. This is an average per campaign rate and what the campaign can expect. It may look simple, but it’s very useful. (Scratching head) “So, what you’re telling me is Thursday around 3 pm is an awesome time to send my Morning Coffee Newsletter?” Not really. Keep in mind that you should use this data as a reference. You certainly don’t want to send your Morning Coffee Newsletter at 3 pm. That would be silly, but then again…some of us need a little afternoon pick me up.

(click on the images for a closer look)

Well, how can I really use this then? Say for instance you don’t send a Morning Coffee Newsletter and you normally send your campaign out at 10 pm. We encourage you to try something new and set up a Time Warp campaign and set it for example, at 3 pm. Or even create an A/B split campaign  based on your different campaign delivery times. See how it works for you. Ultimately, you want to send your campaigns where you see fit but, you may come to find that based on your industry, A/B split test results, or time warp campaign, that a different delivery time works better for your campaigns.

Next on the menu is “The Effects of Subscriber Recency on Open /Click Rates.” Recency is a fancy word for: occurring right before the present. So, when your subscribers sign up for a newsletter they are likely to be more engaged from the start. Again the ‘y’ axis presents the percentage of opens across our tested data. You might think its a bit odd to see a dwindling of engagement as time goes on however, dependent upon your industry and what type of campaigns you send, you can fine tune that engagement. If you start experiencing depleting engagement, it may be time to consider reengaging your subscribers.

Last but not least is the “Effects of Number of Links in Email on Click Rate.”
The ‘y’ axis presents the percentage of click rates across our tested data. As this graph shows, the more links you have, the more clicks you are likely to have. This is true, but remember it’s not always the case and could effect your engagement. We advise that the links are relevant and pertain to your campaign content. It is also important to minimize the use of shortened links and check for misspellings. If you use URL shortening, have a look here.  A healthy balance of links and general campaign content is always good. So don’t overload your subscribers with hundreds of links, as they may eventually stop opening emails in fear of a “total link assault.”

All in all, we want to provide you with rough benchmarks of our performance and what you can expect from your campaigns. Every data point should work symbiotic with each other to achieve optimal campaign performance. What you send matters to you and to MailChimp, which is why we created Chimp Charts. Now off to eat some banana bread!