When you send email campaigns to your audience, Mailchimp can help you decide how to create and design your marketing content. Mailchimp’s Content Optimizer gives additional guidance with analysis based on industry best practices. Access this feature in the new email builder or your email campaign reports before sending your next email.
In this article, we’ll go over how to view the Content Optimizer and what it can do to help you send better emails.
Before you start
- Access to the Content Optimizer’s detailed report requires a Standard Marketing plan or higher. To find out what features are included in each plan, check out our pricing page.
- Make sure you’re familiar with the different types of data that an email report can contain. To learn more, check out About Email Campaign Reports.
- Content Optimizer is only supported in accounts that have opted in to our data analytics projects.
- At this time, Content Optimizer will only analyze English language content.
How it works
When you create an email campaign in the new builder, we’ll provide inline suggestions based on marketing best practices. You’ll also get comparisons of best performing emails from Mailchimp users within your industry who have the same marketing objective as you.
The Content Optimizer reviews writing elements like the length of sentences and headings, as well as errors in link formatting, merge tags, spelling, and grammar. While merge tags aren’t part of a heading or sentence’s word count, we still prioritize checking merge tags and links for any errors.
After you send your email campaign with the new or classic email builder, we’ll provide a report based on your contacts’ activity that includes information from the Content Optimizer. You can see information granularly such as click tracking and performance, e-commerce tracking for connected online stores, bounces, unsubscribes, and more.
View the Content Optimizer in the new email builder
As you add content to your email, we’ll suggest ways to help you improve your message. If we find any issues, like a broken link or merge tag, we’ll mark them with an exclamation point icon.
Click the Optimize tab to see the types of issues, as well as the total number of issues of each type.
View the Content Optimizer in reports
To view the Content Optimizer report for an email campaign, follow these steps.
- Click Campaigns, then click Reports.
- If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
- Find the email you want to work with and click View Report.
- Click the Content Optimizer tab.
Read on to learn what you’ll find in the Content Optimizer report.
About the Content Optimizer analysis
When you open the Content Optimizer in your campaign report, you’ll see your email campaign’s name along with a set of industry best practices. The analysis shows you the number of best practices that your email met and a total for each category. Mailchimp will attempt to identify the marketing objective of your campaign. To change your marketing objective, navigate to Campaigns then select Reports. Click on View Report and under the Content Optimizer heading, select Choose objective.
Here’s an overview of what you’ll find in your Content Optimizer analysis for each best practice:
- Skimmability
Reviews how easy it is to skim your email for understanding. We’ll count how many words are in your email and the estimated time it takes to read. When you keep your sentences under 25 words, the content of your email under 200 words, and use smaller words, you’ll have a higher skimmability score. - Links & CTAs
Assesses the links and calls to action (CTAs) that keep your audience engaged. We’ll show you how many links, social links, and CTAs you included in your email. Adding CTAs and links within the email that connect to web content or your social media can result in a higher Links & CTAs score. - Text & Visuals
Analyzes the use of images, headings, and tone to create interest for your audience. The optimizer will review the words and phrases in the email and assign a tone to the overall email. If there’s another tone that has been shown to be more effective for your marketing objective, the Content Optimizer will recommend that instead.
You’ll also see how many images you used as well as your average heading and subheading lengths. If you keep your headings and subheadings short, you’ll increase your score in this category.
- Typography
Checks the consistency of your font sizes and text styles. The optimizer will review the size ratio of your headers and subheaders and how consistent the paragraph text is in the body of your email campaign. We’ll also average the size of your headers and subheaders and paragraph text. To make a professional, easy to read email, the fonts you use can go a long way.
