About Comparative Reports

Comparative Reports compile data from your sent campaigns into a comprehensive, shareable report. Compare any number of emails and RSS automations to help you identify patterns in audience engagement. Then, use the data to improve and target your marketing content.

In this article, you'll learn how Comparative Reports work and what information is included in finished reports.

Things to know

Here are some things to know.

• This feature is included with the Standard plan or higher.
• Comparative Reports are available to account Owners, Admins, and Managers. To learn more about user permission levels, check out Manage User Levels in Your Account.
• Comparative Reports can include regular emails and RSS automation campaigns sent within the last 18 months.
• RSS automations are a classic automations feature. Classic automations are only available to accounts that have previously created a classic automation.

Definitions

When we talk about comparative reporting, we use some terms that are a little different from how we talk about other tools and tasks in Mailchimp.

• Report preview
  A preview of the data we'll display based on the campaigns and segments you choose. If you're satisfied with the preview, you can finalize the report and generate a Snapshot.
• Snapshot
  A static report that's based on your report criteria. Any time you run a report, we'll present a static Snapshot of campaign performance data up to that point in time. Snapshots can be scheduled, shared, or exported.
• Baseline
  The combined performance data for all the campaigns in your report. Segments you add to your report appear after the baseline, so you can see how specific sets of contact compare to overall audience engagement.
• Conditions and groups of conditions
  Individual and combined conditions you use to filter contacts into segements. Use conditions and groups of conditions to create complex segments to compare against your baseline.
• Top-level condition group
  The first group of conditions in your segment. The any/all logic assigned to the top-level group applies to all the following groups in your segment.

How Comparative Reports work

Use Comparative Reports to compare regular emails or RSS automations sent in the past 18 months to a single audience. Choose as many campaigns as you'd like to compare, and we'll display the combined and individual campaign statistics.

Each Comparative Report saves the parameters you set, so you can generate the same report over time to track campaign activity in a series of Snapshots. If you send more campaigns to your audience that fit the parameters you set for your report, your report will update to include data from those campaigns.

You can generate campaign Snapshots as many times as you want, or schedule them to generate daily or weekly. You can also export or share your Snapshots.

Using a method similar to regular audience segmentation, you can track certain contacts' engagement with your campaigns over time. Comparative Report segments allow you to combine any/all logic in a single segment.

View and access reports

After you create a Comparative Report, you'll find it on the Comparative tab on the Reports page in your account.

We'll display 1 of 4 icons to let you know the status of a Comparative Report.

Icon	What it means
	Draft Reports that have been created, but don't have a Report Preview or Snapshot yet.
	Scheduled Reports that have been scheduled to generate a Snapshot.
	Processing Reports that are still generating a Report Preview or Snapshot.
	Finalized with Snapshot Reports that have been finalized and have at least one Snapshot.

To view Snapshots for a scheduled or finalized report, click the Edit Report drop-down and choose View Report History.

About Comparative Report statistics

Each Snapshot includes report data on your campaigns from the time it was generated. Snapshots have 3 major sections: results, graphs that show performance over time, and a table of campaign metrics.

Results

The Results section gives you an overview of your campaign statistics, including open and click rates for each segment in your report. All Snapshots include a baseline segment, which displays your combined campaign data, so you can see how your added segments compare to overall audience engagement.

Performance over time

The Performance over time section displays a graph of the data for each segment in your report, including the baseline. Graphs default to display open rate. Use the Open rate drop-down to view a different set of graphs, such as click rate or bounces.

Each dot represents a campaign. Hover over a dot to view the send date and campaign-specific statistics. The date range is displayed on the X axis, and the percentage rate is displayed on the Y axis.

Metrics table

The campaign metrics table is a detailed breakdown of how each segment performed for each campaign in your report.

• Segments display after the baseline for each campaign.
• Click Hide segments in table to display only baseline metrics.
• Click the campaign to open it.