About Campaign Manager

Mailchimp's Campaign Manager helps you plan, execute, and analyze your marketing efforts. Create an end-to-end campaign that connects multiple marketing touchpoints to a single objective. Then, use the insights from your campaign report to help guide your next steps.

In this article, you’ll learn about Campaign Manager.

Things to know

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• Campaign Manager is available to users with a Standard Marketing plan or above, as well as to users on the legacy Monthly plan with the Mailchimp Pro add-on. To change your plan type, visit the plans page in your account.

• Within Mailchimp, the term “campaign” usually refers to a piece of marketing content that you send to your audience. Within Campaign Manager, “campaign” refers to a marketing effort that coordinates email, ads, and other channels to achieve a business goal.

• Marketing emails created with Campaign Manager can be accessed within Campaign Manager, under the List View of the All campaigns page, and under the Campaigns tab of the Reports page.

Definitions

Here are some terms you’ll come across as you work within Campaign Manager.

• Touchpoint
  A scheduled activity within your Campaign Manager calendar. Touchpoints include tasks, events, emails, and webhooks.
• Task
  Anything that needs to be done to achieve success with your campaign. Name your task, select a date and time, and include notes. Update the task status as needed to not started, in progress, or complete.
• Event
  Any marketing event such as a webinar, sale, or product launch. Name your event, select the event type, add the date and time, and include notes.
• Email
  A message designed for a specific marketing campaign. Send emails to your entire audience, or target your tagged or segmented subscribers.
• Webhook
  A tool that syncs Mailchimp activity with a third-party app. Webhooks let Mailchimp request an external app to take a specific action.
• SMS webhook
  A type of webhook that triggers an SMS text message to send to your Mailchimp contacts via a third-party app.

How it works

Campaign Manager is a powerful end-to-end marketing tool with advanced scheduling capabilities. Think of Campaign Manager as your brand’s single source of truth where you can plan, execute, analyze, and optimize your marketing goals.

When you set up a campaign, add touchpoints such as emails, events, tasks, or webhooks to connect multiple channels to a single objective. The interactive calendar view makes it easy to plot your campaign touchpoints where you need them.

Before the start date, a campaign has a ready status. During the duration of a campaign, it’ll have an active status. After the end date passes, a campaign has a concluded status. Touchpoints have a variety of statuses like draft, upcoming, or not started depending on type and progress.

For active and concluded campaigns, you can view and manage the multi-channel reporting based on overall campaign performance. Advanced analytics provide valuable engagement insight, and they can help steer your next marketing moves.

Create a campaign

To create a campaign in Campaign Manager, follow these steps.

1. Click Campaigns, then click Campaign Manager.
   

2. On the Campaign Manager overview page, click Create campaign.
   

3. On the Campaign settings page, enter a Campaign name, select an Audience, choose an Objective, set a Start date and End date, and check the desired boxes in the Set email tracking settings section. Keep in mind, all fields are required.

4. Click Create campaign.
   

After you create your campaign, you’ll see an overview on the Manage campaign page. From here, you can edit your campaign settings, add touchpoints, enable Send Day Optimization, and view your to do list.

On the Manage campaign page, you can also view your campaign in the default calendar view or the agenda view. In the calendar view, use the drop-down to set the display to Day, Month, or Week. In the agenda view, select what touchpoints to review with the Touchpoint type drop-down.

Add a touchpoint to your campaign

To add a touchpoint to your campaign, follow these steps.

1. On the Campaign Manager overview page, click the campaign you want to work with.

2. Click the Add touchpoint drop-down, then select Email, Event, Task, SMS webhook, or Webhook.
   

   From the calendar view on the Manage campaign page, you can also click a date within your campaign timeframe to add a touchpoint. The Add touchpoint pop-up appears, and you can select the type of touchpoint you want to add.
   

3. Complete the required information for your touchpoint. When you’re ready, click Schedule email, Submit, Schedule SMS webhook, or Schedule webhook to add the touchpoint to your campaign.

Excellent! You’ve added a touchpoint to your campaign. Add as many touchpoints as you need to achieve your objective.

Send Day Optimization

Send Day Optimization determines the best day to send an email based on your industry. To enable this feature, click on a campaign from the calendar view. Then, toggle the Enable SDO slider on.

Send Day Optimization looks at historic, year-to-year click rate trends and predicts engagement for emails sent within your campaign's timeframe. When enabled, you can view the good, better, and best days to send an email to your audience. These predictions are based on the industry you selected in your account settings.

To do list

Use your Campaign Manager to do list to keep track of outstanding tasks and draft emails. Click on the campaign you want to work with, then view your planned items in the To do section. Each campaign has its own list, and displays the days remaining to complete your task or send your email based on where each item is plotted on the calendar.

As you progress with your campaign tasks, edit them to update the status. Tasks with a status of Not started or In progress appear on your to do list. After you complete a task, set its status to Complete, and it’ll disappear from the list.

Emails with a Draft status also appear on your to do list. After you schedule an email campaign, it’ll disappear from the list.

Completed tasks and scheduled emails remain on the calendar for reference.

Tracking and reporting

When you create a campaign, choose email tracking settings to help measure success. These tracking settings are consistent throughout all emails in your campaign, and they stay in place once your campaign is active. You can view reports for active and concluded campaigns, and highlight specific data points.

Here are the tracking and reporting settings available with Campaign Manager.

• Use Inbox to manage replies
  When enabled, we’ll use your Inbox reply-to address for your marketing email. We’ll automatically filter “out of office” replies, and replies from your subscribers will appear in your audience's inbox.
• Auto-convert video
  This feature scans your email content for embedded videos (which don’t always render properly in email apps), then auto-converts them to use our email-friendly video merge tags instead.
• Track opens
  Discover who opens your email by tracking the number of times an invisible web beacon embedded in the email is downloaded. To learn more, check out Use Open Tracking in Emails.
• Track clicks
  Discover which email links were clicked, who clicked them, and how many times they were clicked. To learn more, check out Use Click Tracking in Emails.
• Track plain-text clicks
  Track clicks in the plain-text version of your email by replacing all links with tracking URLs. To learn more, check out Use Click Tracking in Emails.
• E-commerce link tracking
  Track visitors to your online store from your marketing email, capture order information, and pass that information back to Mailchimp. This lets you view purchase details, conversions, and total sales within your campaign report. You can also set up segments based on your subscribers’ purchase activity.
• Google Analytics link tracking
  Add Google Analytics tracking to your marketing emails to pass link tracking data back to your reports. To learn more, check out Integrate Google Analytics with Mailchimp.

Here are the data points you can highlight in your campaign report.

• Emails sent
  The total number of emails sent throughout your campaign.
• Opened
  The number of recipients who opened any email in your campaign any number of times.
• Total opens
  The total number of times the emails in your campaign were opened by recipients. This count includes multiple opens from individual recipients.
• Clicked
  The number of recipients who clicked any tracked link any number of times in any email.
• Unsubscribed
  The number of recipients who opted out using the unsubscribe link in any email within your campaign.
• Unsubscribe rate
  The percentage of recipients who opted out of your emails using the unsubscribe link in any email within your campaign.
• Open rate
  The percentage of successfully delivered emails that registered as an open.
• Click rate
  The percentage of successfully delivered emails that registered a click.
• Clicks per unique opens
  The percentage of recipients who registered an open and also clicked a link in any email.
• Revenue
  The total amount of revenue earned from your campaign.
• Orders The number of orders made from all emails in your campaign.
• Average order revenue
  The average amount of revenue from each order made from your campaign.

View campaign reports

To view a campaign report for an active or concluded campaign, follow these steps.

1. Click Campaigns, then click Campaign Manager.
   

2. Click the Campaigns list tab.
   

3. Search for your active or concluded campaign, or find it on the list.

4. For an active campaign, click the Manage campaign drop-down, then click View report.
   

5. For a concluded campaign, click For a concluded campaign, click View report.

Highlight specific data points

To highlight specific data points for an active or concluded campaign, follow these steps.

1. Navigate to the report for the campaign you want to work with.

2. In the Email performance section, click Edit.
   

3. Select the data points you want to view for your campaign, then click Save. You can view up to 4 data points at a time.