MailChimp posts subscriber engagement data, shows decline over time

MailChimp has posted insightful statistics on subscriber engagement data. The data was gathered from a staggering 45,361,424,068 sends, 1,286,970,135 clicks, and a total of 1,250,527,700 list subscriptions over the past year. With a lot of difference in the amount of campaigns each subscriber receives, Cass Petrus of MailChimp calculated the data using ‘sends since subscription date’ and combining sends and clicks per campaign.
One of the results was the engagement (overall click rate) over time, in this case since subscription date. The result in one graph:

As you can see, click rates dropped significantly (about 2%) over a sequence of 100 sends.
Another graph from the subscriber engagement data that drew my attention was the one comparing click rates by opt-in type:

I hope you have your double opt-in in place: this could mean about twice the subscriber engagement compared to single opt-in! If you don’t have double opt-in working yet, get it done soon – it could be one of the easiest ways to lift your email marketing campaign results. And not just one time, but from that moment on.
Here’s another graph. This time, it’s comparing webmail client domain (Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail) by click rate. Guess who wins?

In this case, the subscriber engagement data favors Gmail users over Hotmail and Yahoo users. Even so, over time the Gmail users lose interest as well.
See the whole post with subscriber engagement data here. 

According to all this data, it is best to send your email campaigns out to Gmail users who have subscribed through a double opt-in process, and you should ask them to unsusbscribe after about 25 email campaigns.
Of course, that’s not really feasible for anyone. Even so, there are ways to make sure you give your subscribers what will make them most happy. Be relevant and be sure to help. After all, the best email marketing you’ll ever do is helping people. Don’t forget you’re not sending out emails to email addresses. You’re communicating with people.
MailChimp has posted some major stats insights before. In August last year, they posted their major email provider statistics.
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