Healthy DTC accounts run 30-50% of email revenue through automations. Below 30% means the merchant is hand-blasting newsletters and leaving money on the table.
At a glance
The percentage of total Mailchimp-attributed email revenue that came from automations (Customer Journeys + Classic Automations) vs broadcast campaigns. Computed as SUM(automation_revenue) ÷ (SUM(automation_revenue) + SUM(campaign_revenue)) × 100. Healthy DTC accounts run 30-50% of email revenue through automations. Below 30% means the merchant is hand-blasting newsletters to a list and leaving structural revenue on the table. Mailchimp’s automation depth is materially lighter than Klaviyo’s, so the upper end of “healthy” is lower; aim for 35% on Mailchimp where 50%+ is the Klaviyo benchmark.
| What it counts | Numerator: revenue from Customer Journeys + Classic Automations (reports.ecommerce.total_revenue per automation email step). Denominator: numerator + revenue from broadcast campaigns (regular + A/B test). |
| API endpoint | Marketing API v3. Campaigns: GET /3.0/reports/{campaign_id} per regular/A-B campaign. Automations: GET /3.0/automations/{workflow_id}/emails/{email_id}/reports per Classic Automation step; GET /3.0/customer-journeys/journeys/{journey_id}/steps/{step_id}/reports for Customer Journeys. |
| Audience-based scope | Aggregates across every audience. Per-audience automation-share split is not surfaced; the blended figure can hide significant per-audience differences. |
| Channel scope | Email only. SMS automations (where Mailchimp Studio is enabled) are excluded. |
| Bounce / spam handling | Not applicable to share. Bounces / complaints affect underlying revenue but the ratio is calculated post-revenue. |
| Attribution model | Inherits Mailchimp’s 24-hour click attribution default. Both numerator and denominator use the same model so the share itself is unaffected by window changes. |
| MPP impact | None on revenue share. Opens are MPP-affected; revenue is downstream of clicks. |
| Mailchimp vs Klaviyo benchmark | Mailchimp’s automation product is lighter than Klaviyo’s, fewer pre-built journeys, less granular conditional logic. Healthy band: 25-40% on Mailchimp vs 40-60% on Klaviyo. Don’t apply Klaviyo benchmarks to Mailchimp accounts; merchants will think their automation is broken when it’s actually performing as well as the platform allows. |
| Currency | Mailchimp account base currency. Both numerator and denominator are in the same currency. |
| Time window | 90D (longer window than most cards because automations need time to accumulate revenue across the full lifecycle) |
| Alert trigger | automation share <30% (drives the insight that the merchant is under-leveraging automations) |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Mailchimp data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A small DTC pet-supplies brand on Shopify with Mailchimp Standard, three audiences, the merchant blasts weekly broadcast campaigns and runs three Customer Journeys (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase). 90D window 02 Feb 26 to 02 May 26.| Source | Type | Sends / entries | Mailchimp-attributed revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly newsletter (12 sends) | Regular campaign | 312,000 | £18,400 |
| New product launch (4 sends) | Regular campaign | 110,000 | £8,200 |
| Discount weekend (3 sends) | Regular campaign | 78,000 | £6,400 |
| Welcome flow (2 emails) | Customer Journey | 4,800 entries | £4,200 |
| Abandoned cart (3 emails) | Customer Journey | 8,200 entries | £11,800 |
| Post-purchase upsell (2 emails) | Customer Journey | 6,100 entries | £3,200 |
| Campaign total | £33,000 | ||
| Automation total | £19,200 | ||
| Total Mailchimp Revenue | £52,200 | ||
| Automation share (this card) | 36.8% |
- The 36.8% figure is healthy for Mailchimp. A Klaviyo merchant would target 50%+; on Mailchimp, 35%+ is the practical ceiling because Mailchimp’s automation depth is lighter (fewer prebuilt recipes, simpler segmentation, 24h attribution vs Klaviyo’s 5-day). Don’t push for 50% on Mailchimp, you’ll be working against the platform.
- Abandoned cart drives 22.6% of total revenue from 8,200 entries. Per-entry, the abandoned-cart automation generates £1.44 in attributed revenue, ~3x the per-send efficiency of broadcast campaigns. This is the canonical Mailchimp automation pattern, abandoned cart > all other automations combined. If your account is below 25% automation share, abandoned cart is the most likely lever.
- The post-purchase upsell at 6.1% is under-performing. Per-entry £0.52 revenue is too low; healthy upsell automations on Mailchimp generate £1-2 per entry. Likely cause: the upsell offer is generic rather than tied to the original purchase. Improve by using Customer Journey conditional logic to recommend complementary SKUs based on the customer’s first order.
- List-based blast vs segmented send efficiency shows up clearly. The weekly newsletter blasts to all 26,000 subscribers regardless of engagement; the 312k sends generated £18,400, or £0.06 per send. The Customer Journey emails average £1-1.50 per send because they target only behavioural triggers. Restructuring 30% of newsletter volume into segmented “engaged 60d” sends typically lifts campaign per-send revenue 2-3x without losing total reach.
- Mailchimp’s automation upside is real but bounded. Even after optimising abandoned cart, post-purchase, and welcome, Mailchimp accounts rarely exceed 45% automation share because there are fewer high-ROI automation types to deploy than on Klaviyo. The diminishing-returns curve flattens around 40-45%; chasing 50% usually means broadcasting less rather than automating more, which can hurt total revenue.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
The share is the strategic view; pair with these for the operational drilldown:| Card | Why pair it with Automation Revenue Share |
|---|---|
| Mailchimp Top Automation Revenue | Which automations drive the share. Surfaces the 80/20, typically abandoned cart is half the automation revenue. |
| Mailchimp Abandoned-Cart Status | The single biggest lever. Live abandoned cart often pulls share from 15% to 30%+. |
| Mailchimp Welcome Status | The second-biggest lever. Welcome flow typically drives 10-15% of automation revenue. |
| Mailchimp Email-Attributed Revenue | The total this share is computed against. Ratio without total context is misleading. |
| Mailchimp Top Campaigns by Revenue | The denominator-side breakdown. If campaigns dominate, the merchant is hand-blasting. |
| Mailchimp Customer Journey Count | How many automations are even running. Low count = low share by definition. |
| Mailchimp Automation Status Breakdown | Are existing automations live or stuck in draft? Draft automations don’t contribute to share. |
| Klaviyo Total Revenue (when both connected) | If running both ESPs, compare automation share between them, useful for ESP-consolidation decisions. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Mailchimp’s own dashboard: Mailchimp → Reports → Comparative Reports lets you build a custom report grouping by “Type” (Regular, Automation, A/B). Mailchimp → Customer Journeys shows per-journey revenue per step. Mailchimp’s UI does not have a single “automation share” tile; this is a Vortex IQ-derived metric. Other Mailchimp views that look like the same number but aren’t:- Audience Overview: shows revenue per audience, not per send-type.
- Account → Reports → Top campaigns: ranked campaigns including automations mixed with broadcasts; doesn’t compute the share.
| Reason | Direction of divergence |
|---|---|
| Time-zone. Mailchimp uses account timezone; Vortex IQ uses UTC. Boundary days affect attribution. | ±0.5 pp on the share at the boundary |
| Customer Journey vs Classic Automation. Engine pulls both. Mailchimp’s UI sometimes presents them in separate tabs that obscure the combined automation total. | None on the share; affects how merchants build their own comparison |
| Page caps. Engine pages campaigns 10 per call up to 5 pages, automations similarly. Accounts running >50 distinct sends per 90D will see truncation on either numerator or denominator. | Direction depends on which side truncates |
| Attribution window changes mid-period. If the merchant changed Mailchimp’s e-commerce attribution window during the 90D, both numerator and denominator are affected proportionally so the share is roughly stable. | None on the share |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
klaviyo.klv_flow_revenue_share | When both ESPs run on the same store, Klaviyo’s flow share is typically 10-15 pp higher than Mailchimp’s automation share. | Klaviyo’s deeper automation product, segment-first model, and 5-day attribution window all favour automation revenue capture. |
shopify.total_revenue | Automation share x Mailchimp share x Shopify total = automation contribution to total revenue. Useful for budget allocation. | Indirect; this is a calculation, not a reconciliation. |