Three sends from a seasonal campaign. Client asks 'which one performed best?' Exporting to CSV and loading Excel is the slow path. SFMC's built-in Compare Email Sends view is the fast one.
Seasonal campaign just wrapped. Three sends went out over four weeks. Client asks: "Which performed best? Which should we repeat next year?"
The slow path: export each send's tracking to CSV, pivot in Excel, build a comparison table. 45 minutes.
The fast path: Tracking > Compare Email Sends - side-by-side metrics in 30 seconds.
Email Studio > Tracking tab (not Reports, not Overview). The Compare Email Sends option.
Select multiple send jobs from a list - 2 to 10 at a time is the sweet spot. SFMC renders a side-by-side table with every engagement metric across all selected sends.
A table like:
Immediate visual: Send 2 underperformed on both open and click. Send 3 was the winner.
Different tools for different needs. Compare Email Sends is the lightest-weight.
Seasonal or product launch campaigns with 3-5 emails. Which hit hardest? Which underperformed?
Action: replicate the winning approach next cycle. Investigate the underperformer's subject line, send time, or content angle.
After the SFMC A/B test picks a winner, compare the A and B variants directly. Confirms the winner and quantifies the gap.
This year's summer sale send vs last year's. Similar content, similar timing - did performance shift? If yes, is it audience maturity (subscribers less interested after 12 months) or content decay?
Morning vs afternoon send. Weekday vs weekend. The comparison view isolates send time effects.
Tracking data in SFMC retains for ~6 months by default (some event data up to 2 years). Comparisons across older sends need data archived via Tracking Data Extract (covered in the next post).
If the client asks "compare this holiday campaign with last year's" and last year's data has aged out, you need the archive. Set up archiving early in the engagement to avoid this scenario.
Send 1 went to Gold tier; Send 2 went to all subscribers. The comparison isn't apples-to-apples - Gold tier typically has higher open rates.
Rule: only compare sends with comparable audiences. Or note the audience difference in the analysis.
Send 1: 22.1% open. Send 2: 21.8% open. "Send 1 won!" Not quite - that's noise. Report meaningful differences only (typically 10%+ relative, or whatever statistical significance supports).
"Send 2 had lower open rate" without investigating why isn't actionable. Every comparison should produce a hypothesis:
Comparison is the start of analysis, not the end.
The Compare Email Sends view has an export option. CSV comes out with the same columns; drop into Excel or PowerPoint for client presentations.
For polished presentations, consider Datorama - charts and visualizations are built in. For internal team use, the raw comparison is enough.
Compare Email Sends is the 30-second answer to "which of these performed best." Built into Tracking, no exports needed, no setup. Use for seasonal campaigns, A/B retrospectives, and year-over-year comparisons. Every comparison should end with a hypothesis about why, not just which number is bigger.
Running multi-send campaigns on SFMC? Our Salesforce team builds comparison reports and post-campaign retrospectives on production engagements. Get in touch ->
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