A deep dive on Chartr

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“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

We all know that quote. And it’s exactly the thesis Chartr was built on.

And it proved to be a successful thesis.

5 years and more than 500,000 subscribers later – it recently got acquired by Sherwood Media (Robinhood’s media arm).

Today, we’re taking a deep dive.

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❓ WHAT IS CHARTR?

Chartr is a newsletter that focuses on one single thing: data storytelling.

Here’s how they describe it themselves: Data-driven insights into business, tech, entertainment and society. Our visual newsletter takes 5 minutes to read and it’s completely free.

Chartr captures the story of the current day – whether that’s the financial markets, a natural disaster, or the movies currently playing in theaters.

Look at the most recent email, for instance: it opened on an analysis of whether or not the US is in a recession, it then went on to visualize the rapid growth of AI, later zoomed in on employees in all different sectors striking, and then it compared the box office of 2023’s biggest movies, and so on.

Chartr is very different from other newsletters when it comes to picking topics. Instead of sticking to a certain niche, Chartr is (delightfully) all over the place.

But at the same time, it’s all the same. There is a common denominator: data visualizations.

Whether it’s a chart, a graph, or a circle diagram – Chartr simplifies the biggest stories by visualizing them.

That’s what makes it unique.

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🪴 HOW CHARTR GROWS

📈 Paid ads. 

Look at these examples of ads ran by Chartr on Facebook and Instagram, for instance:

Chartr runs a couple of different types of ads. 

1️⃣ Some of them are very simple. They show examples of data visualizations, add some context in the ad copy, and then have a call-to-action to subscribe to the newsletter for more.

2️⃣ Others are a bit more complex. Videos of testimonials by readers are used, for example. They look more like user-generated content, so that they perfectly fit into potential subscribers’ feeds. Of course, with a call-to-action to subscribe for free.

📲 Outside of paid ads, Chartr also seems to keep their social media channels active. Twitter is used quite extensively to share graphs and charts that can also be seen in the newsletter.

Which brings me to…

📷 Instagram

Their Instagram account is massive, with 517k followers.

And the engagement rate is decent, an average post gets 3k+ likes.

📈 Sparkloop

Chartr is part of the partner network on Sparkloop.

With Sparkloop, you can set custom criterias and only pay for the subscribers that you consider high quality. And Chartr’s criterias are as follows: US-based subs, 2 emails opened or 1 unique email click in the last 7 days of the screening period.

They pay $1.25 per accepted subscriber, and spend more than six figures a year on Sparkloop, so it’s reasonable to assume that they’ve added 100k+ subscribers from the partner network.

Interested in growing your newsletter with Sparkloop? Check out more here.*

🤖 Reddit

Although they don’t post there anymore, the chartr graphs routinely went viral on Reddit for years. I’m sure that this has brought on a lot of subscribers.

💰 HOW CHARTR MAKES MONEY (AND HOW MUCH)

Chartr is free, but makes it’s money through advertising. 

💵 Like many newsletters, Chartr makes money by selling advertising spots in its emails.

While we have no data or specific numbers on how much Chartr sells its spots for, the form on their website indicates that companies can start advertising with a budget of $2,000.

🧳 As we know, Chartr has over 500,000 subscribers. CPMs for newsletter ads are commonly between $20 and $50. As Chartr’s content is generally more valuable than the average newsletter’s, it would not be crazy at all if its CPM would be somewhere around $35-$40.

That could mean Chartr charges between $17,500 and $20,000 for an ad placement – although these are estimates. 

💲 As they send out an email every two days, this would put the monthly revenue somewhere between $262,500 and $300,000. 

Which brings the annual revenue to $3,000,000+.*

A little over a week ago, it was announced that Chartr got acquired by Robinhood. Sadly, no numbers about an acquisition sum or yearly revenue were announced.

*These are guesstimates.

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All in all, Chartr is a newsletter and media company that went all-in on one content strategy — and it ended up paying off: it’s loved by readers all over the world (including yours truly).

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