Email Marketing Audit: The Ultimate Checklist Before You Hit Send

Hitting the send button is, in a way, like launching a rocket into space: this is a one-way action you won’t be able to cancel. This is why it is essential to check if everything is in place before doing it, as you cross your point of no return with a single click! 

Your email marketing strategy might look great on paper, but are you sure everything is working as it should? Before you hit send on your next campaign, you must do something that is called an email marketing audit. The marketing audit process is very useful as it can help you spot issues that could negatively affect your deliverability, engagement, or conversions. 

What Is an Email Marketing Audit?

An email marketing audit is a systematic and comprehensive review of your email strategy to identify areas that need improvement. As the process is based on a holistic approach, it ensures that your campaigns are optimized for deliverability, engagement, and compliance with legal regulations. 

There are two ways to check your email strategy using audit marketing. The first is a self-audit checklist when you assess your email campaign performance. This approach is a must-have before taking any broader and more sophisticated action. If everything is fine, you will stop at this point, happily launching your email marketing campaign. However, if things are not as perfect as you would have thought, you will have to undertake a comprehensive email marketing audit to find out the problem. 

Yet, let us begin with what you can do with your own efforts. 

Start with a Quick Self-Audit Checklist

Do you want to know if your email strategy needs a deeper audit? First, run through this quick email audit checklist, consisting of seven basic points. Here’s how to run it step by step:

✅ Are your emails landing in the primary inbox, not spam or promotions?

✅ Do your subject lines encourage opens without sounding clickbaity?

✅ Is your email list growing steadily without a spike in unsubscribes?

✅ Are your open and click-through rates meeting industry benchmarks?

✅ Is your email design optimized for mobile users?

✅ Have you tested your CTA devices to see which drives the most conversions?

✅ Are you segmenting your audience for better targeting?

Please take into consideration that this email audit procedure is pretty demanding, even if you conduct it on your own. So, if you have at least one “no” to any of these questions, waste no time and launch a complete email marketing audit. 

Why Conduct an Email Marketing Audit?

Simply because a regular email campaign audit will help you with an array of parameters that directly impact the overall performance of your marketing objectives. Here’s what you can achieve: 

• Improve email deliverability, with your open rate ideally exceeding 22%, which is an average across industries. So, a good open rate that leads to a successful email marketing campaign must be somewhere between 17 and 28%, according to MailMunch. Still, this variable depends very much on the industry and location, so you must consider what category your business relates to. 
• Boost engagement rates. It is no secret that great engagement rates are the centerpiece of a successful digital marketing business. 
• Reduce spam complaints and unsubscribes. Being flagged as a spammer would ruin your email marketing campaign and seriously affect your company’s reputation. 
• Ensure compliance with legal regulations, like the GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CCPA.
• Maximize ROI on your email campaigns. As ROI is an essential measure of your email marketing campaign effectiveness, please keep in mind that an average number in this area is 36:1, according to Litmus. Yet, checking the ROI standard for your specific industry would be very helpful. 

So, to keep your emarketing campaign going in the right direction to help you achieve your ultimate goals, include email audits in the list of your must-have tools.

Email Marketing Audit Checklist

Now, let’s look at the comprehensive checklist that covers all the potential problem areas within your email marketing campaign:

1. Email list health check

Assess list quality

Rule #1: A clean list leads to better engagement. Consider removing inactive subscribers and verifying emails regularly using list-cleaning tools. This way, you will keep your email contact list as efficient as possible.  

Analyze bounce rates

As you know, a high bounce rate signals problems. If your bounce rate exceeds 2%, it’s time to check for invalid or outdated emails.

Unsubscribe & spam complaints

You must also monitor unsubscribe and spam complaint rates. If your unsubscribe rate is over 0.5%, reassessing your content and frequency would be the best solution.

2. Email deliverability & sender reputation

Check email authentication

To achieve it, you must ensure your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC email authentication protocols are properly set up to prevent spam, spoofing, and phishing attacks. 

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) verifies that an email is sent from an authorized mail server. It prevents spammers from sending emails on your behalf. DKIM, or DomainKeys Identified Mail, adds a cryptographic signature to your emails to verify that they haven’t been altered in transit. DKIM provides email tampering and forgery. Finally, DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) blends SPF and DKIM functionality. It lets domain owners specify how to handle unauthorized emails. It can reject, quarantine, or allow them. DMARC guards you from email spoofing and phishing attacks.

Monitor spam score

To be on the safe side, you can use tools like Mail-Tester or SpamAssassin to check if your emails might be flagged as spam. Being marked as a spammer could ruin your email marketing campaign and your company’s overall reputation, so act quickly when necessary!

Review sender reputation

Trust is everything! Your domain’s sender reputation impacts deliverability. You can check it using tools like Google Postmaster Tools or SenderScore. Again, don’t let your potential customers vanish because you didn’t care enough about your sender reputation. 

3. Email content & design review

Subject lines & preview text

Consider crafting compelling and attractive subject lines under 50 characters (on the average) and optimize preview text for better open rates. Think of this personalized subject line as an example: “Jeff, where have you been lately? We miss you!”

Body content & personalization

As you know, personalized emails perform better. You can use dynamic content to tailor messages to recipients. We also strongly recommend including personalization into the body content. However, don’t spoil it with too many personalization fields in the text as it may irritate the recipient. 

Call-to-action (CTA) optimization

Here’s the key: your CTA should be clear, action-oriented, and visually distinct. Try a straightforward CTA approach, such as: “Join the VIP List for Early Access” to create exclusivity, “Shop Now & Save 20%” to trigger urgency with a discount, or drive FOMO with “Last Chance! Grab Your Deal Before It’s Gone.”

Mobile responsiveness

According to Audience Point, a U.S.-based email marketing company, more than 50% of emails are opened by users on the go. In fact, mobile users are now the majority of your customer base. Keeping this in mind, you must test your emails across devices to ensure a seamless experience.

4. Email automation & segmentation

Check drip campaigns & workflows

Yes, it may look rather boring, but we strongly advise you to review automated workflows to ensure they are still relevant and properly triggered.

Audience segmentation analysis

A proper analysis would help you segment your audience based on demographics, behavior, and past interactions to increase relevance.

Personalization & dynamic content

Leverage merge tags and AI-driven recommendations for better engagement. For example, you can merge tags to insert names or locations: “Hey [First Name], we found something cool just for you!” You can also use a behavior-based personalization approach. In this case, you may recommend products based on past browsing or purchase history, such as “Since you liked [Product A], check out these similar items!”

5. Engagement metrics and performance analysis

Open rates & click-through rates (CTR)

You should compare your rates against industry benchmarks to see where improvements are needed. For example, the average open rate across industries in digital marketing is 22%, as was mentioned above. According to Business.com, the average CTR across all industries is 3.25%. However, it varies very much depending on the area, such as technology (7.4%), financial services (5.34%), education (3.17%), real estate (3.51%), and travel (2.52%).

Conversion rates and ROI

To measure the profitability of your email marketing campaigns, track how many email recipients take the desired action and calculate your return on investment (ROI). The formula for calculating ROI is: 

ROI (%) = [(Revenue from emails – Email marketing costs) / Email marketing costs] × 100. 

If you think ROI is below the target, consider spicing up your email marketing campaigns with segmentation, personalization, and re-targeting.

A/B testing insights

You should constantly test different subject lines, layouts, and CTAs to determine what resonates best with your audience. For example, you can compare “John, get ready for Christmas with us!” vs. “Don’t miss our Christmas sale, John!”

6. Compliance and legal considerations

GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CCPA compliance

Ensure your emails comply with data privacy regulations and include necessary disclosures. Depending on your business’s jurisdiction, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is for the European Union, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM) is for the United States, and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is for the Golden State. 

Unsubscribe process review

Don’t be shy to say goodbye to the disloyal contacts; make opting out easy and ensure you honor unsubscribe requests promptly.

Data privacy and security measures

Finally, you should take care of the confidentiality issues. You must safeguard customer data by implementing strong security measures and transparent privacy policies.

Tools for Conducting an Email Marketing Audit

Are you wondering how to conduct a marketing audit for your email campaign? Here are some useful tools to assist with your email marketing audit:

• Google Postmaster Tools: This comprehensive solution allows you to monitor sender reputation. 
• Mail-Tester: This tool is great for a quality spam score analysis. 
• SenderScore: Use this tool when you need to check domain reputation. 
• Sendigram Email Checker: This is a decent option when your email list needs cleaning.
• Litmus or Email on Acid: Engage any of these for your email preview testing.

To Sum Up

Thanks for getting to the finish line of the review! We hope you figured out the importance of email marketing audits as an essential process to ensure your campaigns perform at their best. By evaluating different parameters, like your list quality, deliverability, content, automation, and compliance, you can optimize your strategy for better results and keep the trust among consumers at high levels. 

Remember: regularly auditing your email marketing activities is essential. In this case, your open rates, engagement, and conversions will thank you—and your business will thrive!