How To Do An Email Marketing Audit
If you’re a business owner, don’t sleep on email marketing. 99% of consumers check their emails every day. When we say “reach your audience where they are at,” email marketing is exactly what we’re talking about.
Yes, they probably are also on their social media platforms, but did you know that only 10% of your followers will see your post on Instagram? And that’s if your image or video caught their attention long enough for them to stop scrolling.
It's not that Facebook isn't important for your business, but if you want direct impact and reach, email marketing has no competition.
This blog will guide you through how to do an email marketing audit so you can take a close look at your strategy to maximize your return on investment.
Let’s talk about why audits are important, how to do one, and what they are.
Why an Email Marketing Audit Matters
Email marketing gets results. For every dollar spent, the average return is $40. The campaigns help you build relationships with your customers by sharing updates, offers, and valuable content, leading to greater brand loyalty and repeat business.
Your strategy shouldn’t just be “send an email.” Each newsletter should be strategically crafted to reach your marketing goals. Whether you’ve been sending emails for decades or your first one is in your drafts, doing an audit will maximize the impact of your campaign.
The goal of an audit is to take an honest, unbiased look at what's working, what's not, and where you can make improvements. By reviewing your email list, content, timing, and overall strategy, you can identify areas to optimize and make data-driven decisions to increase open rates, boost CTRs, and drive better results.
Components of an Email Marketing Audit
If the word audit casts a sense of dread over your body, we feel you. Just remember, it’s not telling you what you’re doing wrong, but more guiding you in the right direction. Here’s what you should look at when doing an email marketing audit:
Subscriber List
Make sure your subscribers have opted in. You don’t want to talk to people who aren’t into you anyway. Regularly clean out inactive subscribers to boost engagement and segment your list to more effectively target different audience groups.
Personalization
Identify key moments in your customers' journey to send timely messages. Automated messages like welcome emails and abandoned cart reminders can be personalized. Keep testing and refining your approach to see what works best.
Performance Metrics
Review metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. This helps you see what’s working and where you can improve.
Compliance
Follow email marketing laws like Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation. Get explicit consent, provide clear information, and allow easy opt-outs. This helps you avoid legal issues and build trust with your subscribers.
Content
Look at your subject lines, messages, visuals, and calls to action. Confirm they are interesting and personalized to keep your audience interested. Test different elements to improve your results.
Deliverability
Currently, the best time to send an email blast is 10am on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Make sure your emails bypass the junk folder by maintaining a good sender reputation, using proper authentication, and avoiding spammy language. Monitor deliverability (like with monthly reporting — a service we provide to our clients) to catch any issues early.
How To Do An Email Marketing Audit In 6 Easy Steps
We’ve tackled the “what” and the “why,” now for the “how.” These six steps will make the process a bit easier.
1. Set Your Goals Decide what you want to achieve with your audit. Are you aiming to boost overall performance, improve deliverability, or refine your content? Knowing your goals will help shape the audit.
2. Choose Your KPIs
Key Performance Indicators are what measures your success. These are things like open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. Setting clear goals will help you see what’s working and where you need to adjust.
3. Create a Spreadsheet
If you’re not a spreadsheet girly, trust us when we say it’s for the best you become one in this case. Track details like campaign names, subject lines, audience segments, open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. This helps you keep everything in one place and helps you spot trends.
4. Gather and Organize Data Compare your metrics with industry standards and past performance to find trends and areas for improvement.
5. Analyze What Works Look into why some emails performed better than others. What made the successful ones stand out? Figure out how to replicate that success in your next campaigns.
6. Make a Plan
For all the other creatives crying out there, we’re on the last step! Make a report with clear takeaways and then start implementing and testing your new ideas. It will work!
We like to make ourselves an email audit checklist so we can get a dopamine hit after we complete each of the 6 steps. Bonus points if you add a little treat for yourself after you complete the audit.
Conduct Regular Audits
Email marketing audits will give you valuable insights to make a clear action plan that lines up your email marketing with your business goals. Whether you're focusing on list health or doing a full audit, following this framework will make it easy. Start focusing on what works and ditch what doesn’t.
If after reading this email marketing suddenly jumps to the top of your to-do list, we’re ready to help! We also happen to have an extremely high open rate on our own newsletter at 45-49%. Humble brag, but the industry average is 21.5%.
Contact us here to get started on your next email marketing campaign.
