Email marketing audit [guide + step]

Email marketing is a powerful tool to engage, nurture, and convert prospects. To maintain a high ROI in your email marketing campaigns, it’s important to continuously audit and analyse your email marketing strategy.

What is an email marketing audit

An email marketing audit is a step-by-step process of reviewing your email marketing procedures and strategy to ensure their effectiveness.

The goal here to see how well email campaigns are working, find areas to improve, and make sure it still matches marketing goals. This involves looking at things like email design, content relevance, and how well emails are delivered, along with metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. By doing an audit, you can improve their email marketing, boost subscriber engagement, and get better results.

Why conduct an email marketing audit

An email marketing audit allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your current strategy, identify areas for improvement, and ensure you’re aligned with industry best practices. By conducting regular audits, you can:

1. Increase engagement: Optimise content and design to enhance open rates and click-through rates.
2. Ensure deliverability: Identify issues that may hinder your emails from reaching inboxes.
3. Boost conversion rates: Fine-tune your call-to-action and landing pages for better conversion.
4. Enhance subscriber experience: Tailor content to meet the evolving needs and interests of your audience.

Types of email marketing audit

There are several types of email audit that one can do based on their needs. Below are the most common email marketing audit types.

Email marketing performance audit

An email marketing performance audit involves evaluating key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI to assess the overall effectiveness of your email campaigns. This audit helps identify strengths and areas for improvement in your strategy.

Things checked in this audit:

1. Open rates: This is generally used as a base metric to assess the likelihood of an email being opened. If the open rates are low, then it’s typically due to poor subject line and pre-header text (considering there are no deliverability issues).
2. Click rates: This helps understand how your CTA and the content is working, as a low click rate means will result in low conversion rates. Optimising CTA copy, colour, and the email body might help improve click rate.
3. Conversion rates: It’s one of the most important metrics, and conversion is the goal for most marketing activities. All the above discussed points together help with conversion rates.
4. ROI: This helps understand whether you’re getting the right return from your email marketing activity. Also, the goal should be to keep increasing the ROI with time.

Email marketing deliverability audit

This audit focuses on ensuring your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes by analysing factors such as sender reputation, bounce rates, spam complaints, and authentication protocols. The goal is to optimise deliverability and maximise engagement.

Apart from these, you should double-check your domain authentication status as there can be some new changes.

Email design audit

An email design audit reviews the visual aspects of your emails, including layout, branding consistency, and mobile responsiveness. This audit ensures your emails are visually appealing, effectively communicate your message, and enhance user experience.

During an email design audit, you can also change how your email design and structure looks to help boost conversion based on industry data and case studies.

Email accessibility audit

An email accessibility audit evaluates how easily people with disabilities can access and understand your emails. It involves checking elements like alt text for images, clear language, and compatibility with assistive technologies to ensure inclusivity.

There are also third-party tools that automate the process of email accessibility check and is a great option for high-volume senders.

Email marketing compliance audit

A compliance audit ensures that your email marketing practices align with relevant laws and regulations, such as GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CASL. It involves reviewing your data collection, consent practices, and unsubscribe processes to avoid legal issues.

Also, privacy laws are regularly updated; hence a regular compliance audit helps ensure that your email marketing activities remain compliant.

Key Components of an Email Marketing Audit

1. Data Analysis
   • Subscriber growth: Evaluate the effectiveness of your list-building strategies.
   • Engagement metrics: Review open rates, click rates, and unsubscribe rates.
   • Segmentation: Analyse how well you are targeting different subscriber segments.
2. Content and Design Review
   • Subject lines: Check for clarity, relevance, and effectiveness in grabbing attention.
   • Email copy: Ensure your content is engaging, informative, and concise.
   • Visual elements: Assess the impact of images, fonts, and layout on readability and engagement.
   • Call-to-action: Verify that your CTAs are clear, persuasive, and prominent.
3. Technical Audit
   • Deliverability: Review sending practices, authentication protocols, and bounces.
   • Responsiveness: Ensure emails are mobile-friendly and display correctly across various devices.
   • Load time: Optimise image and text ratios for faster loading times.
4. Compliance and Privacy
   • GDPR and CAN-SPAM compliance: Make sure that your practice respects legal requirements regarding user data and privacy.
   • Preference centre: Allow subscribers to easily update their preferences and opt-out options.

Steps to Conduct an Email Marketing Audit

1. Set clear objectives: Define what you aim to achieve with your audit, such as improving engagement metrics or increasing conversion rates.
2. Gather data: Collect all necessary data from your email marketing platform and any integrated systems.
3. Analyse and interpret: Dive deep into your findings to identify patterns, strengths, and weaknesses.
4. Identify opportunities for improvement: Highlight specific areas where you can make adjustments to improve performance.
5. Implement changes: Put your recommendations into practice and monitor the results.
6. Review and repeat: Email marketing is not a one-time effort. Schedule regular audits to keep your strategy fresh and effective.

Conclusion

Conducting an email marketing audit is important for improving your strategy and boosting your campaign results. By carefully reviewing each part of your email marketing, you can find useful insights and take steps to succeed.

Also, if you’re looking for an easy to use GDPR-compliant email marketing on a budget, then do have a look at EmailOctopus.