Guide
The email marketing audit
Subject lines are the last thing to look at, not the first. Deliverability, list health and lifecycle gaps account for most of what an email programme is losing.
Email audits usually start with open rates and creative, which is the equivalent of auditing a shop by rearranging the window display while the door is locked. Start where the losses are largest: whether the messages arrive at all, whether the list is worth sending to, and whether the obvious moments are covered.
1. Deliverability - start here
If mail is landing in spam, nothing else in the audit matters.
Authentication
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured and passing on the sending domain.
- A dedicated sending subdomain rather than the root domain.
- Consistent from-name and from-address across programmes.
Reputation
- Bounce rate, and whether hard bounces are being suppressed automatically.
- Spam complaint rate, by campaign - one bad segment usually explains it.
- Whether the list contains addresses that have never engaged, and how many.
- One-click unsubscribe present and working, not a preference-centre maze.
2. List health
Where addresses come from
- Every capture point on the site, and what each promises the subscriber.
- Whether consent is explicit and recorded, per jurisdiction.
- Whether the promise made at capture matches what actually gets sent.
- Growth rate against unsubscribe and decay rate - the net number, not the gross.
Segmentation
- What is known about each subscriber beyond their address.
- Whether that knowledge is used to change what they receive.
- Whether inactive subscribers are being suppressed or endlessly re-mailed.
3. Lifecycle coverage
Map what is sent against the moments that matter. The gaps are usually where the money is.
The moments worth covering
- Immediately after signup: does the promised thing arrive, quickly?
- The first week: does anything establish who you are and why they subscribed?
- Abandonment: a started-but-unfinished form, cart, or booking.
- Post-purchase or post-inquiry: onboarding, next steps, or the next sensible offer.
- Dormancy: a genuine attempt to re-engage before suppression.
4. Performance, finally
Now look at the numbers, and look at the right ones. Open rate has been unreliable since mail clients began pre-fetching images; it is a directional signal at best and should not be the basis of a decision. Click rate, click-to-open, conversion per send, and revenue per subscriber are the numbers that survive scrutiny.
Compare campaigns against each other rather than against published industry averages. Those averages are drawn from wildly different lists and mostly serve to make everyone feel either complacent or unfairly judged.
Common questions
- What should an email marketing audit cover?
- Deliverability and authentication, list health and consent, lifecycle coverage against the moments that matter, and then performance on click and conversion rather than opens.
- Why is open rate unreliable now?
- Mail clients that pre-fetch images register an open whether or not a person looked. It still has some directional value across large samples, but it should not be the basis of a decision.
- How often should you audit an email programme?
- Deliverability quarterly, because it degrades quietly. The full audit annually, or whenever performance drops without an obvious cause.
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