Email Audit: A Checklist to Determine Where Your Weaknesses Lie

Email Audit - Checklist - picture of a laptop and tablet on a desk with a plant and report

Are your emails working as hard as they can for you? If you’re not sure, then it’s probably time to conduct an email audit. As a small business owner or entrepreneur in today’s digital age, having high-performing emails can be the difference between reaching an engaged audience and getting lost in a sea of unopened messages.

Why You Want to Conduct an Email Audit on Your Email Marketing

Are you looking for ways to improve your email marketing? Would you like guidance on how to ensure it’s effective? A key strategy is to conduct an email audit. An email audit allows you to identify any weaknesses in your current emails, helping to ensure they are engaging and provide maximum impact. 

Understanding where the weak spots may be will focus efforts on improving delivery and open rates in order to get the best results from our campaigns.

An email audit may seem overwhelming at first—there are so many details to consider!—but don’t worry. I have created a checklist below to make the process much simpler. It will provide valuable insights into how you can improve and refine your email strategy. So, get ready to learn where your weaknesses lie and start smashing those goals!

Your Email Audit Checklist:

Check Your Subject Lines

Your subject line is the first thing recipients see when they receive your email, so it’s important to make sure that it’s clear, concise, and engaging. Are they clear and concise? Do they accurately reflect the content of your email? 

A good subject line will entice recipients to open your email, while a poor subject line will likely result in your email being deleted without being read. To ensure that your subject lines are effective, consider using a tool like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer.

 

Examine Your Email Content

Once you’ve determined that your subject lines are up to par, it’s time to take a look at the content of your emails. Are you providing value to your recipients? Is your content interesting and relevant? If not, it’s likely that your emails are being ignored or deleted. To keep recipients engaged, make sure that your email content is well-written and relevant to their interests.

 

Review Your Call-To-Action

Your call-to-action (CTA) is the part of your email where you ask readers to take a specific action, such as visiting your website or making a purchase. An effective CTA will be clear and concise, telling your audience exactly what you want them to do. Additionally, your CTA should be placed prominently in your email so that recipients can easily find it.

 

Evaluate Your Sender Name and Email Address

The sender’s name and email address you use for your business emails can have a significant impact on whether or not recipients open and read them. If you’re using a personal email address or an unrecognizable sender name, there’s a good chance your emails are going straight to the trash. To increase the chances of recipients opening and reading your emails, use a professional sender name and email address associated with your business.

 

Assess Your Email Frequency

How often are you sending emails to your list? If you’re bombarding your email list with multiple emails each day, there’s a good chance they’re getting sick of hearing from you. This leads to them either ignoring or unsubscribing from your list. On the other hand, if you’re not sending enough emails, you may be missing out on opportunities to engage with potential customers. To strike the right balance, consider sending one to two emails per week.

 

Analyze Your Open Rates

Another important aspect of an email audit is to analyze your open rates. This will give you an idea of how many people are actually opening and reading your emails. If your open rates are low, it could be a sign that your emails are not relevant to your subscribers or that they’re not interested in what you have to say.

 

Examine Your Click-Through Rates

In addition to open rates, you should also look at your click-through rates. This will tell you how many people are actually clicking on the links in your emails. If your click-through rates are low, it could be a sign that your emails are not interesting or the call-to-actions are not effective.

 

Review Your Unsubscribe Rate

Finally, review your unsubscribe rate. This will give you an idea of how many people are choosing to unsubscribe from your email list after receiving one of your emails. If your unsubscribe rate is high, it’s a sign that something is wrong with either your content or your delivery and you’ll need to make changes.

Keep This Email Audit Checklist Handy

Email audits can be intimidating, but it’s an essential tool to have in the modern marketing landscape. The potential benefits range from improved email performance and reduced spam reports, to better understanding your customer base and reaching a more engaged audience. 

Reviewing your emails with this checklist will help you identify key metrics like click-through rate, deliverability quality, content alignment, responsiveness, subscriber list management, and more. Executing these strategies will give you a great opportunity to adjust your strategy accordingly and achieve maximum impact with your emails. 

Conduct regular audits of your email campaigns as doing them too rarely can cause underlying issues that threaten email performance and reputation scores. Now is the perfect time to start examining email performance and pinpointing opportunities for improvement by sprucing up metrics such as spam trap churn rate or unsubscribe rate. Beginning your email audit now could end up making a huge difference in the long run.

Need Help with Your Email Growth and Marketing?

This is the perfect time to get email and email automation set up for your company. If you’re looking for help with audits, strategy, or setting up automation in your marketing and emails, reach out! Check out my contact page to set up a quick chat to discuss your needs.