How to carry out an e -mail marketing audit

February 23, 2025

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Regardless of whether it is a new year, a new financial year or you start a new job if you carry out an e -mail marketing audit of your existing campaigns and databases is a smart option. These examination figures can help you set up a basis for improvements and boastful rights.

You can start an audit in many different ways. In this article I will show you how I would do an e -mail marketing audit, but of course you are welcome to choose to do this work better for you.

For this audit I will concentrate on the following:

E -mail sends of systems
E -mail marketing database
Segmentations and lists
E -mail marketing campaigns
E -mail templates
E -mail processes

E -mail sends of systems

This is completely optional, but with larger organizations it is often a good idea to create a list of all shipment platforms. Note changes in this list every year. In some companies, for example, e -mails from the marketing automation platform as well as tools such as Outreach, Salesforce and Gainsight are used. I keep a simple list of these shipment systems as well as system owners and sends of domains.

E -mail marketing database

I usually focus on my marketing automation database for this exercise. However, if your company uses a data Lake to hand over data to your marketing automation platform (MAP) or E -Mail service provider (ESP), you can also search there. I start the E -Mail -Marketing -Audit with a table or a Google sheet with all my data so that I can pass it on and save it later for comparisons.

It is a good idea to check these seven factors annually (or even quarterly):

The total number of contacts: So many clear e -mail addresses that you have in your card or on your map.
The total number of marketable contacts: Define marketable as your company and companies. For example, contact data records that are not driven out, the data values for “job title” or “Land” may not be immediately marketable (this is a B2B example).
The number of marketable contacts that you have received in the last 12, 6 and 3 months by e -mail: This gives you a good indication that you will miss your database when sending large cohorts and enables you to create a strategy for achieving this data.
The number of inactive marketable contacts (or you can turn them over to display active contacts) in the last 12, 6 and 3 months: Once again you have to work within your business rules to determine a definition for “inactive”. This often means that contacts have not opened or clicked on e -mails, fill out forms, visit the website, etc. Why measure inactive contacts? Because it is a good practice to suppress inactive contacts from your e -mail marketing campaigns.
Database growth: The number of new contacts a year.
Database wear: The number of contacts that deregistered or crashed hard. You can also include a different cell in your table with the number of contacts that have become inactive.
The total number of e -mails sent: Instead of looking at contacts for this metric, we would like to know how many overall -e e -mails for the year, the quarter or the month have been sent.

Here is an example of how I set up this part of an e -mail marketing -udit table:

E -mail marketing -Audit -table layout

Segmentations and lists

If you only use a small number of lists (or segments), use this time to think about whether creating additional segments is required. Or if you believe that it is a worthwhile idea to test, you can start planning these tests. If you deal with dozens (or even hundreds) of segments in your e -mail marketing, it is now a good time to ask these questions:

Which segments do you use in your marketing? If you use too many to count, what most important segments do you use?
How does every segment do? How do your main segments do?
What improvements can you make about your segmentation?
Do you have the need for a new segment or a new segments? For example, your company has started marketing on a new persona. Have you created a suitable segment?

E -mail marketing campaigns

If you are an e -mail marketing team of one, you may already follow which campaigns you have sent for the year and how they were carried out.

Make a column for your table for:

E -mail campaign name
Date provided (or data)
Segment or target list
Subject line
A/B test (if applicable)
Number of e -mails sent
Hard bounce rate
Soft bounce rate
Clear open rate
Clear click rate
Click on the relationship
Fromkunting rate
Conversion rate (optional, this metric may not be available easily)

This is basically just an e -mail marketing campaign report for the whole year. Please add columns or remove the requirements of your e -mail marketing audits! With campaign data worth a whole year, you can see what efforts were more successful than others.

Do the same for Automated E -Mail campaigns. Note which campaigns are executed and how they occurred. You may not have to provide a provision date, but you could draw the rest of the metrics.

E -mail templates

So you have looked at your e -mail campaigns and your database, but you don't want to forget your e -mail template! During this annual e -mail marketing audits, write down your existing templates.

Ask your stakeholders and yourself:

Do you need additional e -mail templates or modules (sections in your e -mail templates)?
Have you received feedback or have new insights in previous A/B tests find out?
Were your e -mail templates tested last year? If not, it is a perfect opportunity to use e -mails on acid to test and fix compatibility.
Does your company have a new logo or new pictures you have to update?
Does your footer need a new copyright? This is the season to make these improvements, including your templates accessible and dark mode friendly.

E -mail process

A new year is an opportunity to check and see your existing E -Mail production process where you can make improvements. Do you need ideas? Take a look at this article with the title “How to improve your e -mail creation process through your e -mail creation.

After you have put together all this great information in your fantastic table, it is time to share the e -mail marketing audit with your team. If you want to go the extra parts, create a presentation or a slide decks that add your data and insights. Share it with your manager and team to show you what e -mail marketing has in the past year! Also use this data to create your e -mail marketing strategy for 2021. Which campaigns can be repeated with a few changes? Which automated campaigns work best, could it possibly do better?

Download an e -mail marketing action plan

The E -Mail marketer works on the 2021 action plan

After examining the e -mail campaigns of the last year, you can use this information to inform your e -mail marketing strategy from 2021.

If the changes that were delivered at 2020, they scratched them on the head, read the special report, the e -mail marketing and the next normality with insights from the Senior -E -Mail -Marketing Manager Betsy Grondy.