Getting The Most Out Of Your Email Campaigns By Getting The Audit Right!

Published on: 15 July 2023 Last Updated on: 29 October 2024

Excerpt: Delivering email campaigns that perform exceedingly well requires effort and email audits help you get closer to better ROIs. Read on!

So half of the year has gone by smoothly (well, almost), your brand’s making money, your workflows are automated, and your email marketing campaigns are doing well. Wait, yes, pause at the last part of the sentence. Are they really performing optimally?

To get a clear understanding of the efficacy of your email marketing campaigns, no matter how great and well-automated they might be in your perspective, you NEED to run audits twice or thrice every twelve months.

If you meet an email marketer over drinks, they will probably have a lot to say about their KPIs and how the click-throughs are not making the cut. So how can one ensure that their email marketing efforts don’t go down the drain? The answer is quite simple indeed: execute email marketing audits to unveil your strengths and weaknesses, areas of improvement, and those that are doing just fine.

In the blog that follows, we will delve into the different kinds of email marketing audits that one can conduct and ways to go about executing them. Let’s get cracking!

The Kinds of Email Marketing Audits That One Can Conduct

In simple terms, an email marketing audit is a deep analysis of the various factors that contribute to the success of an email campaign so that you know what’s working and the areas that need to be tweaked.

The following are some kinds of email audits that you can carry out; each of them focuses on different facets of the email.

1. Email Content & Design Marketing Performance Audit

One of the most common kinds of audits, here you delve into your various KPIs (CTR, CTOR, etc.) to get a holistic understanding of the email campaign’s performance. The aspects that you need to look out for are:

Subject line: Try to keep them personalized, crystal clear, non-sales, and within the range of 40-45 characters, optimized for mobile viewing. Please steer clear of spammy words such as “earn quick money” or basically anything that sounds too good to be true.
Preheader text: It should be related to the subject line, albeit not repetitive.
Header: First impressions are often long-lasting; cliched though that may sound, it does hold some weight. The header text next to your logo should be noticeable, clear, and in alignment with the brand ethos.
Email copy: Grammatical errors and typos are a major turn-off. No wonder brands invest in the best copywriters to churn out good copy, even in the age of AI! Keep it crisp, clean and deliver maximum value in minimum words.
CTA: The Call to Action buttons are the ones that can make or break the ROIs. Keep the design and text in tandem with the brand guidelines, easy to spot and click, devoid of broken links that lead nowhere!
Graphics: When crafting an HTML or interactive email, ensure that the graphics render well across devices and the visual hierarchy is maintained.
Conversions & Engagement rates: This is the litmus test of your email campaign. Are your emails good and engaging enough to keep subscribers interested, or are there more hits than misses? The KPIs should spill the beans on this one.

2. Email accessibility audit

When crafting your emails, if one overlooks the critical aspect of disability, you might fail to foster inclusivity with your campaigns, thereby risking losing the patronage of your subscribers. Keeping email accessibility in mind is absolutely essential, and is something that all email marketers should perpetually strive for.

Ensure that there is no sensory overload for those with visual disabilities by keeping a simple and clean email layout.
For those living with tactile difficulties, make the CTA buttons larger to ensure greater clickability and visibility across a range of devices.
Remember to check for alt text in images to simplify things for users deploying the services of a screen reader.

3. Deliverability Audit

You might have the best of Salesforce email templates (or Hubspot; whatever rocks your boat) and check all the above aspects, but if your email campaigns fail to reach the intended inboxes, all your efforts will end up in vain.

To check for email deliverability issues, one needs to check the following aspects;

Clean email list devoid of incorrect email ids
Email Authentication
HTML code failures
Domain reputation
Blocklisting
Spam traps
IP address

4. Compliance Audit

This would include checking the level of compliance of your email campaigns with the guidelines and requirements of CCPA, GDPR, PECR, etc.

5. Email Code Audit

Here, one would evaluate and carry out a code clean-up, fix bugs (if any), and ensure the incorporation of the best practices in email coding. One would also conduct tests to see how well the email renders across different email clients and devices.

6. Design Audit

In this kind of audit, one would review the emails from the design and aesthetics viewpoint and check how consistent the layout is with the branding guidelines. The different elements one would generally bring under the lens in this kind of audit are checking for the right use of white spaces, design patterns in accordance with the heat map, fonts, logo, layout, graphics, etc.

7. Automation Audit

Here, one would check automated email campaigns to see if everything is in order, such as API triggers, templates, links, rules, customer journey maps, etc.

One can either carry out all these audits or create a bespoke audit plan that includes permutations and combinations of the different kinds of audits mentioned above.

Steps For Conducting The Perfect Email Audit

Now that we are privy to the kinds of email audits that one can carry out, let’s move over to getting started with the process of what’s going well and what’s lacking in your current email campaigns.

Firstly, you need to begin with drafting a clear set of goals. Much like in other areas of life, the lack of well-defined goals in sight can very well be akin to sailing in a rudderless ship, and frankly, no one wants to be aboard such a ship!

You could begin by jotting down the kinds of audits you’d want to run on your existing campaigns and, based on the purpose of the audit, figure out your bespoke learnings and takeaways.

Then, you’d like to create a list of measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you will be evaluating to check the health and effectiveness of your current campaign.

These may include:

Unsubscribe rates
Open rates (albeit not a very effective one as per Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature unveiled in the WWDC conference held on 7 June 2021)
CTR (Click Through Rates)
CTOR (Click To Open Rate)
Spam complaints
Conversions
Email client & device assessment

You can create a spreadsheet to maintain a record of your audit. Here’s what you can document:

Name of the email campaign
Date deployed (not applicable in case of automated emails)
Name of the audience segment
Subject line
Soft bounce rate
Hard bounce rate
CTOR
CTR
Conversion rate
Unsubscribe rate

You can modify the contents of the spreadsheet as per your unique requirements. One can also diversify the main spreadsheet by adding tabs for different kinds of emails, such as promotional, transactional emails, etc.

Once you have your data in place, you can and should proceed with the data analysis. Begin with scanning all the metrics and specifically scrutinize those that fall on the extremities of the curve. The ones that did really well and the ones that missed the mark. Proceed with asking yourself the following questions,

Are the subject lines and preheader texts enticing enough? Will I click on them if I receive them in my inbox?
Is the visual hierarchy of the email in place, or does it look too cluttered?
Does it offer a personalized experience to the subscriber?
Does the email copy offer value to the reader, or does it appear too salesy?
Does it cater to specific buyer personas and age demographic, or does it appear mass-produced with no specific target audience in mind?
Is the cadence too annoying for the subscribers leading to higher unsubscribe requests?
Are the CTAs visible, quirky, and enticing enough to get users to click on them?
Are your emails accessible to users across the entire spectrum?

Wrapping It Up

While there are a number of tools available in the market to help you conduct email audits, and you can always request colleagues for a fresh eye perspective on your campaigns, if you’d rather have experts analyze the game for you, that’s possible too! Email Uplers will not only help you analyze your existing campaigns but also deliver interactive emails from scratch attuned to your specific needs. Do drop by for more information!

Read Also:

7 Tips For Choosing The Best Digital Marketing Agency For Your Ecommerce SEO

Arnab

Arnab is a professional blogger, having an enormous interest in writing blogs and other jones of calligraphies. In terms of his professional commitments, He carries out sharing sentient blogs.

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Creating A Successful Call To Action In Your Business Emails: Here Are 5 Tips To Consider

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Importance of Creating a Successful Call to Action in Your Business Emails Email is still one of the most effective tools when it comes to business communication. It does not matter whether you are communicating with your colleagues or customers. Ensuring the right implementation of emails is crucial. Despite the rise of a plethora of messaging apps and other communication platforms, most businesses prefer emails. Moreover, when it comes to email, you need only fewer resources for optimum results. The following are some of the reasons why creating a successful call to action in your business emails is important: Email is effective because it has universal access. Moreover, they are also interoperable across a variety of platforms. Thereby, you can ensure seamless communication between stakeholders. Email is one of the fastest and most efficient ways of sending messages. Whether you want to send an email internally or externally, you will get real-time results. Moreover, with the help of emails, you can respond to customer inquiries better and faster. Hence, with this instant access to information, email has become a valuable tool for businesses. When you compare emails to other communication methods and platforms, you will find that the former is more cost-effective. Furthermore, you also do not need excessive business resources to succeed with effective communication. Email comes with high-profile security options. These include transport-layer security (TLS) and others. Hence, when you send confidential information, it remains safe and secure. Tips for Creating a Successful Call to Action in Your Business Emails The following are some of the major tips you need for creating a successful call to action in your business emails: 1. Keep It Real: To generate trust and improve the overall click-through rate, you need to keep everything real. Also, you must ensure there are not any gimmicks or excessive terms and conditions. Be very clear about what you are offering and what benefits the readers will get if they click on the button. For example, you can highlight text like there are no hidden charges, you pay what you see, and more like them. These types of text not only help you improve the call to action but also help you gain trust faster among your customers. This thing applies to every section of the email — be it the subject line, body text, or the main CTA. Also, you must ensure there is no misleading clickbait that will increase the bounce rate or unsubscribe rate. 2. Short And active: Ask your copywriter to draft every email in an active voice with very short and crisp sentences. It makes no sense to write long lines or paragraphs, and it is the main reason behind it. Many people check their emails on the go from their smartphones, and if the email is lengthy, they might skip it and save it to read later. However, as an average user receives a lot of emails a day, the probability of opening the email is very low. That’s why you should keep the email text as simple and short as possible. However, make sure it’s conveying the entire message that you want to present to the readers. You can keep the email body text within 100 – 150 words as it’s easier to read and incite users to take the desired action. 3. FOMO Works Creating a sense of urgency using the fear of missing out technique works if you implement it correctly. No one wants to miss out on great deals, especially when they need that product or service. You need to make your audience feel they will miss out on something really great if they don’t take action right now. You can specify in bold text that it’s a time-sensitive offer only, or you can run a counter on the landing page. This technique will bring a higher CTR and will make your call to action more prompt and active participation. You will find a lot of free FOMO templates to make your copy more exciting and click-worthy. 4. Use The Right Colors: This trick sounds ordinary, but it brings extraordinary returns and improves your business email's overall call to action. Pick the colors that reflect your brand, and don’t change the color theme frequently. Your readers should register a common theme so that when they open your email, it will remind them of your brand. Apart from colors, don’t overdo animations as they might load slower on some devices due to any reason. Keep the color scheme simple, attractive, and clutter-free. You can use email marketing tools and pick any premade campaigns if you are not into designing them. 5. Creativity: Smart creativity is the key when it comes to a successful call to action in your business emails. Be creative because you need to stand apart from the rest and attract your busy readers’ attraction in a limited time span. You need to understand that people’s attention span is very limited, and you need to make every aspect click-worthy without getting spammy. Instead of using a free stock image, ask your graphics team to create bespoke images that can match your custom offer and improve the CTA. Create A Successful Call To Action Now Hence, you can see that creating a successful call to action in your business emails is not very difficult. Follow these simple steps to create a successful call to action and drive more sales to your business. Email marketing is not hard, and it can drive substantial results for your business strategies. However, if you are not into emails, it’s the right time to get started and drive additional traffic and revenue to your business. Keep experimenting with different formats to check which works best for you. Read Also: Online Marketing: Selling Your Product And Services How to Integrate Email Marketing With SEO 3 Easy Ways to Grow Your Email List Best Way To Earn Passive Income In 2020: Email Marketing

Should You Consider Outsourcing Your Brand’s Marketing Campaign?

If you’re in higher management, you strive to make sure your marketing team is doing its best to market your brand and bring in leads to the sales team. Lest outsourcing becomes ponders publicity, keeping your organizational processes internally is crucial to you because you want to keep control over operations, and you want to keep costs at a decent minimum. Now you’ve realized that internalizing all of your online marketing efforts might not be working out as well as you’d imagined. Businesses that outsource marketing have specialized marketing services on their side, collaborating with them with every campaign and a new initiative to make sure it’s successful. Online marketing services are often more efficient than an in-house marketing team and, more often than not, more affordable. Systems are even created to make sure your brand still has control over activities and the reputation of the company. 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Virtual assistants, for example, combine technical expertise with marketing education or experience. These professionals work in leading organizations and have a greater understanding of the market than full-time professionals with little experience. When To Do Outsourcing? If you do not see the results you want from your in-house marketing team, then you should consider outsourcing. Your in-house team is working relentlessly with the goals set before them, but the results continue to be short of optimal. Staying on top of performance and campaign optimization isn’t easy. Often in-house teams have no time to optimize these campaigns for better performance, so they end short of hitting their goals. Evaluating the results of marketing efforts is critical to the success of a team not only in-house but for outsourced professionals as well. If it’s been a few months since your brand launched a great marketing campaign, it might be time to outsource marketing. a. Your Marketing Team Is Burned Out In marketing, there is graphic design, copywriting, SEO, website development, email marketing, lead generation, and so much more. How many professionals do you have in your team? Do you have someone assigned to each task involved in marketing, or do you have one marketing guru filling many hats? A copywriter can’t be a graphic designer and vice versa, but so many entrepreneurs expect so much from one marketing employee. One team member cannot meet the massive marketing demands in today’s market. b. You’re Always Running Out Of Time You’re planning a stellar email campaign this month, but your team ran out of time, so you reschedule it. You’re rushing to get the offer, the Facebook posts, and the blog posts out before Christmas. If you feel like you’re always running but never get anywhere, then it might mean you don’t have the necessary systems or strategies in place to run efficiently. c. You Lack Proper Strategy Getting things done might feel rewarding, but those things are time idlers instead of business generators when they are not part of an overall strategy. Posting on social or sharing a blog post is useless unless you have a purpose of reaching your goal. Sharing for the sake of staying active on social media platforms is not a real strategy. You feel the pressure of staying active online, so you ask your marketing team to ensure the social accounts are active always, but you don’t give them a genuine reason. As a business, you have income goals, but if you lack a proper strategy to meet those goals, then you might want to consider outsourcing digital marketing services. Summary That’s all about the logic behind considering outsourcing your brand’s marketing campaign. I hope the article was intriguing enough to make you understand why you should outsource the marketing campaign. The rationale is justified above along with specific situations to make your concept clear. Wanna clear any doubts? Drop your queries in the comment area below. Read Also: What You Need to Know When Outsourcing SEO How Legal Services Outsourcing Aids Law Firms and Legal Departments Balancing the Books with Outsourcing – Virtual Receptionists 9 Things Conservatives & Liberals Have in Common How To Reduce The Operating Cost of Your Business?

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Getting The Most Out Of Your Email Campaigns By Getting The Audit Right!

The Kinds of Email Marketing Audits That One Can Conduct