Email Marketing Health Check (Expert members)

Reviewing the six key areas to improve your email marketing

It's hard to plan a route from A to B if you are not clear where you are now and even harder if you're not sure exactly where B is anyway. As a consultant, I will often use an audit or benchmark as an early stage to improve email communications strategy for a company.

I created this email benchmarking spreadsheet in collaboration with Dave Chaffey, to provide a fast and systematic method of evaluating the use of email marketing within a company, to enable answering the question of where is A and B? It provides the key questions that need to be considered within your email marketing strategy, broken down into:

• 1. Objectives and value
• 2. Evaluation
• 3. Email Communications strategy
• 4. Copy and design
• 5. Deliverability and permission
• 6. Governance

The health check is aimed at Marketing Directors, Managers and Agencies involved in email marketing. It has been distilled down from a more extensive and detailed evaluation process used when consulting.

Having a preset format and set criteria provides these benefits:

• Speed. It's quick to use
• Repeatable. Allows the evaluation periodically repeated to measure improvement
• Complete. Ensures nothing is missed, as compared to using adhoc evaluation
• Focused. Identifies the areas that need work

Once complete the true value of the health check is in interpreting the results and diving deeper, answering the questions that arise. The ultimate objective is to build a roadmap plan to improve email marketing activity.

The health check can be self-run, though you might consider walking through it with a colleague, your team or an external consultant. In doing so you will find increased value as the questions asked stimulates further and more insightful conversation.

Do let us know any comments you have. Thanks!

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