7 things to consider when conducting an audit of your email marketing program

As 2024 draws to a close, hopefully your team has some time to reflect on what worked this year and where your marketing strategy has room to grow.

As an email strategist and designer at Spark Bridge Digital, I conduct audits for brands all year long to help them scale. Understanding key email marketing metrics—and the problems behind a lagging metric—is critical to leveling up your email marketing efforts.

Here’s what I look for when conducting an email audit:

1. An average campaign open rate of 35% or higher

Campaign performance is the most reliable messenger of engagement and deliverability issues, so it’s always the first metric I look for when conducting an audit. While open rates have been unreliable since iOS 15, they can still give you insight into how well your segmentation and deliverability are working.

Ideally, I like to see an open rate well above 35%. But if your open rate is lower than 35%, your brand probably has segmentation and deliverability problems—and potentially content and design issues as well.

A low open rate prompts us to look at segmentation and deliverability and ask some specific questions.

Reworking your segmentation and deliverability strategies usually yields significant results, not only for campaigns, but for overall performance.

Open rate tip: for automated flows, you’ll want your open rates to hover around or above 50%, with the exception of your sunset flow, which will always have low open rates.

2. An average campaign click rate of 1% or higher

Click rate tends to speak to how well a brand’s content is performing. If a brand’s click rate is very low, there’s a good chance that the issue is segmentation, similar to a low open rate.

But if segmentation is in good shape, the problem may be the design of the templates you’re using or content that isn’t resonating.

When focusing on email design to improve click rate, we look at 4 key areas:

1. We make sure the design is streamlined throughout the customer journey and that there are no clashing aesthetics.
2. We want the design to look elevated and optimized for click rate. This means the font size and any text within images are readable, modules stack properly on mobile, and links are correctly spaced and clearly visible.
3. We analyze competitors’ designs and formatting to see how your designs compare.
4. Segmentation plays a big role in click rate, so we analyze which content went out to certain groups to understand where there is room for improvement.

Typically, a brand may overhaul their templates and even rethink the content they share with subscribers. Both of these things can significantly improve campaign click rates.

3. Soft and hard bounce rates of 0.4% or lower on campaigns + flows

The Klaviyo deliverability tab is a great tool for anyone new to conducting an audit—it gives me an accurate reading of both soft bounces and hard bounces. If a spam rating is high for a certain campaign (or an automated flow), we go through and segment out everyone who has hard bounced in the last 30 days.

“Bounces can be a strong signal indicating a potential deliverability or sending reputation issue,” says Ryan Steen, senior deliverability strategist at Klaviyo. “Once a major inbox provider starts to bounce your email campaigns, they are likely trying to get your attention. Most inbox providers will contain additional information that will explain the reasoning behind the bounce in more detail.”

Bounces can also be a symptom of bot sign-ups, which are a far more common issue that many brands want to admit. The first thing you want to do is figure out where they’re coming from. Often, email addresses you collect through an integration end up being bots, even though they look real.

But don’t worry, there’s a simple fix: install a Captcha test to weed out bot sign-ups. Many brands turn off double opt-in because they don’t want to add an extra hurdle to the sign-up process, but it’s a best practice for a reason: it’ll save you from deliverability problems down the road.

And of course, bounces can be another reason to take a look at your segmentation strategy. Some good questions to ask yourself if your bounce rates are high are:

• What’s the intention behind each segment?
• What action do we hope this group will take?
• Are segments getting what they need at each point of the customer journey?

These questions are important to ask. Frequently, I’ll see a brand with a segment of lapsed purchasers who aren’t getting a specific win-back email, or a nurture-based email going to new subscribers, but the email doesn’t include an offer.

Revisiting your customer journey can also help improve your email marketing strategy.

Bounce rate tip: Refer to the benchmarks tab in Klaviyo to see how your bounce rates stack up to your peers.

4. Unsubscribe rates across campaigns + flows around 1% or lower

Although unsubscribes from your list aren’t ideal, they can actually be a good thing. I’d rather see your list clean itself than subscribers reporting your brand as spam or hard bouncing.

But if you start to see your unsubscribe rate grow higher and higher, it’s a good time to dig into the customer journey. What emails were subscribers getting that led up to their decision to unsubscribe?

I’ve seen multiple accounts where the lack of Smart Sending and proper filters in flows made it so that one subscriber got 8 emails in a single day—it’s no wonder why people in that situation unsubscribe. Once you understand what’s going wrong in your customer journey, you can work on a more personalized approach.

“The key to strong retention with subscribers is to set proper expectations as to what type of content they will be receiving and how frequently they should expect emails, and reinforcing that those emails will have value to them if they remain subscribed and engaged,” says Steen. “A healthy email list is not always about constant growth—keeping your current subscribers happy can also be a very wise strategy.”

5. 20–30% average attributed revenue from email campaigns + flows

30% is the average attributed revenue from email that I like to see. That typically means that an account’s overall sending strategy is consistently moving the needle for their brand. But if the rate is even 20%, that’s a great starting point.

Anything below 20% leads me to look at a client’s overall marketing strategy. This could point to a lack of consistent campaign sending, or it could indicate the need for more strategic flow builds. Either way, a brand in this position needs a stronger strategic approach to their email marketing.

On the flip side of that, a very high average attributed revenue from email percentage, like 60–70%, is actually a red flag. Ideally, sales should close faster outside of your email journey.

Brands with too-high average attributed revenue from email should look at their:

• Sales acquisition strategy: Things like Google Search, paid ads, and influencer marketing should also be driving your revenue.
• Reporting insights: Reviewing the reporting of other programs can provide more detail on what effect email is having in your performance.

6. List growth on a healthy incline of at least 1% a month

The basic questions around list growth are:

• Are we gaining more subscribers than we’re losing each month?
• Are we on a healthy incline of around 1% growth each month?
• Are there issues with unsubscribes or growth that doesn’t collect leads?
• Is there room to optimize our pop-ups?

The solution to most list growth problems is to A/B test your pop-ups. Once you put that performance under a microscope, you can usually see where to optimize the sign-up experience.

Email audit pro tip: An in-depth audit of your marketing program usually means taking a pretty serious look at the on-site experience your shoppers get as well. Many times, the issue behind lagging list growth is actually low traffic to your website. Re-strategizing your paid ads or social ads may help you correct a list growth problem.

7. The automated flow experience

You can learn a lot about your subscribers by pretending to be one for a few days. When figuring out what to improve about a brand’s automated flows, I sample a population. I look into what the last 10 people who’ve entered a flow have gotten in their inbox.

So often, I find missteps in this process. Sometimes a recipient is getting too many emails—a welcome series alongside a post-purchase flow, and maybe some browse abandonment or cart abandonment emails as well. It’s imperative that you have mechanisms in place to pause a certain automated flow once someone makes a purchase.

I always check on a brand’s trigger filters, too, as sometimes filters are accidentally set up that keep out viable buyers.

Often, whichever flows a brand has set up may be working well, but they’re not enough. Looking at the flow experience from the perspective of a subscriber allows me to recommend a few more—for example, a segment of people who may buy something seasonally, or a flow for buyers of children’s clothes to send apparel a size up in the next 6 months.

Auditing your email marketing program: no small task

A solid marketing agency will look at your flows bi-weekly for reporting and monthly for a quick audit. So, while there’s plenty you can do at the end of the year to set your brand up for success the next year, it can be worth your while to schedule regular auditing during the year.