This how-to article covers everything you need to know about email deliverability auditing.
What is an email deliverability audit?
An email deliverability audit is a path to check whether sent emails are delivered and measure how many of them reach your recipients’ inboxes.
The effectiveness of your email campaigns depends on the deliverability of the emails sent. You need to know if your emails are opened by potential customers or if they end up in spam. A low email open rate could mean that a large number of emails sent turn out to be spam and you need to get to work and do a proper email audit.
The key to high email deliverability is a good email sender reputation, which you should maintain and review regularly. If you notice that your emails have suddenly increased and your engagement metrics such as click-through rate and response rate have dropped, it’s time to check your email reputation. Even worse, if several potential customers reply to you and say they found your email in their spam folder, it’s time to check.
Why is an email audit important?
The time and effort you put into finding leads and creating a great email campaign are very valuable. It would be a shame to spend hours creating custom email content and brainstorming for a subject line only to have it all go to waste because your potential customers won’t see it in their inbox.
Conducting an audit can help you resolve some issues affecting your email deliverability. For example, let’s say you notice that your email reputation has gone down. This may be due to several issues. Checking email blacklists, dealing with spam complaints, and checking your email list for inactive recipients are just some of the problems you can find and fix with an email deliverability audit.
Common problems found and fixed by email auditing:
- Email acquisition issues
- Poor email list hygiene
- Cause of bounced emails
- Not following privacy policies
- Misaligned team strategy (e.g. sales and marketing)
- A high number of unopened emails
- Low click-through rate
How long will an email deliverability audit take?
It depends on factors such as the size of your team and the issues that arise. Small teams can get through the fastest email deliverability audit process in a couple of days. Larger sales and marketing teams may need a couple of weeks to resolve more complex issues.
All team members must participate in creating, developing, and sending emails. This way, everyone will be in the know and the audit process will be easier to manage.
How to do an audit of your email sending reputation?
If your team sends out a lot of more complex emails to different email lists, you should consider hiring an expert to guide you through the process. Smaller teams are better off doing internal email reputation audits. This should be tedious, but relatively easy and likely to be cheaper. If you choose option number two, read on to find out what you need to know.
Here’s how to perform a thorough email deliverability check in 4 steps:
Technical Setup – Setting up your domain and email behind the scenes.
Email Reputation – Check your email reputation by viewing your bounce rate and spam complaints.
Email deliverability. Emails you send end up in your Inbox or end up in your Spam folder.
Email Content Quality: View content that directly impacts the performance of your email campaigns, as well as open, click, and response rates.
