Summary
Effectively presenting email marketing audit findings and evaluating program maturity requires a comprehensive approach that balances positive and negative feedback, provides actionable recommendations, and clearly communicates the program's current state and path to advancement. Experts emphasize the importance of structuring findings clearly, often using visual aids and multi-stage maturity models, and ensuring recommendations are linked to business value. A key aspect is understanding the business context and focusing on improving core elements like deliverability, list hygiene, content relevance, and the adoption of advanced automation and personalization features.
Key findings
- Comprehensive Audit Scope: An effective email audit checks and reports on all aspects, both good and bad, often utilizing a clear signaling system like green, yellow, and red to indicate performance or risk levels.
- Structured Presentation for Stakeholders: Audit findings should be presented with a concise executive summary, detailed analysis backed by data, and prioritized, actionable recommendations tailored for key stakeholders, linking directly to business goals and potential ROI.
- Multi-Dimensional Program Maturity: Evaluating email program maturity involves assessing key areas like subscriber acquisition, segmentation, personalization, automation, and performance metrics, looking for the adoption and optimization of advanced capabilities beyond basic email blasts.
- Risk Analysis and Growth Planning: A thorough risk analysis should identify current practices, propose better alternatives, outline associated costs and risks, and acknowledge existing strengths. This analysis also considers a company's stage of email growth, anticipating future issues and growth considerations.
- Deliverability as a Core Maturity Aspect: Presenting deliverability audit findings requires clear data points on metrics like bounce rates and spam complaints. These findings must include specific technical and strategic recommendations, as improving inbox placement is a critical indicator of overall program maturity.
Key considerations
- Understand Business Context: Before evaluating program maturity, understand the business model, how email is currently used, and how it is desired to be used, focusing on whether an email program genuinely adds value to the company.
- Balance Positive and Negative Feedback: When presenting audit findings, include both positive and negative points. Leading with compliments or highlighting current successes can make negative feedback more digestible and prevent senior management from feeling overwhelmed, often referred to as the 'shit sandwich' approach.
- Focus on Actionable Recommendations: Audit findings should lead to clear, actionable recommendations. Prioritize issues based on their potential business impact and quantify potential ROI where possible. Recommendations should cover areas like list health, content, deliverability, data quality, and automation.
- Use Visual Aids and Clear Structure: Present findings in a digestible format for stakeholders, using visual aids such as scorecards, traffic light systems (red, yellow, green), or SWOT analyses to indicate maturity levels and highlight key takeaways. Organize findings by categories like audience, content, design, deliverability, and automation.
- Assess Program Health Metrics: Evaluate program health by monitoring key metrics like bounce rates, spam complaints, engagement (opens, clicks), list hygiene, sender reputation, and proper sending infrastructure (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). A healthy program exhibits low complaint and bounce rates with strong engagement.
- Map Current State to Desired Maturity: For maturity evaluation, map the current state of the email program against a multi-stage model (e.g., foundational to leading) across dimensions such as strategy, data, and personalization. This helps identify gaps and outline a clear path for advancement, leveraging advanced capabilities like sophisticated segmentation and complex automation.
What email marketers say
12 marketer opinions
To effectively present email marketing audit findings and assess program maturity, it is crucial to deliver insights that are both comprehensive and actionable. Experts advocate for a balanced approach that highlights both positive aspects and areas needing improvement, often suggesting a complimentary opening to soften critical feedback. The presentation should be highly structured, leveraging visual aids like scorecards or traffic light systems to clearly communicate current status and potential impact. Evaluating maturity involves using multi-stage models to map the program's current state against ideal advanced capabilities, thereby outlining a clear pathway for strategic growth and optimization.
Key opinions
- Identified Strengths and Weaknesses: An effective audit identifies both positive and negative aspects of an email program, often using a clear signal system like green, yellow, or red to denote performance and areas for improvement.
- Program Maturity Stages: Email programs can be evaluated across multi-stage maturity models, revealing their current state regarding strategy, data utilization, personalization, and advanced capabilities like sophisticated segmentation and complex automation workflows.
- High-Impact Improvement Areas: Audits consistently reveal opportunities for improvement across areas such as list health, content relevance, deliverability, and data quality, where enhancements can significantly impact ROI.
- Advanced Capability Gaps: A common finding is the gap between basic email blasts and advanced capabilities like hyper-personalization, rigorous testing, and sophisticated automation, indicating areas for growth towards a more mature program.
Key considerations
- Balanced and Positive Framing: Present audit findings by including both positive and negative points, with experts recommending opening with a compliment or highlighting successes to make negative feedback more digestible for stakeholders.
- Structured and Visual Presentation: Employ a clear, structured approach for presenting findings, incorporating a concise executive summary, detailed data analysis, and visual aids like scorecards, traffic light systems, or SWOT analyses to simplify complex information.
- Actionable and ROI-Driven Recommendations: Focus on providing prioritized, actionable recommendations that directly link to business goals, quantify potential ROI, and offer a clear path for phased improvements across all audited areas.
- Holistic Maturity Evaluation: Assess program maturity by using a multi-dimensional framework that maps the current state of the email program against established stages, identifying specific areas for advancement and the adoption of more sophisticated strategies.
- Stakeholder-Centric Communication: Tailor the presentation to the audience, ensuring findings are in a digestible format, focusing on key takeaways, and emphasizing how recommendations will drive overall program value and improvement.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Email Geeks explains the importance of including both positive and negative points when presenting email audit findings, suggesting that only flagging negatives can make it seem impossible to senior management and referencing the 'shit sandwich' concept.
8 Mar 2025 - Email Geeks
Marketer view
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that as a consultant, it's essential to open with a compliment when presenting audit findings, whether about content, data quality, or styling.
1 Jan 2024 - Email Geeks
What the experts say
2 expert opinions
Effectively presenting email marketing audit findings and evaluating program maturity requires a deep dive into the underlying health and strategic alignment of the email program. Experts advocate for a comprehensive risk analysis, identifying current practices, proposing better alternatives, and outlining associated costs. A key part of evaluation is understanding the core business model to ensure email activities genuinely add value. Program health, a critical component of maturity, is assessed through monitoring deliverability and engagement metrics, maintaining list hygiene, validating technical infrastructure like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and ensuring content relevance and ethical subscriber acquisition practices.
Key opinions
- Comprehensive Risk Analysis: In-depth risk analysis reveals current email practices, proposes strategic alternatives, and outlines potential costs and risks, while also highlighting areas of existing strength.
- Program Health Indicators: Evaluating email program health, a key aspect of maturity, involves assessing metrics like bounce and complaint rates, engagement (opens, clicks), list hygiene, and proper sending infrastructure (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
- Maturity Tied to Business Value: A program's maturity is fundamentally evaluated by understanding the business model and email's role, specifically how it currently contributes and can contribute value to the company's objectives.
- Strong Foundational Practices: A healthy and mature email program consistently demonstrates low bounce and complaint rates, strong engagement, relevant content, and adherence to ethical subscriber acquisition methods.
Key considerations
- Deeply Understand Business Context: Thoroughly understand the business model and how email is currently used and desired to be used, specifically questioning whether starting or expanding an email program will bring genuine value to the company.
- Conduct In-depth Risk Analysis: Perform a detailed risk analysis that identifies existing email practices, suggests improved alternatives, outlines associated costs and risks, and acknowledges current strengths.
- Monitor Core Program Health Metrics: Regularly monitor key program health metrics including bounce rates, complaint rates, and engagement metrics such as opens and clicks.
- Prioritize List Hygiene and Infrastructure: Maintain rigorous list hygiene practices and ensure the proper setup and ongoing health of sending infrastructure, including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records.
- Evaluate Content Relevance and Acquisition Ethics: Assess the relevance and targeting of email content, along with the ethical methods used for subscriber acquisition, as these are critical components of a healthy email program.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks explains her approach to in-depth risk analysis, which includes identifying current practices, suggesting better alternatives, outlining costs and risks, and highlighting what clients are doing well. She also touches on a company's current stage of email growth, noting potential future issues and considerations for growth. When evaluating a company's email program maturity, she focuses on understanding the business model and how email is currently used and desired to be used, specifically questioning whether starting an email program will bring value to the company.
30 Jan 2022 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that evaluating email program health, which is key to program maturity, involves assessing several metrics and practices. These include monitoring bounce and complaint rates, analyzing engagement metrics like opens and clicks, maintaining list hygiene, ensuring proper sending infrastructure (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), evaluating content relevance and targeting, and using ethical subscriber acquisition methods. A healthy program will show low bounce and complaint rates, good engagement, and strong foundational practices.
25 Jan 2022 - Word to the Wise
What the documentation says
4 technical articles
Effectively presenting email marketing audit findings and evaluating program maturity requires a structured approach that categorizes insights, focuses on actionable next steps, and deeply assesses key program areas. Experts emphasize organizing findings by specific categories like audience or deliverability and prioritizing actionable recommendations. Evaluating maturity involves a comprehensive review of elements such as subscriber acquisition, segmentation, and automation, while also identifying opportunities to adopt and optimize advanced features like behavioral triggers and sophisticated analytics. Crucially, deliverability audit findings must include clear data points and specific technical or strategic recommendations, as improving inbox placement is a core indicator of a mature email program.
Key findings
- Categorized Findings Drive Action: Organizing audit findings into distinct categories, such as audience, content, design, deliverability, and automation, streamlines the identification of actionable insights and next steps for program enhancement.
- Maturity Spans Key Program Facets: Assessing email marketing program maturity involves evaluating critical areas, including subscriber acquisition, segmentation, personalization, automation, and performance metrics, to identify improvement opportunities and guide the program's advancement.
- Advanced Feature Adoption Signals Maturity: An effective audit often reveals opportunities to leverage advanced features like behavioral triggers, sophisticated segmentation, and comprehensive analytics, with program maturity being assessed by the adoption and optimization of these capabilities.
- Deliverability Data is Foundational: Presenting deliverability audit findings with clear data points on metrics such as bounce rates, spam complaints, and sender reputation is crucial, as specific technical and strategic recommendations in this area are fundamental to overall program maturity.
Key considerations
- Organize Audit Findings by Category: Structure audit findings using specific categories like audience, content, design, deliverability, and automation to provide a clear and actionable overview.
- Prioritize Actionable Insights: Ensure the presentation of findings emphasizes actionable insights and outlines clear next steps to effectively guide program development and maturity.
- Evaluate Core Maturity Areas: Assess program maturity by evaluating key areas such as subscriber acquisition, segmentation, personalization, automation, and overall performance metrics to pinpoint existing gaps.
- Leverage Advanced Capabilities: Consider how the program can adopt and optimize advanced features, including behavioral triggers, sophisticated segmentation, and comprehensive analytics, to enhance performance.
- Provide Specific Deliverability Recommendations: When presenting deliverability findings, include clear data points on metrics like bounce rates and spam complaints, along with specific technical and strategic recommendations for improving inbox placement.
Technical article
Documentation from Mailchimp explains that organizing audit findings by specific categories like audience, content, design, deliverability, and automation is crucial. The presentation should focus on actionable insights and clear next steps to foster program development and maturity.
14 Apr 2024 - Mailchimp
Technical article
Documentation from Salesforce Trailhead explains that assessing email marketing program maturity involves evaluating key areas such as subscriber acquisition, segmentation, personalization, automation, and performance metrics. The goal is to identify gaps and areas for improvement, guiding the program towards a more advanced state.
19 Jun 2022 - Salesforce
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