Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Email Strategies: A Comprehensive Assessment Guide

In the ever-changing realm of digital marketing, email strategies find themselves at the forefront of transformative forces. Legislative shifts, industry announcements, and evolving consumer behaviors demand a critical examination of your email strategy to ensure alignment with the latest trends and best practices. With email consistently ranking as a top-performing revenue channel, a thorough assessment can unlock new avenues for growth and optimization.

What is an Email Strategy Assessment?

An email strategy assessment is a comprehensive evaluation of your organization’s email program, meticulously scrutinizing its strengths, weaknesses, and areas ripe for improvement. This assessment extends beyond design aesthetics and clickthrough performance, delving into subscription acquisition, external factors, customer journey intricacies, and deliverability nuances. This cross-functional exercise necessitates collaboration between marketing teams and IT partners, fostering a holistic understanding of the program’s effectiveness.

Components of an Email Strategy Assessment

The assessment’s primary objective is to identify organization-wide trends, opportunities, and potential threats. The findings are meticulously compiled into a comprehensive presentation, highlighting aspects that excel, areas that warrant improvement, and actionable steps to propel your email strategy forward. Key areas of focus include:

1. Design and Copy

– Evaluate design elements to ensure they effectively guide the recipient’s attention towards the call-to-action (CTA).

– Assess the number of CTAs, as excessive CTAs can diminish clickthrough rates.

– Review copy length, ensuring it’s concise yet informative, with compelling subject lines and preheaders.

– Analyze the effectiveness of CTA text by aligning it with the “I want to…” format.

– Determine the sender’s name and ensure it’s recognizable to recipients.

– Evaluate accessibility aspects of the design, including fonts, sizes, color contrast, and layout.

– Identify the suitability of the layout for different types of emails (e.g., longer scrolls for newsletters, shorter versions for nurtures or cart reminders).

– Ensure design consistency across all messaging channels and consider developing an email style guide.

– Benchmark your design against competitors or industry peers using tools like Really Good Emails.

2. Conversions

– Analyze average clickthrough rates in comparison to industry standards and email type benchmarks.

– Assess the impact of email security tool clicks on your overall strategy.

– Measure clicks and opens, taking into account the impact of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection on recipient list accuracy.

– Investigate potential reasons for declining clickthrough rates, such as the number of CTA buttons, content relevance, insufficient or excessive intro text, button placement, repetitive content, or high email volume from a single sender.

3. Deliverability

– Identify tools and resources available to gain insights into deliverability metrics.

– Determine if anyone in the organization is actively monitoring sender reputation.

– Clarify whether the organization is using a dedicated or shared IP.

– Investigate the presence of other sending systems and monitoring practices.

– Identify any practices outside of marketing that could negatively impact sender reputation.

– Assess spam complaint rates in relation to the new guidelines from Gmail and Yahoo.

– Evaluate the percentage of inactive email addresses on the list and develop a plan for managing them.

4. Data

– Understand how records are created in the marketing automation platform.

– Verify the eligibility of synced records from the CRM for marketing emails.

– Explore personalization beyond the first name and assess the reliability of CRM data for email personalization.

– Consider conducting a data landscape audit.

– Identify records in the marketing automation platform that can be safely removed based on activity, time, or employer.

5. Segmentation, Subscriptions, and Types of Sends

– Determine the current methods for acquiring subscribers and assess their effectiveness.

– Evaluate the number of opt-in options available and ensure they can be feasibly supported with content.

– Review the subscription process for compliance with recent legislation like GDPR or CPRA.

– Assess the effectiveness of public lists in attracting opt-ins.

– Identify opportune spots for opt-in captures.

– Explore the diversity of email types beyond newsletters.

– Analyze the number of unsubscribes in the past year.

6. Compliance and Legal

– Research the impact of changes in tracking technologies and legislation on your email program.

– Identify industry-specific language or storage requirements.

– Explore any other legal considerations that may influence your email strategy.

Post-Assessment Actions

The assessment results will likely yield a series of projects that need to be prioritized based on their potential impact. Actionable steps might include:

– Running an opt-in campaign and implementing an ongoing opt-in strategy.

– Revamping newsletters and subscription options.

– Creating triggered emails to reduce reliance on newsletters.

– Conducting data cleanup.

– Developing an email design and best practice guide.

– Running clickthrough rate A/B testing projects.

Conclusion

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, email strategies must adapt to legislative changes, industry trends, and shifting consumer behaviors. By conducting a comprehensive email strategy assessment, organizations can gain valuable insights into their current practices, identify areas for improvement, and develop a roadmap for optimizing their email programs to drive revenue growth and enhance customer engagement.