by Kim Houlahan – e-Marketing Strategist

“Smell the Coffee” is just one of many expressions that help us understand the importance of taking a step back, to stop everything, and take a good look at our state of affairs. It’s called taking stock of what you’re doing. When it comes to email, it’s called an “email audit”. I’ve pulled together many of our favourite expressions to stress the importance of performing regular email audits.

I’m suggesting you take up the gauntlet, keep the big cheese at bay, quit giving lip service to the email audit, pull your weight and get started on your email marketing audit. One of the greatest strengths of email marketing is measurability! Dig out those stats and look at your open rates, click throughs, bounces and list growth over the last few months.

How often should I look at my email metrics?
You don’t have to pay through the nose for an audit. And you don’t have to read between the lines of this article to know what to do. Don’t wait until the cows come home or once in a blue moon to review the email metrics from your last 3-6 months of broadcasts. Our rule of thumb is to review these metrics after every broadcast, with a more in-depth review every three months. There is a method in our madness and we’re not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, but the metrics that come from each email broadcast are solid gold for marketers.

Don’t be fooled, ignorance is not bliss when it comes to keeping in touch with your metrics. Declining open rates may be a sign of reader fatigue – is your content still fresh and relevant to your readers? Are you broadcasting too frequently? Your click-through statistics impart the lion’s share of the information. Are your click-throughs making your blood boil? Perhaps it’s time to test new content and ditch the links that just don’t count!

Is no news good news? Not when it comes to email statistics. Some may call it navel gazing, but we know that the information in the email reports can save your bacon when you’re trying to figure out how to improve the content, frequency and calls to action in your email campaigns.

I’m not pulling your leg when I tell you that auditing your email content and metrics on a regular basis is important. If you’re results are run of the mill, you should get on the ball and make changes to improve your email initiatives – put your nose to the grindstone, put your thinking cap on, pull out all the stops, take the bull by the horns to turn the tables, make adjustments to your content, design and key messages, and watch your results take an about face.

The writing is on the wall, or, in the case of email, in the metrics. If you feel your metrics reports are “all Greek to you” than you should leave no stone unturned in your quest to find someone, like cardcommunications, to help you mine the gold nuggets of information buried in your email metrics.

A picture paints a thousand words, but are your pictures effective in your email campaign? You don’t have to start from scratch to get the ball rolling on improving your email campaigns. The metrics will also give you the seal of approval on what you are doing right! There are pros and cons to measuring your email efforts. The metrics tell you what you are doing right too! If it ain’t broke, no need to fix it!

There’s no time like today to start your email audit!
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, your email initiatives can improve with a simple, regular audit. Don’t keep your head in the sand on this issue. You’ll be head over heels that your email campaigns have not gone to the dogs because you paid attention to your metrics.

You can have an email audit done on a shoestring budget, on the spur of the moment, out of the blue, and it will pan out because you’ll be over the moon and the powers that be will be pleased as punch that you have outlined the pros and cons of regular email audit procedures.

In a nutshell, does this mean you need to start to beaver away (we Canadians do that best) to see the big picture, push the envelope, pull strings, and separate the wheat from the chaff? That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question!

Rome was not built in a day. You don’t need to jump the gun and go back to the drawing board but don’t take a laissez-faire attitude and you’ll have the last laugh.

If you don’t feel you have the Midas touch with your email campaigns and it feels like you’re looking for a needle in a haystack when you search your metrics for answers, nip it in the bud and make no bones about it, call us and we can help you take stock of your email efforts. We won’t play fast and loose with your audit.

The ball is in your court now. I know I have the gift of the gab and you have your work cut out for you, but we’ll make quick work of your email audit – we work like a house on fire! We see the light, talk the hind legs off a donkey, have a vested interest in your business (warts and all) and we wait with baited breath for your call.

It will be a red letter day when your email audit results help you live the life of Riley, lock stock and barrel. When the chips are down and you feel your email efforts are willy nilly, and great results seem so near yet so far, remember, it’s a whole new ball game when you’re marketing efforts are in the limelight and you have so many irons in the fire. Don’t miss the bus on the opportunity to throw your hat in the ring, put the cart before the horse, join the rat race, and venture off the beaten track.

Ours is not to reason why…your email campaigns will pan out and that’s par for the course. Mind your metrics and it’s in the bag.

Need help with your audit? I’d be pleased as punch if you called us at
613-592-7243 or email us and get your email marketing tuned up for top performance!

Thank you to a cool “expressions” website that I referred to while writing this!

About cardcommunications:
As an innovative e-marketing outsource solution, cardcommunications helps businesses deepen customer relationships, influence client behaviour, build brand and boost revenue. These benefits are achieved though a wide range of e-marketing programs including e-newsletters, e-promotions, and e-surveys - all built through a combination of permission-based strategies and best practices. Serving local and national clients in government, education, high tech and retail sectors, the reach of cardcommunications is broad.