An email marketing map audit is the process of evaluating a marketing program’s structure, content, and performance to determine what’s working and what needs to be changed to improve results.
Email marketing is one of the most successful digital marketing strategies there is, and with good reason. Research shows that emails get opened more often than other types of marketing communications, such as text messages and push notifications.
However, just because something is digital doesn’t mean it’s easy to plan, execute, and measure. One of the biggest challenges of an email marketing campaign is maintaining track of its performance over time.
Many companies and marketing agencies operate in a siloed fashion, with isolated groups of individuals focusing on specific aspects of a marketing plan, such as social media or email marketing. While each group may have their own ideas about what works and what doesn’t, the results of the campaign as a whole often times gets overlooked.
This can lead to a situation where, months after the fact, key performance indicators (KPIs) for the email marketing campaign are still not known, or even guessed at. When that happens, it means the person responsible for the campaign cannot claim credit for its success or failure. Instead, they’ll have to settle for a “we did our best” approach, attributing the results to luck or chance rather than skill and planning.
To solve this problem, many marketing departments, businesses, and organizations have turned to email marketing map audits, which help companies find the sweet spot between strategy and execution, and give marketers full visibility into each stage of the campaign’s progress.
Why An Email Marketing Map Audit Is Important
An email marketing map audit can help you find the sweet spot between strategy and execution in your email marketing campaign, by providing you with a clear picture of how all the pieces fit together. Before you begin your digital marketing journey, it’s important to ask yourself, “What am I trying to achieve? What are my objectives?”
For example, let’s say you’re a small business owner who has decided to try email marketing to generate more sales. To achieve that goal, you’ll need to do a considerable amount of research, and pull together a list of email marketing benchmarks, including email engagement and open rates, to determine whether your strategy is working or needs to be changed.
An email marketing map audit can help you find areas of strength and weakness, giving you a good idea of what you’re doing right, and what you could do more of, to improve results. It’s also important to remember that, although you can use isolated tactics, such as social media or search engine optimization (SEO), to grow your business, at the end of the day, you’ll always need an email marketing strategy.
How To Conduct An Email Marketing Map Audit
The first step in the process of conducting an email marketing map audit is to identify which parts of the program you’ll need to track, measure, and report on, and which you can safely ignore, for the moment.
The first thing you’ll need to do is set up automated email receipts for all purchases, the equivalent of a purchase order system, which tracks all the products and services you send out, including digital subscriptions, email marketing, and more.
Next, you’ll want to look at the number of email opens, bounces, and click-throughs for each campaign, as well as the length of time it takes for subscribers to open, click through, and engage with your content, to determine whether or not your email marketing strategy is working.
After you’ve established the baseline, you can then dive into deeper analysis, looking at the quality of the content, the design of the email, and the performance of each individual campaign, to find the cause of the problems, and propose solutions, if any.
To get started, simply create a new dashboard, and from there you can choose an email marketing vendor, or agency, to carry out the analysis. At this point, you’re ready to begin mapping out your strategy and creating a plan of action, to take your business to the next level.