An email marketing audit can help you identify areas for improvement, whether you are new to email marketing or an experienced professional.
Imagine your email inbox was a physical mailbox – a metal box on top of a wooden post outside your office.
There is no doubt that the mailbox is overflowing, just like our inboxes. This visual isn’t too far-fetched, as every day, 306 billion emails are sent. BILLION–with a B! This number will reach 361 billion by 2024.
This number may scream opportunity to some financial marketers, but makes other financial firms despise the idea of engaging in email marketing.
Although our advice is to resist the urge to upend your inbox – email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach and engage your audience.
Litmus’ 2021 State of Email Report showed 79% of respondents consider email to their top three marketing channels.
Meaning marketers are still cutting through the clutter, despite the volume of emails sent every day to your consumers.
Refresh your email marketing efforts with an audit
Do you feel your emails are getting lost in the clutter?
Are you looking for ways to improve your financial firm’s email marketing performance?
An email audit is the best place to start. An audit allows you to see the whole picture of your email program.
Providing a 360-degree view of your email program, instead of losing in single-send statistics and open rates.
An audit can reveal deliverability problems, areas for content improvement, and list clean-up possibilities, as well as any data gaps.
We guarantee that even if your emails are performing well, you still have room for improvement.
Let’s look at 7 components you need to analyse when performing an email audit for your firm.
1. Review your audience
Think about your financial organisation’s target audience.
Are you currently targeting this audience with your email campaigns?
If so, great, you should be.
Plan out your target audience and review it regularly. It is beneficial to note your target audiences’ job titles, seniority level, and industries.
Personas are another great way to create your ideal client. Read more about Personas here.
Documenting and understanding who you want to target with email marketing will in turn help ensure your campaigns are aligned to that same audience.
When you know who you’re speaking to, your messaging is more likely to resonate with them.
2. Email infrastructure
Next, think about the email platform you are using. Here are some of our favourite email marketing platforms:
- Entry – Mailchimp
- Middle – Active Campaign
- Top End – Hubspot
You shouldn’t pay too much or too little on your platform. It should be the right size and scale to allow execution.
Compare the above platforms to determine which fits in the sweet spot.
Find one that is the right price, offers the features you require, and addresses your challenges.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Is this platform equipped with the right features?
- Is the system worth the price?
- What are the biggest challenges facing this platform?
3. List quality
Your campaigns’ success depends on the quality and size of your email marketing lists.
Consider the last time your email list was cleaned. Regular list cleaning impacts campaign performance.
Cleaning up and maintaining an email subscriber list improves delivery and ensures that the people interested in your content receive it.
Segmentation is the final aspect of a quality list. This is a crucial step in ensuring you send the right message at the right time to the right subscriber.
Segmented emails increase readers’ likelihood of clicking on a hyperlink by 50%.
Segmenting your audience can be done based on their industry, seniority or actions.
You can then send unique content to any segment of your audience.
4. Review your content
Your emails should reflect the needs of subscribers and how you can solve them. List the content you are currently sharing in your email, and what more you could be doing.
Some examples of content types are:
- Blog articles
- Research
- Reports
- Educational resources
- Case studies/Testimonials
- Company news
Check your email analytics to see which content types get the most clicks.
This is a good indicator of what your audience likes the most, and obviously – do more of it!
5. Best and worst performers
While you are in your analytics, look at the open rates for the past six months to one year.
What was your top- and bottom-performing email?
You can compare things such as the subject lines, year, click-through rate, and content. Consider why your most successful email performed well.
You might also wonder why your worst-performing emails didn’t get much response.
This will help you improve your future campaigns.
To see if your emails have a positive effect on engagement and open rates, test out what you discover.
6. Timing
As part of an email audit, you should record the day and time you sent emails.
Note the details of different email types that you send on different days if they are part of your email audit.
Find out if there is a correlation between performance and send day(s).
Are Mondays more popular than Tuesdays?
Did your worst-performing email always go out on Fridays?
Sometimes, additional testing may be required to determine the best send days and times.
It’s always best to start with industry best practices as a starting point.
7. Email Automation
If you’re not yet automating your email sequences, why not?!
The best email automations reduce the workload of your marketing team and increase the value for your subscribers.
Email automations provide benefits including: time saving, lead generation, and higher ROI.
Automations can also reduce stress and help you establish consistency.
Creating different workflows for different areas of your client journey is key.
Sometimes, being too close to a project can lead to blinkers.
It can be difficult to see the bigger picture of your email marketing strategy from afar, because you are so focused on the day-to-day. We can help you gain a new perspective and fresh eyes, helping challenge you with outside opinions.
Email Marketing for financial advisers
Is it time to review your email marketing strategy? Schedule your free email marketing audit
