What Is A Deliverability Audit?

When you hear the word ‘audit’ what do you think of?

Before I got into the email space, I thought of the IRS. Fortunately, there are other audits out there that aren’t as scary, such as an Email Deliverability Audit.

I have learned there are many businesses that are completely unaware that they have deliverability issues. In fact, most marketers aren’t totally sure what the word “deliverability” means. Some are just not educated on the subject, and others are afraid to really get to know how their email program is performing. Ignoring deliverability issues within your email program isn’t an option if the goal of the program is to drive revenue. You cannot begin making improvements if you don’t know what’s going wrong. Because of this, an email deliverability audit is a great place to start uncovering areas that can be bolstered to improve your program’s ROI.

When an email is “delivered,” it means that it made it to the intended recipient. “Deliverability” is the measure of how many emails make it into the inbox, not how many emails make it to the intended recipient.

So, your email was delivered. That’s great. But where was it delivered? The promotions tab? The junk folder? The spam folder? If it wasn’t delivered to the inbox, there’s a reason, and we can help you identify why. The word “audit” is defined as an official inspection of an individual’s or organization’s accounts, typically by an independent body, and in this case, it’s your email program.

A deliverability audit takes time. It’s in-depth. It’s thorough, and it takes a lot of analysis.

During the course of an audit we take a look at the following areas of your email:

• Current Data Review – review of the internal data logs to review bounce log file summary.
• Seed List Testing – examine and test content, reputation, and consistency of email sends to a list of seeds at the major ISPs.
• Infrastructure – examine IP address structure, subdomains, volume throttling, RFC compliance, and authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
• Content & Design – examine website and email content consistency, email client rendering, and spam assassin testing.
• Reputation – various public and private blacklists, spam trap data sources, domain registration, and web reputation.
• Content Analysis – images, links, HTML, text.
• Data Management – data collection and hygiene, feedback loop, unsubscribe management, and bounce management.
• Education – detail ISP best practices, deliverability tips, and upcoming landscape changes.

Once the deliverability data is compiled, sorted and organized, it is then put into a presentation and shared with you. In addition, we walk you through the discoveries, dissecting the details of the report so you can understand its findings. We want to help resolve any deliverability issues and also help you understand why those problems are occurring. We implement email best practices and help you develop a different approach to keep your email program operating at the highest level.

To learn more about deliverability or to set up a deliverability audit for your email program, drop us a line! We’ll be happy to discuss it in detail with you.