22-Point Email Marketing Checklist For Mistake-Free Emails

Why some companies experience outstanding email marketing performance while others don’t?

Logically, it has a bit to do with experience, but mostly it has more to do with the company’s email marketing process.

The best email marketing process helps you:

• Launch high performing email marketing campaigns
• Stay focused and not miss any detail
• Maximize email open rates and conversions

Looking to boost your email marketing results and score more conversions?

Here is a 22-point email marketing checklist to support your email performance growth from A to Z.

This email marketing checklist covers:

• Email strategy and goal
• Campaign setting
• Creating email content
• Preview and testing
• Targeting and sending
• Bonus: Email autoresponder checklist

Let’s get started.

Bulk Email Marketing checklist

1. Set up your strategy and goal

Define your campaign’s goal

Having a clear objective is an essential step to any marketing strategy, and bulk email campaigns are no exception.

Your email campaign objective can be:

• Customer upsell or cross-sell
• User onboarding
• Lead nurturing
• Increase free to paid conversion
• Improve customer experience
• Build a sales pitch

Keep your email campaign limited to a single objective.

Decide on your email KPIs

Defining your email campaign KPIs is a must-do when designing your email campaigns.

Here is the 7 email marketing KPIs  that you should track:

1. Value and cost of leads per drip campaign

2. Conversion rate over time

3. End-to-end conversion rate over time

4. Time to customer conversion

5. Contact generation over time

6. Contact’s engagement level

7. Unsubscription rate over time

Segment your audience

Effective email marketing is all about proper segmentation – every marketer knows that. The better you segment your audience, the higher your ROI will be.

Segmentation is the practice of applying filters to make it easy to find a set of subscribers that have something in common.

Contact filtering can be based on:

• Age
• Specific ebook downloaders
• Paying customers
• Subscription date
• Contacts’ position
• Gender
• Geo-location
• Contacts’ engagement (Automatically added tags)
• And any other information your contacts shared with you.

Suppose you have an email database that includes more than a hundred CEOs you are interested in sending emails to for your B2B email campaigns.

You don’t need to create a separate email list for each segment. With an email list management software, you can create contact filters that allow you to target contacts based on their position.

Not only can you easily find people in your database, but you can also save them and reuse the same filter later.

You don’t have to send the same email to your whole list. You can send relevant offers based on contacts’ life-cycle stage, interest, geo-location, and more.

Segmenting contacts based on their position is one thing, imagine what else you can use it for your email marketing.

Here is a case in which we create a filter based on:

• Position (CEO)
• Active status (Active)
• Email address (Doesn’t include gmail.com)
• Subscription date (After January 1st)

All together.

Creating filters to segment your contacts is one of the best email database management practices. 

Instead of having multiple email lists, you can have one email list and use filters to segment your contacts.

2. Set up Your Email Setting & Subject Line

Set up your email setting

Your email setting is made of 4 essential elements.

1. Campaign Name: Is the name of your email campaign that would be saved inside your email marketing software.

The campaign name is only visible to you. It helps you keep your email campaigns organized and easy to find.

2. Sender Name: Is the name that you want to display in your contacts’ inbox or mobile notification when you send an email campaign.

Keep it clearly identifiable, so your contacts recognize you. It rhymes, so it’s true 😃.

3. Sender Email: It’s the email address you want to send emails from.

4. Reply Email: It refers to the email address that your contacts reply to.

Write your best email subject line

Your email content won’t matter if you don’t get your subscribers to open the email in the first place.

Spend enough time to create an attention-grabbing subject line for your email campaigns.

If still undecided, you can rely on Automizy’s free email subject line tester. It would help you decide on the best subject line to use. You might also consider using emoji in your subject line.

Writing subject lines should never be based on gut feeling. 

The Subject Line Tester in Automizy grades your subject lines based on data from over 100K campaigns.

Not only scoring, but the free subject line tester suggests you other email subject lines that would increase your email open rates.

Even the most seasoned email marketer doesn’t have that kind of experience.

Use an email subject line generator

Writing subject lines should never be based on gut feeling and best practices. You might feel positive about your own subject line, your contacts might not.

Automizy’s free email subject line generator writes you high-performing subject lines based on your email copy.

• Step 1: Copy & paste your email content.
• Step 2: Let Mizy read and analyze it.
• Step 3: Copy, like, and use the subject lines you prefer.

In 3 steps, skyrocket your email open rates.

AB test your email subject line

A/B testing your email campaigns help you get the maximum results of your existing contacts.

Use A/B testing to identify the better performing email. Identifying your best performing email drip campaign has a significant effect on your campaigns’ ROI.

A good tip to increase your email open rates is to A/B test your drip email subject line.

You send 20% of your contacts 2 different subject lines for the same email during a specific period of testing.

And the better performing subject line will be sent to the rest 80% of contacts to guarantee you reach the highest email open rate possible.

Here is how to A/B test your subject lines in email marketing software.

An A/B test measures the engagement for different subject lines, to send the best performing one to your contacts.

A key to making the ideal drip is to customize it according to your industry and business needs.

This way, you will be able to optimize it based on your target audience’s needs and behavior.

3. Create Your Email Content

Choose the content email template

Whether you’re sending a bulk email campaign or adding an email to an Automation, Automizy provides a list of pre-built email templates to make your work quicker while sending great-looking emails.

In the “Pre-made templates” on the right side select “All” and you’ll have all the templates ready to use:

The Automizy Email Templates are responsive and fully customizable. After you made some changes, you can save it and reuse it later.

Write content relevant to the audience’s interests

When writing your email content and copy always ask the following two questions:

1. So what?
2. What’s in it for me?

Ask yourself, “So what?” after finishing every sentence. For better understanding, here is an example:

“Wanted to share with you that we’ve built the most sophisticated software?”

So what? That information doesn’t help your customers or contacts in any way.

Here is a better alternative.

“We’ve been working on developing more features to save your time and help you increase your sales. Check it out here.”

Now we’ve answered the “So what?” question, and your contacts can find value in your email.

I just shared an example of an announcement email campaign because that’s when most companies talk so much about what they’ve been working on and forget about what value it adds to their contacts.

This brings us to our next question, “What’s in it for me?”

It’s what every email receivers ask when they get an email.

Put yourself in your contacts’ shoes and shape your email content based on it.

Decide on your call-to-action

This part depends on your email campaign goal.

Whether you want your contacts to:

• Read an article
• Download a PDF
• Buy a product
• Refer a friend, etc.

Reflect on your campaign goal and write your CTA copy accordingly.

To help you, refer to these 79 call-to-action examples.

Proofread and check spelling, grammar, etc

Making mistakes is something that we’re all good at. It’s a human thing.

Make sure to proofread your email content before sending it. Check the spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.

If you missed a mistake and found out about it too late. This means after sending your email, you still can fix it by sending an apology email to your subscribers.

It always depends on how severe the mistake is. It might be a spelling mistake or a broken CTA link.

Include contact details and address

Including your contact details and address reassures your subscribers and customers.

It gives them a feeling that there is a real business behind an online purchase, and by including contact details, customers can reach it for support or assistance.

Add unsubscription link to keep your emails GDPR compliant

Including an unsubscription link in your email is not only for contacts who don’t want to receive emails anymore.

It’s also to respect the law.

You should ensure a proper way for their contacts to unsubscribe, to be compliant for the EU GDPR. The unsubscribe process under GDPR needs to be clear and straightforward.

Here is your GDPR email marketing checklist.

Include the visible unsubscription link in each email where your subscriber can:

• Unsubscribe to a specific email campaign
• Unsubscribe to all of your email lists
• Contact a return email address
• Edit their contact data.

Keeping your emails GDPR compliant not only guarantees subscribers’ satisfaction but also keeps you away from paying thousands of dollars in fines.

4. Review Your Links And Design

As a part of the process, you’ll have to be meticulous with your campaign’s tiny details.

And like an accountant, create your email marketing audit checklist and dig into the following details.

Check your UTM parameter if you’re running any

Use UTM parameters for email marketing to get your Google Analytics to see what your contacts do when they reach your website.

What pages they visit or which products get the most attention.

You can use Google’s UTM parameters URL builder to build your links.

Alternatively, you can use a custom URL shortener like Rebrandly to create secure, branded links.

Given that generic short URLs often get marked as spam, using a branded link can improve your overall email deliverability and provide more detailed analytics.

You also can embed UTM parameters within the branded link so you can keep your links synced with Google Analytics.

Test your CTA and links

Before sending any email campaign, always double and triple check your CTA link and landing pages.

Sending an email to drive traffic to an unexisting website page is a massive failure of your campaign.

Preview your responsive email 

There’s nothing worse than finding out that your email looks awful on different devices.

Preview your bulk emails on desktop, mobile, and tablet. So you can see what your subscribers will.

Email preview is practical to proofread your email content and make sure everything looks clean.

Send a test email to your team

Besides email preview to see how it looks on different screens, You can also send a test email to yourself or your team to see how the email would look like in the inbox.

Just insert the emails you want to send a test to, and click on the “Send test.”

Sending a test email to your team helps you collect feedback before sending your email campaign.

5. Sending Your Email Campaign

Select the target list and apply your contact filters

Selecting your target audience is self-explanatory.

At this step of the email marketing checklist, you select the contacts  you want to send your emails to.

By segmenting your target audience with contact filters, you’ll be able to send a targeted email campaign that actually converts.

Applying targeted marketing strategies in small business email marketing could result in a significant increase in conversion.

Now that you’ve laser-targeted your contacts, it’s time to send or schedule your email campaign.

Send or schedule your email

Sending your email blast campaign at the right time could increase your email open rates. Try to send in a timezone that matches those of your contacts.

You can always choose between sending an email immediately or schedule it for a later time.

Once you’ve reviewed your email content, and you think it’s ready, it’s time to hit “Send now” or “Later.”

Automate email resend to non-openers

Increasing email open rates is the first step to boosting your email marketing ROI and generating more sales.

And that has a lot to do with your email subject line.

The subject line is the first thing that appears in your subscribers’ inbox. You’d want to make sure it is attention-grabbing.

If your email open rates are low, a lot of the blame goes to your email subject line.

For that, resending emails to non-openers is a way of having a second chance to increase your email open rates.

Make sure your new subject lines:

• Are personalized
• Generate curiosity
• Communicate urgency
• Highlight recent topics
• Or create a personal connection

Your email content won’t even matter if you don’t get your subscribers to open the email in the first place.

“Should I create a different email campaign targeting contacts who did not open my first email?”

Absolutely not.

With Automizy’s resend to non-openers feature, you can automate your campaign to be sent to non-openers with a different subject line. Without doing extra work.

Here is how it is done.

Monitor your email bounces

A bounced email is an email that is rejected by a recipient’s mail server and get bounced back to you.

In other words, when an email is bounced and couldn’t reach the intended recipient, it gets returned to the sender as a notification with the bounce reason.

Once an email gets rejected by an email server, it’s called a bounce.

The lower your bounce rate is, the better is your email deliverability.

Monitor your email bounce percentage and verify your email list to make sure that your emails are reaching your contacts.

Monitor your email campaign KPIs

Now that you’ve got your perfect email sent, the work is not done yet.

I recommend you take some time to study whether you achieved your campaign goal and reached your planned KPIs.

Every email you send is a little step toward a more successful business.

Automizy does provide you with an email marketing dashboard to display your email campaign results.

We show you the analytics you need to make that little step be the key to your success.

• Email performance metrics
• Campaign analytics
• Automation analytics
• Form analytics

Spending time with your email analytics helps you get rid of email guesswork and base your upcoming email campaigns on data.

Lastly, if you see your campaign’s goal achieved, congrats, you have a reason to crack open a cold one at the office.

Bonus: Email Autoresponders checklist

Autoresponder is a type of email that is automatically sent to new contacts who opt-in your email list.

Here is an autoresponder email marketing campaign checklist on how to automate your email autoresponders and reach out to contacts as soon as they subscribe.

1. Connect your email list to your lead acquisition

Depending on how you manage your email lists, you can have one email list where you keep all contacts. Or else, you can create a separate opt-in email list for your new user registrations.

Users’ registration takes place on your:

• Website forms
• Landing pages
• Website popup
• CRM system
• Social media, etc.

It depends whether you use only one channel or more.

You can integrate all your user acquisition channels to Automizy so you can get rid of the hustle of importing contacts manually and exporting and importing excel sheets.

Your solution to instant, hustle-free contact sync between your CRM tool and email marketing automation.

Just in case you manage a small business email marketing, and you do not use any CRM or whatsoever.

You can simply connect the existing forms on your web page to Automizy and have your contacts synced from your website forms to your email list.

Open your Automizy account and go to “Manage contacts,” then click on “Signup forms” and click on: “Connect From Website.“

This way, you can create an opt-in email list for your new users that you want to send confirmation emails to.

2. Set up your autoresponders

Set up your autoresponder trigger by selecting one of these options in Automizy:

For a basic subscription confirmation email autoresponder, you can trigger your emails to be sent when a new contact gets added to an email list.

Now that you’ve selected your trigger for your new email subscribers, you have to craft your autoresponder messages that you want to send.

You can add your autoresponder emails into Automizy real quick, like the following example demonstrates.

One email doesn’t put your new subscribers into your email sales funnel.

Consider making your autoresponders a drip email sequence to welcome new subscribers, nurture them, and make the sale.

Email autoresponders warm your lead starting at the moment when they’re first interested in your contact.

Not automating your email autoresponders can make your subscribers lose interest in you.

Because if a contact subscribes now and you send them the first email after 3 weeks, probably they’ve already forgotten about you and why they’ve subscribed to your email list.

Conclusion

I think you just ran out of excuses for why some email campaigns underperform.

The step-by-step email marketing checklist helps you not to miss any detail and maximize your email marketing performance.

Going to follow our checklist? Once done, share with us your campaign results and be on our future email marketing case study.