Email list dies a slow but steady death if action isn’t taken from time to time. For most of the companies, fifty percent of their subscribers leave them every year. Everyone uses their click, conversion and open rates in order to measure their email program’s success. But they fail to measure the size of their and quality of their email list. Email list hurdle rate is the new metric to be considered, along with the other old ones, in order to keep the list growing.

The email list hurdle rate determines the loss rate from the email list which needs to be overcome for the list to grow. It gives the exact number of new subscribers to be attracted in order to replace the old ones which have either left the list. The other stumbling blocks to be tackled are list churn and list fatigue.

List churn is the percentage of subscribers who have left the list during a certain time period. This is measured either monthly or annually. Out of this only three percent constitute of people who have unsubscribed from the list. Other thirty percent constitute of email addresses which have been lost to hard bounces every year. The subscribers can either enter their email address incorrectly when signing up or the emails addresses might no longer be valid, causing the emails to bounce. The rest of the percentage constitute of people who have reported spam complaints. Even the biggest legitimate permission marketers get spam complaints.

The list churn rate can be calculated monthly by looking at the email performance reports. The yearly lost subscribers can be calculated by adding up number of unsubscribed, hard bounces, and spam complaints. The total should then be divided by the current size of the list to find out the list hurdle rate. Calculation of the list hurdle rate is very important for the annual planning process and for forecasting the revenues. If this metric isn’t considered a lot of explanation is due to your boss if you fail to achieve the required list growth goal. The list churn rate can be improved by reducing the number of spam complaints and bounces.

List fatigue deals with the subscribers on the email list which have hibernated and have become inactive for quite a while. These people haven’t unsubscribed, but have stopped reading the emails and interaction. Therefore the un-subscription rate cannot give a clear picture about how the readers feel about the company’s emails. The most common cause of list fatigue is irrelevant offers, over mailing and newsletter content which dose not deal with the interest of the reader.

The percentage of the inactive subscribers should be calculated to figure out the list fatigue. People who haven’t clicked or opened not even a single email over a certain period of time should be counted. Usually thirty to fifty percent of an email list becomes inactive annually. There can be a variety of reasons cause of which these people are receiving your emails but aren’t unsubscribing. Major reason is because your mail can be going directly to their bulk folder or because your un-subscription link isn’t working.  So there can be a possibility that out of the fifty percent, forty percent are inactive and the rest ten percent are busy, on vacation, or just not motivated enough by the subject line or email content. Small surveys can be conducted to understand the changing needs of the subscribers.

These sleeper subscribers need to be activated from time to time by giving them spicy stuff like special offer, different newsletter outlook, interactive tools, etc. On one had the old subscribers must be re-energized and new subscribers must be added from time to time. Otherwise the list gets shorter and shorter. Resources must be obtained and plans must be established in order to get the targeted list growth rates. The ratio of inactive subscribers must also be reduced and slowed down.

Reducing and managing the number of email bounces has never been so critical for an email marketer. Frequent managing of email bounces reduces the email delivery costs and boosts the conversions and transactions. This is a sign of a good email program.

The list needs to be cleansed on a timely basis. The cleansing process can be done manually or through list hygiene service by which incorrectly formatted addresses, and invalid typos and domains can be checked for. Most of the companies experience an email address churn of two to three percent per month. Here the Email Change of Address service or ECOA service can be employed to deal with this problem. According to reports, many of the ECOA companies receive at least one million email address changes every month.

Email addresses need to be confirmed regularly. This can be done by sending auto-reply confirmation to customers when they register, subscribe or make a purchase. If the message bounces, attempt can be made to correct the email address. The problem can be tackled by including a second email address line in the opt-in form which can confirm whether the email address entered was correct or not.

One of the basic steps to be taken is to make the update process easier by including the website account and subscription management link in the emails. The customers must be prompted to update information. They can be asked to verify or to update information at the time of completion of transaction in the shopping cart. If any transaction has not been made in a while, phone or direct mail can be used for information update. People who have bad email addresses and whose phone numbers or postal addresses are stored with the company can be contacted for email address correction.

Major domains such as Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc. can be used to track bounces and open rates. If one is different from the others or if there is a sudden change, this can be attributed to blacklisting or filtering. Therefore, it is also a good idea to check major blacklists and spam databases for your company’s or email provider’s name. If the name has been blacklisted, no bounce message will be received even if the message wasn’t delivered. Monitoring and understanding of spam filters helps in dealing with spam complaints more efficiently. The terms and conditions of the spam filters must be reviewed carefully.  Quite often the spam flag addresses are added maliciously. These flags must be removed. Email providers also process bounces. Only understanding them can solve the problem. The basis on which soft and hard bounces are to be pronounced should be studied and later on, managed accordingly.

Because of financial troubles, mergers, and other announcements a big list of service users of one particular ISP decide to shift over to a different ISP or account for their email. Such members on the subscribers list must be emailed with a question raised on the domain name. They should be asked whether they want to update their email and other information. It is a good practice to pretest the emails before distributing the email to the entire list of subscribers. The test can be performed on oneself, company employees and a trusted group of current readers. Try including all the major email services being used by majority of the subscriber list members.

When every other attempt fails, it is best to delete or suppress recurring bouncers. For this purpose a suiting bounce deletion and suppression strategy should be designed according to the email program. Hard bounces should land directly in the trashed list as they are permanently undeliverable.

One of the biggest mistakes to do is to use email like the electronic version of direct marketing media such as postal mailers, catalogs, radio, television, newspaper inserts and even brochures. A world class brand builder can become a sure fire brand killer in no time if it is treated with ignorance, carelessness, and laziness. The brand killing capability is very much dependant on the email’s relationship with the recipients.   The relationship is more personal because of the intimate relationship between the people and their computer. And because of this intimacy, positive and negative feelings are encourages by the company’s name. No mail is as irritating as junk mail and the penalties for such emails are getting much stiffer. A flood of spam complaints can affect the email program to the extent of shutting it down.  

The email is becoming a personal medium, slowly. The recipient should be made in charge, he should be able to decide from whom he should receive email from, what kind of email he wants to receive and when he can stop receiving those emails. An email program which dose not includes all these conveniences will do severe damage to the company’s or brand’s name.

The first thing to concentrate upon is to remove poor permission practices. If this thing isn’t taken care of, nothing done after that will make up for the loss. In simple words, it is completely wrong to email a commercial message to anyone who hasn’t given the permission to do so. Sometimes, a person is simply signed up for receiving email while registering on the website because of checking boxes in a hurry. Thus, it is important for the registration page to display the privacy policy which says that the registration also includes agreement for receiving emails. And in spite of this, there is a high chance to get large complaints because of the unclear opt-in process. Some companies send emails to a person who has downloaded whitepaper or brochure form the website. It is better for the check box be not checked before hand. The job of checking the box should be left to the visitor. 

In spite of taking these precautions sometimes it happen that the recipient will head straight to the report spam button when they do not want to receive email anymore. This happens when the recipient dose not trust the unsubscribe process. The first reason for the loss of trust is because of not sending the message in the desired format: text or HTML. The readers subscribe intrusting the company and when their email program fails to honor their trust, the company has to pay for this. It is very important to give the reader the option to choose from text or HTML format. Usually technical people prefer only text messages where as the teenagers prefer messages in the HTML format.

The content of the email should exactly meet the requested information. If a subscriber has asked for sales announcements then do not send them company news. Similarly, the frequency of email should also be kept in mind. If request has been made to receive a weekly newsletter, do not send bi-weekly newsletters. An occasional exception such as sales bulletins or news can be used sparingly. Customers complain a lot about the pouring of emails during the holiday season. It is better to focus on the quality rather than quantity. 
It is not a compulsion that the content of the email look like spam and considered as a spam. If the recipients able to recognize the sender or dose not consider him to authentic, the mail directly goes to the spam folder. Three things should be considered to keep away from this problem. The sender or the subject shouldn’t appear vague. The content should be relevant to the brand name and its products. The unsubscribe procedure should be checked regularly. Failed unsubscribe and repeated requests for unsubscribing not only blocks the email program but also kills the brand name. Along with checking this link, it is highly recommended to check other links as well. Clicking on the link should take directly to the landing page and not on home page or a ‘Page Not Found’ page. Also, effort must be made in reducing the number of clicks done to achieve a certa

Any marketing to be successful requires a particular strategy to be followed. Hence, email marketing also involves using some strategies. The biggest advantage of using email as a marketing strategy is personalization and segmentation. These advantages are also the most underutilized feature of email marketing, by most the companies. It is very important to make the company’s emails as clear and relevant as possible for every recipient because that particular email is competing with the rest of the emails in the recipient’s inbox. Email can be made relevant by personalizing subject lines, articles, offers, product showcased, and flowing emails depending upon recipient’s action.

Before carrying out an email marketing strategy it is best to send out pre-campaign test to uncover problems before actually implementing the strategy. The test results can be monitored by checking ISP filtering, blacklisting and filtering. The test messages should be sent to different email clients and platforms. The authenticity can be established by the sender of email by adding SPF code in the DNS record. Every email client and platform has a different preview pane and they have different policies for blocking images. To deal with this, the emails need to be redesigned so as to be read easily and rendered properly. The top portion of the email should deliver the maximum possible information. Also creativity should be increased by playing with HTML colors and fonts. Images should be less relied upon as there is greater chance of them getting blocked the email clients or ISPs.

Everything becomes passé over a period of time. A thing which worked few months ago might not work today. Variables such as design, format, copy style, subject line, offers, content types, personalization, product categories, etc., need to be tested constantly.

Email relationship should be paid special attention from the start, because majority of the decline requests comes in the first two months after subscriber’s opt-in. A well organized program must be designed which should engage the subscriber immediately. A welcome message should be sent out instantaneously, followed by current email including the latest offers and promotions. An email can also be sent which offers the best of the past newsletters along with exclusive offers for newcomers. The trust can be build by making things clear such as frequency, proposition, content type, and privacy policies, from the start. Apart from concentrating on new comers it is also important to take care of the long term subscribers. Over a period of time nearly fifty percent of the email list becomes inactive. This happens when the subscribers do not open the company’s emails from a long time. Such subscribers need to be awaken by trying new subject lines, new email formats, and by sending best of newsletters or spicy deals.

Short surveys can be carried out to know about the customer’s requirements and to uncover potential trends.

Instead of focusing on metrics such as click through and open rates, marketers need to focus on end goals such as revenue per mail, conversion rates, whether desired action was taken on time or not, etc. Format style and the type of articles liked by the subscribers must be concentrated upon. Searching option also helps in acquiring customers to a great extent. 

The biggest job is to make a working email marketing plan which actually has specific goals, action steps and success metric. The plan should include enough resources and budget. The program needs to be improved often by continuous testing and analysis, by increasing segmentation and personalization, and by including the latest technology.

The big picture, which is missed by many marketers, about email is that apart from being cheap and quick, it gives the ability to find what works and what does not. It is inexpensive and offers more information to the subscriber than direct mail and the turnaround time is decreased from weeks to hours. Yet, very few marketers invest time and efforts to test drive their eNewsletters and emails. Many of them will question whether the effort made is really worth it. If the order button is shifted from the bottom of the page to the top of the page, where it is more visible, the click through rate goes up by fifty percent. With such results, the effort is worth it. With hundreds and millions of dollars involved in email marketing, money cannot be thrown away like that.

The only way to know about offers and topics which work for the audience is by testing. Testing can be carried out on preferences, emotional triggers, reaction towards subject lines, do they like short or long formats, or do they like text or HTML format. Valuable information about the audience can be learned by variable testing.

Basics of the emails can be started with like the simplest portions of the emails can be formatted. Most of the emails aren’t read because of faulty HTML code. Emails should be tested in different types of email applications like Yahoo or Outlook. By doing this a drastic change can be observed in the overall response rate. Testing should be kept in control. Sometimes marketers get so overwhelmed that they test the whole email at once. If two completely different versions of the same email are send out to different groups, there will be no clue to what actually worked and what didn’t. Therefore it is necessary to pick a single element to be tested at a time and then observe the response of the audience to that particular variable before testing another variable.

Timing is also important when sending out emails for testing. When sending multiple test emails, the time of sending them out should be considered. It is to be seen whether the emails can be sent at the same time, same season, etc. This also includes the testing on more than one variable at a time. According to researches, Wednesday is the best day for getting responses. Other statistics say that at least thirty to fifty responses are required to make a good decision. Some percent of these responses can be confusing, but nearly ninety percent of them will be accurate. The list of elements can be further divided into smaller list and the individual list can be concentrated upon. 

Testing doesn’t mean just taking the grade. It means that we should get the grades or results and learn from it. If something is wrong in the email, the correction should be sought out. When the email marketing efforts are put to test, the goal of this testing procedure is to test one or more elements or variables, the results must be analyzed and the lesson learned should be put to application. Otherwise, it is a waste of time and money to test. And when the results are ready, the marketer should know how to apply the new found knowledge.

Permission is not an optional extra, but is the basic apparatus in email marketing. Permission is the key component in gaining recipient trust, optimizing deliverability and getting investment returns. It is practiced by all legitimate email marketers. But many new email marketers, especially those from print, television, radio and direct mail background resist the idea of taking permission. They fail to realize that email is different from the rest as it is a personal medium, similar to telephone. And the result of decline in telemarketing is a clear proof of this malpractice.

Email marketing isn’t about smacking the recipient with one email after another nor is it about list size. Initially some do get okay results when they do not take permission. These kinds of marketers send out floods of email to email list gathered in trade shows, from white paper downloaders and visitors. But for most of the marketers, mediocre result is not the goal. When subscribers give permission for emailing, results such as increased response rates, better deliverability, and increased brand affinity and trust can be seen. It does take time to build a list based on permission and to send out relevant messages to targeted readers. This list will become shorter by the day if this list is an unsolicited email list. In simple words, permission helps in achieving better results and it is the only method to build strong relationships with customers via emails.

Few marketers think that their non-permission programs are bringing results which are just fine. But when they review their open rate, click rate and conversion rates, they can conclude that they could have improved the results by at least five times if they had used the permission based approach. Permission not only means the subscriber’s consent of receiving emails from the company. It can be further broken down into expressed consent and implied consent. Expressed permission is what the subscriber gives when he fills the opt-in form or clicks on the email permission checkbox when he is filling the registration form. Implied permission is not given actively, but is a following result of another actions like not un-checking the pre-checked email permission box. This practice is not healthy and can affect the relationship with the customer. Therefore, expressed permission is the acceptable one. Implied permission can also be expressed as opt-out.

The U.S. issued law for commercial email in 2003 which is also called as CAN-SPAM. This law allows opt-out marketing if certain conditions are met. The opt-out emails should include a working unsubscribe link. The commercial email should be labeled as a promotional email if affirmative consent is not given by the recipient. This law only has legal criteria and does not promote opt-in or best practices.  Opt-out email marketing gets the company blacklisted instantly. This means most of the money and time spend in emailing is wasted. In opt-out email marketing, there is a high chance of sending emails to addresses which do not exist or which block the messages. 

Opt-in email marketing is of two types: Single opt-in and double opt-in. In Single opt-in, the subscriber is automatically added after the completion of web form or after emailing a request. In Double opt-in, also known as confirmed opt-in, the subscriber is sent an automated email message immediately after the request to which the subscriber must reply to confirm the subscription and to be added to the email list. 

Statistics and surveys have proven the benefits of using opt-in email marketing. Instead of wasting resources on people who aren’t interested in the company’s services or product, a small part of the same resources can be utilized effectively by reaching out to the targeted customers.

The holiday email marketing season takes the overdrive with the onset of Halloween. Certainly, this isn’t the time to design the marketing program from the scratch. But a small fixes can do the trick to raise the deliverability by a few percent without the need to shift to another completely new program. These fixes won’t take major investment in money or time.

As they say the first impression is the best impression, a very important aspect is to include the brand or company name as the sender and not individual name or email. The “from” line acts as the basis for the readers based on which they recognize and trust the sender. So it is best to use the brand name which is widely used by the readers for recognition. Following it is the subject line. It also plays a major role in the opening of the email. The subject line should not only be irresistible but trustworthy. Many subject line tools are available on the internet which can be of great use. The trick followed by most is to phrase the first twenty eight characters with the most important information. Usually the first twenty eight characters are of high importance to get the message across to the client. Putting the brand name in the from line helps to free up space for the critical information, which is the heart of the message, in the subject line. If the email is send to a mobile, the brand name should be first thing the reader should see. If there is space, special offers will be worth mentioning.  

The email should have a link to the complete information which is posted on the website. The link should redirect the reader to the complete article just by one click. Subscribe and unsubscribe links should be working always and the directions should be displayed promptly. If this isn’t done, it is going against the US email marketers law. The email should also include information about the company’s name, address and other contact information such as telephone, link to web contact page, and email. It is good to have links to other offers and services provided by the company. Effects of the previous offers and customer testimonials can also be included to draw attention.

The email shouldn’t resemble to a print ad which has bright colors within which the information is contained. Although, most of the HTML designers love to design this type of emails, but another fact is that most of the readers would have their block images option activated which will stop the image from downloading and the recipient will not be able to see any part of the message. The email should be broken down into manageable chunks. One large image should be replaced with many smaller images and important information should be placed in a text boxes which will be displayed in spite of the images being displayed or not. Alt tags can also be used to describe the images or the offers contained within it. This information will be displayed if the images do not show up.

Coding and spelling mistakes are a big no-no. If there is, this is a sure sign of a spammer. Miss spelt brand or company name can never be forgiven. It is a good habit to get the entire email proof-read by a professional before sending it to the readers. The links should be check individually to see whether they are working or not. Although it is a tedious task, it will save the readers from getting irritated and from losing sales. Past performances shouldn’t be trusted upon and regular checks must be made constantly.

The most important thing is to keep an eye on the competing company and the offers being offered by them. Try to design a better offer and test it on sample readers before committing to the offer. Like every one will be offering free shipping during the holiday season, so try to think of something which will differentiate you from the rest.

The last point to be considered is that because of the overwhelming flow of emails during the festive season, the subscribers can get irritated and complaints may arise. This can be tackled by throttling the frequency of emails. Delivery logs should be read constantly to handle the problem at the proper time.

It is a fact that monitoring or managing customer feedbacks does not fall in the top 10 priorities of email marketers in order to improve the deliverability of their emails. It is really a sorry state of affairs as feedback management enables email marketers to improve email’s most important quality i.e. providing direct interface between customers and email marketers.

When a factor so important such as this it turns off the readers and makes your program vulnerable to threats like spam reports and leaves you with a list containing lots of invalid or dead addresses. Many email marketers forget that relevancy is pivotal to driving deliverability of emails which results in loss of opportunity to make email campaigns more sought after and pertinent to target subscribers.

Even if some email marketers are in a impression that they are doing a tremendous job just being able to receive and reply to people’s comments and issues they have through mediums such as letter, phone or through the website. What email marketers overlook sometimes are few customers who put not to reply to their emails in the subject line as nobody would see it or the email is highly monitored.

While the very thought of shutting down the communication with the customers creates a pain in many email marketer’s heart there are some good email marketers who take both negative and positive feedback in a right way and try to improve. It has been observed that a good email program always requests a feedback in the end with a link to feedback form or customer service or provides phone numbers of customer service. And again good managers have a habit of attending to the feedbacks whatever channel they come from.

Despite clearly telling in the email not to reply it is a fact that some customers will always reply to the email. Thus limiting the customers to only certain channels kills the relation that you are trying to establish in the long run. This also affects deliverability. Take it this way, when you try to close a communication channel you lose one channel to get information from the customer that could have helped you improve efforts.

Effective feedback management does not stop here I.e. just by taking care of customer’s comments or complaints or questions that you receive as a response to your email or purchases or any other interaction you had with the customer. But effective feedback management involves taking extra steps and going that extra mile to reach to the customers requesting your customers for their comments and surveys through offers, newsletters, web links and email transactions.

When customer’s feedback or comments are sought you get rich information that can not only help you market goals but at the same time also take care of the emails that create dissatisfaction among customers and affect their deliverability. But care should be taken that you do not give overdose of surveys also to the customers. Rather email marketers should give attention to 4 main points of interaction where the possibility of getting valuable feedback is highest. The first is when customers sign up for your email program. The second point of interaction is after two or three months when you should contact your customer to bring back their attention to the email program who might have strayed away from the email program. The third and very important point of interaction is when customers contact you with complaints irrespective of the medium of interaction. The fourth point of interaction is when customers contacting you due to sudden surge in spam emails; you can take this as an opportunity to survey the customers.

Last but not the least an effective key to better feedback management is cooperation of different departments in your company in sharing the data and in helping overall improvement of email program.

The reader needs motivation in order to subscribe for emails from a company. This is the very first step towards increasing the email opt-in rate. The website should have display the benefits of subscribing. Simple, nondescript boxes inhabit the homepage which say ‘Subscribe to the company’s newsletter’ and nothing more than that. There is lack of reason why the user should sign up unless they already find the content of the website interesting. It is agreed upon by many that the content should be kept basic. But how basic is the question. Lonely sign up boxes are a big no-no. There should at least be a brief promotional line which gives a specific and concrete benefit that would get the reader motivated to fill the box with his email address and click on the sign up button. The promotional matter should answer questions such as ‘Why should the reader sign up for the newsletter?’, ‘What are the solutions being offered by the newsletter?’, and ‘Is the newsletter focused and specific, concentrating on the needs of the reader?’

The same technique is to be used with the type of words and language being used in the promotional copy or more better, on the complete website. The links should be clear and shouldn’t have any empty, vague or generic matter. The content should be able to solve the problem which the reader is looking forward to be solved. The readers must be offered with back issues and sample to give them a good idea about what they can expect from future newsletters they will be receiving.

After the reader signs up, many of them receive a big nothing. They get big blackness and dead silence. The subscriber wants something to happen in his inbox immediately. Therefore, it is a good idea to send a welcome email right away which can include the latest newsletter or sample of the best newsletters. Try to include some email-special offer. At the end of the message tell them they will be expecting such great offers and newsletter in a short while. The new subscriber should feel that he has joined the club and has already received some benefit. He should feel the signing up process worth the effort. The welcome email also does the job of confirming email, which checks for the validity of the email address.

On one hand there are people who have barely any motivating information on their website and on the other there are people who have too much information on their website. The information is not organized and the users are overwhelmed with innumerable choices. If the company has too many things to offer, it should narrow them down by grouping them into categories. On the basis of these categories, the newsletters too must be sent out. The newsletters should have specific content and any new material posted on the website should be posted in just a link and not more than that.

The last thing which puts off the subscriber is asking too many questions. In the sign-up page they are asked for their email address only. Next they are linked to the preference page, followed by twenty more pages. This is a really blown opportunity. Initially, it is good to keep it sweet and short by asking information like first name, last name, and email address. Then send them a confirmation email where they can click the link for making choices. Marketers should know where to draw the line. A box asking just for the email address is a great way of not getting any subscriptions.

At the year’s end everyone needs to look back on their email marketing efforts to see how successful their program was and if it wasn’t as successful as they were expecting, then what steps should be taken in order to make the program successful. 

The main points to be looked upon are:

* Key performance metrics
The first step in the process of annual review is to note down the newsletter or campaign’s annual result in a spreadsheet. All important statistics such as clicks, referrals, complains, unsubscribe, bounces, spam, etc., should be included in the spreadsheet. After assembling the results must be used to calculate the overall averages. By this the best and the worst performing message can be calculated for every metric. Beyond standard metrics like click through, open, and bounce rates, corporate newsletter publishers must also look at metrics which are more appropriate for achieving the company’s objectives and goals. The major metrics which should be looked upon based on objectives are open rate, click to open rate, click through rate, deliver rate, bounce rate, referral rate, unsubscribe rate, spam complaints, net subscribers, subscriber retention, unique clicks, unique clicks on certain recurring links, website actions, orders, downloads, transactions, total revenue, conversion rate, average order size, and average price per email.
* Content
The content of the actual messages should be analyzed. Every aspect should be relevant and should also involve creativity. The style, tone and the length of the subject line should be reviewed. It is very important to include the company’s or brand’s name in the subject line or easy recognition by the reader, otherwise the email will land in the spam folder. If the format of the emails is being changed constantly, the samples must be compared to see which one is more effective. If personalized emails have been sent, observe the results to see whether the attempt was successful or not.  
* Recipient feedbacks, web site analytics and surveys
An email account can be created to receive feedbacks containing both negative and positive comments, which can be reviewed upon at the end of the year. If the number of feedbacks received isn’t adequate, the feedback procedure must be made easier. Another problem could be of not creating a motivating personality which could make the subscribers to respond. Readers surveys helps in finding keys which can be worked upon in the next year. Analyzing the website statistics also helps a lot. If there are articles present on the website, figure out which ones interest the readers the most. If the website sells products, check out for the product categories which are visited the most and produce the most revenue and orders. Also ponder upon the offers which draw the most attention from the subscribers.
* And finally comparison between internal and external benchmarks

The co-marketers can share information in an organization which produces more than one campaign or newsletter. This helps in benchmarking the key metrics. The company’s performance can be compared to the industry averages to see whether the program is going according to the plan or if it needs attention immediately.
After the internal audit has been done and the review has been completed, it is now time to make an improvement plan for the future, which should include:

* Analysis and reporting
* Testing
* Creativity
* Maintenance
* List building
* Personalization and segmentation