List Buying Guide: How Does Your Garden Grow?

Audit your e-mail file to ensure its healthy maturation

August 2006 By Hallie Mummert

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Third Step: Review Audit Reports
After conducting its audit, Pivotal Veracity provides two reports to the marketer. The first report lists the audit scores; details the practices as reported and pairs them with any issue flags; explains the problem areas; and offers advice for how to improve weak practices. The second report is a stripped-down version of the first that can be shared with companies who might choose to advertise in your e-mails or rent your list. A technical expert and an account manager then review these reports with you, going through each issue flag and the advice section to make certain you understand the infrastructure issues and the recommended course of action. Another goal of this guided review is to identify any information the audit participant might not have reported accurately due to confusion or simple oversight—something that came up in Target Marketing’s audit report review. A quick fix to the details, and Pivotal Veracity was able to update our reports and improve our audit score.

What We Learned That Can Help You
It doesn’t take much effort to undergo an e-mail audit. The most taxing step is the gathering of information, especially if you’ve developed a complex e-mail program with a variety of different contact types: e-newsletters with advertising, product offers, free event invites, etc. In fact, just the act of ascertaining such information can be eye-opening; a sort of informal audit before the audit. Filling out the questionnaire spawned discussions about e-mail best practices within my company’s Web services department, and led to additional conversations with circulation, marketing and list rental managers.

To get the most out of your e-mail audit, consider the following tips based on our experience:
• Ask questions. If you don’t understand what the audit service is looking for, request clarification. To get a true picture of how you’re doing, along with the best corrective advice, the service needs accurate data on your e-mail program.
• Make sure every department involved with your e-mail program reviews the questionnaire and provides feedback regarding the impact their group has on your company’s e-mail address collection, usage and messaging.
• Share the results. Conduct an internal review so all departments understand where practices could be more buttoned up. Some employees might not be aware of all the intricacies of Can Spam legislation, or realize how their business activities affect your e-mail deliverability and opt-out rates. And if any part of your program is outsourced—such as the promotion of your e-mail file—make sure the vendor receives a copy of the audit report. You may or may not want to release your score, but your vendor should be aware of how your e-mail program fared in an independent audit.

Other e-mail program assessment tools to consider include Return Path’s Sender Score Reputation Monitor, and the certification/authentication services provided by Habeas and TRUSTe, to name a few.

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