Always Start with a Marketing Audit to Set Client Expectations

When I start working with a new email marketing client, one of the first things I do is conduct a quick-and-dirty audit on their account.

Many of my clients at KAC Marketing first come to me saying, “I don’t understand why I have 20,000 people on my email list, but I’m not making any money from email.”

To help the client understand WHY I conduct an audit.

My super simple audit includes looking at:

• How big the list is
• What the average click-through rate is
• Who the emails are being sent to

I typically find that the business owner has had their email list for 1 or 2 or more years and has never done a list cleanup activity.

A list cleanup activity is where you periodically remove email recipients who are not engaging.

I typically use the criteria: anyone who hasn’t clicked at least 1 of the last 10 or 15 emails sent.

There is nothing wrong with having an email list of 20,000 people, BUT it can set the wrong expectations for sales if a good portion of those recipients are no longer engaging with the brand’s emails.

Last year I started working with an e-commerce brand that had 22,000 people on its email list; a large portion of which were added to the email list after the brand went viral on TikTok.

The business owner was focused on using social media marketing to promote her brand so those people were on her email list for months without receiving a single email from her. When she tried to start emailing again she heard crickets.

That’s when she reached out and hired me.

I told her after I audited her account that only 5,500 of the people on her list were active and I wanted to remove the 16,500 people who had not engaged with the last 10 emails sent.

She was nervous to do it but reluctantly agreed when we backed up all the email addresses.

Now, with a list of 5,500 people we were able to correctly project email marketing sales because we knew how many people were engaged enough to buy.

This helped the client wrap her mind around her email sales too, because instead of wondering why she only made $3000 from an email she sent to 22,000 people, she was now happy that she made $3000 off an email sent to 5,500 people.

Since then we’ve worked to continue to grow and nurture her list and her email sales are better than ever.

I suggest list cleanup activities for all of my email clients who come to me wondering why their email sales are lower than what they would expect for their list size. It always helps put both the client and I on the same page when it comes to expectations because it shows the client what we’re really working with.

Getting on the same page as a client is so important.

When they understand their results, they’re able to be more appreciative of the work you’re doing for them, which leads to better client retention.

This is why I believe it’s always a good idea to start with an account audit when working with a new client.

A brand can have 20,000 people on its email list or 20,000 followers and wonder why its sales are so low when we can only market (and sell to) the people who are engaged.

Figure out how many people are engaged in your client’s audience and help your client understand THIS is the size of the audience to base sales expectations on (and NOT to base their expectations off of their total audience size).

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