Back to Basics - 10 questions for your Email Marketing

Disclaimer - this post will not be relevant to 20% of marketers who are more savvy than my target audience.

The latest buzz words in the web marketing & analytics space is all around - 'Social Marketing' - Twitter, Facebook etc. & around 'Mobile Marketing'.   While I agree that these emerging media need to be on marketers' radar, I see a lot of clients putting cart before the horse.  Simpler stuff like optimizing email marketing & website optimization are often relegated to back of the 'budget queue'. 

Email is still a significant media for anyone starting out on digital space.  There is a tremendous opportunity to optimize the email media and marketing.  Questions I would recommend marketers ask themselves:

1. Is your email marketing ad-hoc or structured around email programs and campaigns?
2. What are the goals of your email program?  Opens? Clicks? Web conversion? How do these goals align with your marketing and strategic goals?
3. Do you have a measurement framework around email marketing?- campaigns, attribution logic, measurement, testing and optimization?
4. Can you bring your online (email, web) data together with off-line data (for multi-channel marketers)?
5. In-house email lists are the most accessible (and potentially valuable) asset.  Are you monetizing this asset?
6. Do you do any list selection/ targeting or just blast emails to the entire list?  Do you have any broad segmentation for your email list (Geographic, Value, RFM etc.)?
7. Do you do any longitudual activity views on your email list across campaigns?
8. Are your emails being delivered appropriately? what's your deliverability? What is your bounce and un-sub rates?
9. Are your emails linked to your web analytics software so that click through behavior and content consumption can be tracked back to your customers' email address?
10. Do you do any testing (subject lines, creative, copy, offer, audience, segment) in your email program?

Though these may seem like simple questions, answering these questions and acting on these will help streamline your email programs.  While the emerging media (Social, Mobile etc.) are sexy and cool, focusing on basics such as email could bring more bang for your budget bucks.