Email Campaign Checklist

Construct the audience in HubSpot, Marketo, or Iterable using the campaign brief's ICP filters — lifecycle stage, last-engagement window, product interest. Save the segment with a versioned name (e.g., 2025-Q1-newsletter-active-90d) so the post-send report references the same definition.

Pull last-90-day open and click rates plus hard-bounce history. A segment quiet for 6+ months should be run through a re-engagement sequence first — broad-blasting a stale list is the fastest way to tank sender reputation and land in Gmail's Promotions or Spam tab.

Send a 2-3 message win-back sequence and sunset non-openers before the broadcast. The active responders graduate into the campaign segment; everyone else moves to a suppressed cohort.

GDPR (EU) and CASL (Canada) require explicit lawful basis or express consent — separate from US opt-out rules. If the segment includes either jurisdiction, the GDPR documentation step downstream becomes mandatory.

Cross-reference the segment against the master suppression list — unsubscribes, complaints, hard bounces, role addresses, competitors, and the legal-hold list. CAN-SPAM requires honoring opt-outs within 10 business days across every sending platform, including manual one-off sends.

Keep the subject under 50 characters so it doesn't truncate in iOS Mail. Write 2-3 variants for the A/B test split. The preheader is the second-most-read line — don't waste it on "View in browser."

Lead with the offer or insight — most readers scan the top third. One primary CTA per email; secondary links should not compete. Match brand voice to the messaging house.

Use the approved responsive template — don't paste raw HTML. Add alt text on every image (Outlook blocks images by default, and screen readers depend on it). Confirm dark-mode rendering in Litmus or Email on Acid.

Use the team's UTM convention document — utm_source=newsletter, utm_medium=email, utm_campaign=2025-q1-launch. Convention drift is the #1 reason GA4 reports become uncomparable across campaigns. Use a shared link-builder, not freehand.

Required: physical mailing address, clear sender identity, and a working unsubscribe link. Confirm the unsubscribe routes to the global preference center, not a per-list flag — partial opt-outs across platforms are a common audit finding.

Run the sending domain through EasyDMARC or MXToolbox. Gmail and Yahoo now bulk-reject mail without DMARC alignment — a misaligned DKIM signature on a 100K send is how an entire campaign lands in spam.

Seed-list test through GlockApps or Litmus Spam Tester for inbox placement across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and Apple Mail. Flag content patterns that score poorly — excessive caps, money symbols, image-heavy bodies with little text.

Litmus or Email on Acid preview across Outlook 365 (desktop + web), Gmail (web + iOS + Android), Apple Mail, and Yahoo. Outlook desktop is where layouts most often break — VML fallbacks and table-based structure matter.

Record the lawful basis (consent, legitimate interest, or contract) for each EU recipient cohort, plus the consent capture date and source. CASL recipients need express or implied consent on file. Cookie-banner "accept all" does not constitute marketing consent — that's the most common audit finding.

Send to the seed list (creative, copywriter, demand-gen lead, legal). Verify personalization tokens render — broken merge fields like "Hi {{first_name}}" on a public send are the most embarrassing recoverable mistake.

Click-through every link from the seed-test render — including footer links, social icons, and the unsubscribe. Confirm UTMs resolve correctly in GA4 real-time, landing pages load, and there are no redirect chains breaking attribution.

Three documented approvals before send: creative director (visual + brand voice), demand-gen lead (offer + targeting), legal or compliance (claims + disclosures, especially for regulated industries). Slack DMs are not an audit trail — capture timestamped approvals here.

Use the ESP's send-time-optimization or timezone-based scheduling so 9am local hits each cohort. Avoid Monday before 8am and Friday after 3pm for B2B; avoid major holidays. Confirm throttling is set so the ESP doesn't burst-send and trip ISP rate limits.

For lists over 50K, throttle in batches of 10K-25K per hour to protect sender reputation. Confirm the dedicated IP or shared-pool routing matches the campaign type (transactional vs. marketing should not share IPs).

Watch the ESP dashboard for the first hour. Hard bounce above 2% or complaint rate above 0.1% means pause and investigate — Gmail Postmaster Tools and the ESP's reputation dashboard are the canonical sources.

Pause subsequent batches. Pull the bounce categorization from the ESP — block-listed IP, content-flagged, or list-quality issue. Loop in deliverability support and check Gmail Postmaster, SNDS for Outlook, and Postmaster tools at Yahoo.

Pull the ESP report alongside GA4 conversion data — open rates are inflated post-Apple MPP, so click-to-open and click-to-conversion are the real metrics. Compare against the campaign KPIs in the brief and the prior comparable send.

Log subject-line winner, top-performing CTA, segment-level performance variance, and any deliverability anomalies in the campaign retrospective doc. Tag the next quarterly planning session so insights surface during the next brief, not three quarters later.