Email Marketing Checklist

Pick one primary KPI — open rate, CTR, conversions, attributed pipeline, or revenue. Vanity metrics like opens are increasingly unreliable post-Apple Mail Privacy Protection; CTR or downstream conversion is more defensible. Document the goal in the campaign record so reporting can compare apples to apples.

Open the segment in HubSpot, Marketo, Iterable, or whichever MAP you run on. Verify the smart-list logic, suppression list overlap, and total addressable count. Common gotcha: a segment that worked last quarter no longer matches because a property was renamed in CRM sync.

Pull the segment's last-90-day engagement: opens, clicks, hard-bounce rate, complaint rate. A list quiet for six-plus months will tank sender reputation on a broad send. If hard-bounce trends above 2% or engagement is below 10%, mark the segment as needing sunset before this send.

Send a 2-3 email re-engagement series to the stale segment with a clear 'still want to hear from us?' ask. Move non-responders to a suppression-only list — don't include them in the broadcast. Skipping this step is the most common cause of inbox-placement collapse on enterprise sends.

Filter the segment by country to determine whether EU or Canadian residents are in the send. GDPR (EU) and CASL (Canada) require lawful basis or express consent that US-only opt-in flows don't satisfy. The answer here drives the compliance gating downstream.

Aim for under 50 characters on subject and 90 on preheader so mobile clients don't truncate. Avoid spam triggers (ALL CAPS, excessive punctuation, 'free', '$$$'). Write 3-5 variants for an A/B split test on a 10% holdout.

TOFU prospects need an educational hook; MOFU readers want a use case or proof point; BOFU contacts respond to a demo or pricing CTA. Sending the same body to all three is the fastest way to flatten conversion. Match copy density to where the segment sits.

One primary action, repeated 2-3 times: above the fold, mid-content, and at the bottom. Secondary links are fine but never compete in styling. Confirm the destination URL works and matches the email's promise.

Editor checks for tone match against the brand's voice guide, AP or house style on punctuation and capitalization, and accessibility (descriptive link text, no 'click here'). Spell-check is not enough — read aloud catches awkward phrasing the eye skips.

Use the approved master template in HubSpot, Marketo, Klaviyo, or Iterable — don't paste raw HTML from a designer's mockup. Keep total weight under 100KB to avoid Gmail clipping; images hosted on a CDN, not embedded.

Use the team's UTM convention document — source=newsletter or campaign-specific, medium=email, campaign=YYYY-MM-slug, content=cta-position. Drift here breaks GA4 attribution and makes month-over-month reports uncomparable.

Roughly 40% of recipients have images blocked by default; alt text is what they see. It also matters for screen-reader accessibility under WCAG 2.1 AA. Decorative images get empty alt (alt=""), not the filename.

Test against Outlook (desktop and web), Gmail (web, iOS, Android), Apple Mail (macOS and iOS), and Yahoo at minimum. Outlook desktop is where most renders break — Word's rendering engine ignores most modern CSS. Attach the screenshot grid for the approval record.

Seed list should include the campaign owner, copy lead, brand reviewer, and a Gmail and Outlook account on the team. Click every link from the seed copy — staging URLs and unparameterized links slip through automated checks routinely.

Required: a valid physical postal address, a clear unsubscribe link, and an accurate From / Reply-To. Confirm the suppression list is honoring opt-outs within the 10-business-day window — failures here are per-email statutory penalties.

Pull the consent record for the EU and Canadian portion of the segment. Cookie banner 'accept all' is not marketing consent; the lawful basis must be documented (opt-in, contract, or legitimate interest with documented assessment). For Canadian recipients, CASL requires express or implied consent on file.

Send a test through Mail-Tester or GlockApps and confirm all three pass. DMARC policy should be at least p=quarantine; p=none means you're not protected against spoofing. BIMI logo display requires DMARC enforcement plus VMC.

Domain and IP reputation should be High or Medium; spam-rate dashboard must be under Google's 0.3% threshold. If reputation has dipped in the last 14 days, reduce send volume or warm a fresh sub-domain rather than blasting on a damaged sender.

Capture timestamped approval from legal (claims, disclosures, regulated-industry language) and brand (visual lockup, voice). Slack DMs do not count as approval records — log the decision here so the audit trail survives team turnover.

Use the segment's historical engagement-by-hour data, not generic 'Tuesday 10am' advice. For multi-region sends, use the ESP's send-time optimization or split the send by timezone so 9am local lands consistently.

Watch the bounce rate, complaint rate, and ESP throttling alerts in the first 60 minutes. A spike above 5% hard bounce or 0.1% complaint is a stop-the-send signal — pause remaining batches before more damage compounds.

Capture click-through rate, conversion rate per the campaign's primary KPI, and unsubscribe rate. Flag any GA4 events that fired off-pattern — a CTR/conversion mismatch usually means the landing page broke or the UTMs misrouted.

Roll up opens, clicks, conversions, attributed pipeline or revenue, unsubscribes, and complaints. Compare against the KPI set in the brief. Note any subject-line A/B winner so the next campaign benefits from the learning.