SEGMENTATION
Breaking an audience into distinct, more manageable segments that are likely to behave in a similar manner has long been a fundamental principle of marketing. Email enables some incredible segmentation power, as well as the ability to truly take advantage of small audience segments that might otherwise be financially difficult to communicate with.

Variable content: Are you providing different segments with different content? Variable content will provide more relevancy and stronger actionable items.

Gathering additional information: Do you have strategies for gathering more data? After you gain credibility, try asking for a few small bits of information within your email messages.

COMPLIANCE
Regulations and technical requirements are changing every day. With so many different areas of technical and marketing compliance, you need to revisit your email initiatives and audit them for compliance.

Can Spam: Are you aware of CAN SPAM regulations and are you confident you have all of the pieces in place?

Privacy policy: Have you reviewed your privacy policy for accuracy? Are you confident it is up to date? Has it been audited by legal counsel?

Authentication: Are you making use of the latest authentication technologies, such as Domain Keys, Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Sender ID?

METRICS
Email marketing creates many specific data points that can be used to gain insight. Understanding what you are capturing and putting that data to its best use can result in continuous success and provide knowledge about your audiences.

Conversions: Are you looking "beyond the click" at conversions within your Web site? Conversions could be actual purchases, contact forms, or anything that is a "valuable action" for your organization.

Long-term trends: Are you looking at message "cycles" over longer periods of time? Often, looking at longer-term trends can give you a different perspective than specific and individual message results.

TESTING
Because of the immediacy of email data, testing should become an integral part of your email efforts. Knowing what to test, how to test it and what to glean from the results will make your email initiatives perform to their fullest.

Creative: Do you test different styles of messages with various offers and graphic treatments?

Content: Do you test messages with different content and content types to gain insight on what your recipients are responding to?
Landing pages: Do you create and direct your audience to different landing pages and review what destinations performed the best? Creatively testing where the click takes them and what that looks and acts like can give you considerable insight.

Use this checklist as the cornerstone of your email efforts. If you can address each of these areas with detail and certainty, you're well ahead of the curve. If not, you could see dramatic improvements by addressing items in the checklist that are not currently a part of your email initiatives. You can download a SubscriberMail white paper, The Strategic Checklist for Email Success, as a guide.