Email Marketing Checklist: Planning, Sending and Measuring Your Results.

Your email subscribers are some of your most valuable business assets — and building and strengthening your list should be a top priority for your business. Here are a few steps to consider before hitting that "send" button.

Planning:

Email Send Date: When does this email need to land in your prospects' inboxes?
Email Topic: What is your email about? Ex: New ebook, monthly eNewsletter...
Subject Line: What subject line will entice recipients to open your email?
Goal: What do you hope to accomplish with this email? Ex: Lead generation, clickthroughs...
Target Segment / Persona / List: Who did you create this email for? Ex: CEOs at small to mid-size companies in the Northeast.
Suppression List(s): Who do you want to exclude from your send? Ex: Employees, current customers...
Personalization: Which elements of your email are you going to personalize for the recipient? Ex: Name, Company Name.
Image: Will you have any images in this email?
Call to Action (CTA): What do you want recipients of this email to do? Ex: Download, Watch, Register...
Link to Landing Page or Other Asset: Which web page are you trying to drive the recipient to?
Social Share Links or Buttons: Do you want your email recipients to tweet or share an element of your email?

Testing:

A/B Test: Is there a certain element that you want to test? Ex: Subject line, Call to Action, Color, Send date/time?
A/B Test Results: What were the results? Which variation won?

Results:

Total Emails Sent: How many email addresses did you send to?
Total Emails Delivered: How many of the email addresses you sent, successfully landed in an inbox?
Total Emails Opened: Of the email addresses you sent, how many were opened?
Total Clicks: How many unique individuals clicked a link in your email?
Deliverability: Total Emails Delivered / Total Emails Sent. Above 95% is ideal.
Open Rate: Total Emails Opened / Total Emails Delivered. An open rate of 20% would mean that out of every 10 emails delivered, 2 were actually opened.
Clickthrough Rate: Percent of recipients who clicked a link in your email out of total emails opened.
Leads Generated: How many new potential business contacts did you get from email recipients filing out the form on your landing page?