Email Marketing Audit

This audit checks three things: domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC status), your email performance vs industry benchmarks (open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate graded A-F against 28 industries from 3.6M campaigns), and cost efficiency (whether you're overpaying for your ESP compared to 11 alternatives at your subscriber count).

60 seconds. Enter your domain authentication status, your metrics, and your current ESP — you get instant results with a scored report, specific grades, and prioritized recommendations.

No. Domain authentication checks use your self-reported setup status. Performance benchmarks use your self-reported metrics. Cost analysis uses published pricing data we've verified across 11 platforms. Nothing connects to your account.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) authorizes which mail servers can send email on behalf of your domain. Without it, ISPs like Gmail and Yahoo may reject your emails outright or route them to spam. It's a DNS TXT record — your ESP should provide the exact record to add.

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) cryptographically signs your outgoing emails so receiving servers can verify they weren't tampered with in transit. It proves the email actually came from your domain. Like SPF, it's configured via DNS records your ESP provides.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) tells receiving mail servers what to do with emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks — reject them, quarantine them, or let them through. Gmail and Yahoo made DMARC mandatory for bulk senders as of February 2024. Without it, your deliverability will suffer.

The three most common causes: (1) Missing DMARC policy — this alone drops your authentication score to 62% or lower. (2) Performance metrics below your industry average, especially click rate which carries the heaviest weight. (3) Overpaying for your ESP — if you're on Mailchimp at 5,000 subscribers ($100/mo) when MailerLite charges $39/mo for equivalent features, your cost score takes a hit.

Fix authentication first — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are table stakes since Gmail and Yahoo's February 2024 enforcement. Then focus on click rate, the metric most correlated with actual revenue. Segmented campaigns get 100.95% higher click rates (Mailchimp, 2014). Finally, evaluate whether your ESP is the right fit for your size and needs — our pricing showdown tool compares all 11 platforms at your subscriber count.