Audit Email Automations to Find Revenue Gaps

Automated email flows that are missing or performing below par quietly drain revenue from countless brands. An audit can expose those gaps, boost deliverability, and pinpoint the lifecycle automations that generate more engagement, repeat purchases, and sustainable growth.

Even brands with seasoned in-house teams frequently overlook opportunities within their automation programs. A thorough audit can deliver meaningful gains without boosting send volume or purchasing new technology.

Begin by examining your technical foundation, then assess your highest-impact flows, your ESP’s native capabilities, and testing opportunities to refine performance over time.

Audit your technical email fundamentals

Major inbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo now deploy AI to determine in real time whether your email reaches the primary inbox, gets shuffled into promotions, or is skipped entirely. Weak fundamentals no longer just threaten spam folder placement. They actively train AI algorithms to deprioritize your messages.

Start by evaluating the foundation of your email deliverability and message rendering before addressing the flows built on top of it. Look for:

A dedicated domain : If you’re operating on a shared domain and scaling your sends, you face a higher risk of being classified as spam or routed outside the primary inbox. A dedicated domain is strongly advised for long-term deliverability.

Authentication configuration: Test your DMARC, DKIM, and SPF settings to verify everything is properly configured and help keep your emails out of spam folders.

Functional templates: We’ve all received emails with broken images, and ADA noncompliant emails are even more widespread. As recently as 2024, well over 99% of email campaigns had significant accessibility issues, despite ADA compliance being a legal requirement.

Check your live templates for ADA compliance, image and link integrity, and one step too many marketers skip: test sends across every device and email client.

Review your existing flows

The technical base won’t drive growth alone. You likely already have at least a starting point on flows, even if it’s just a couple of thank-you or welcome emails, but if you suspect things aren’t fully optimized, they aren’t.

I’ll go in order of revenue impact with the following list. Build and thoroughly test one flow at a time to give yourself bandwidth to make progress without rushing and skipping steps.

On-site activity and high-intent page visits

You probably have far more users who visit high-intent pages (e.g., product, pricing, or demo) and stop there. Re-engaging those folks is a growth opportunity with more scale.

Cart and checkout abandonment

Adding an item to the cart and starting the checkout process are two distinct behaviors that require different flows to optimize conversions.

A high volume of checkout abandonment should also trigger a broader audit of the checkout experience from a buyer and UX perspective. Even if that responsibility doesn’t sit with the email team, communicate what you’re seeing to the relevant stakeholders.

Post-purchase

Too many email marketers stop at the purchase, and this is a big missed opportunity. Repeat business is key to sustainable profitability because it’s far more efficient than acquiring new customers.

Email is a key tool for strengthening the bond between the brand and the customer and boosting affinity that leads to future transactions.

Re-engagement

These flows are as important for defending deliverability as they are for driving new revenue. If subscribers who have gone dormant after a clearly defined period aren’t segmented into their own flows, they’ll suppress overall engagement and increase the risk of deliverability issues. They need to be split into their own segment with customized re-engagement messaging and a fallback plan to remove them from sends altogether.

Repeat purchasers

Showing a little appreciation to repeat purchasers may seem like preaching to the choir, but it’s worth the effort to retain your best customers and strengthen loyalty.

Flows that remind users to cash in rewards, deliver product usage tips, and/or offer something of value as a thank-you will help strengthen the bond between your brand and your most valuable audience.

Get more from your ESP

ESPs, like any martech tool, love to tout new features and product roadmaps. Focus on the features you should already be using rather than rushing to integrate the next great thing.

Send time optimization

These days, every ESP we encounter uses AI to predict the optimal send time for each recipient. The benefits are real: open rates improve with no additional ask of your creative team.

Smart sending

This function sets up guardrails so you can’t spam subscribers with too many messages within a short window.

Channel affinity routing (for multi-channel campaigns)

If you have active email and SMS campaigns, these tools assess where each subscriber is most likely to engage and route messages to the appropriate channel.

Preference centers

Especially as part of a welcome flow, preference centers are highly effective at helping marketers collect data on interests and communication preferences.

A CPG food company, for instance, can collect data that helps it deliver relevant recipes. A suburban dad who wants to feed his kids snacks after soccer practice will probably have different uses for premium cheddar cheese than a single urban socialite who loves throwing themed parties.

Test variables within flows

Within your campaigns, we recommend testing the following variables:

Time of day/day of week.

Intervals between emails.

Subject lines and preview copy.

Discount offers versus non-discount content.

Sequence length.

Generic versus personalized content (we’ve seen each scenario win)

Before you run each test, make sure you know exactly what you’re hoping to learn. And remember that even failed tests can teach you something.

Turn your audit into action

Go one step at a time once you have the audit findings. Making progress with setting up basic flows and shoring up your technical foundation can lead to double- or even triple-digit percentage gains in engagement, clicks, and revenue.

Treat each flow as a starting point, test the variables listed above, and add complexity, as long as there’s a purpose, as you go, and your email marketing automations should be a great, dependable source of revenue within a matter of months.