Why We Audit Before We Build: The Case for Starting Every Engagement With Data

When a brand reaches out to us about their email marketing, they usually have a diagnosis already. "Our open rates are low." "We need more flows." "We're not sending enough campaigns." They've identified what they think the problem is, and they want us to start fixing it.

We don't. We audit first. Every engagement starts with data, not assumptions.

The reason is straightforward: brands almost always misdiagnose their own email problems. Low open rates might look like a content problem, but when we check the DNS authentication, we find SPF isn't passing and 30% of emails never reach the inbox. "We need more flows" sounds like an automation problem, but the existing Welcome Series has a broken trigger and hasn't fired in three months. "We're not sending enough" might be true, but if the list is full of unengaged subscribers, sending more will make deliverability worse, not better.

The audit finds what's actually happening, which is often different from what the brand thinks is happening.

Our audit process covers five areas. First, deliverability foundation. We check SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication using MXToolbox and Klaviyo's built-in verifier. We look at the sending domain setup, bounce rates, and spam complaint history. We check Google Postmaster Tools if the brand has it configured. This alone catches problems in roughly 60% of audits we perform.

Second, list health. We analyze the subscriber composition: how many are engaged versus unengaged, what the growth and churn rates look like, whether there are obvious quality issues (role-based addresses, disposable email domains, suspiciously large import batches). We check consent status mapping between Shopify and Klaviyo. A 50,000-subscriber list where only 12,000 have opened an email in the last 90 days tells a very different story than the raw subscriber count suggests.

Third, flow architecture. We map every active flow: what triggers it, what filters and conditions are applied, how many emails it contains, what the timing looks like, and most importantly, whether it's actually working. We check for common issues like missing exclusion filters (which cause subscribers to receive overlapping flows), broken conditional splits, and flows that technically exist but have zero sends because the trigger conditions never fire.

Fourth, campaign history. We review the last 3-6 months of campaign sends. We look at sending frequency, audience targeting (full list versus segmented), engagement metrics trends, and content patterns. The campaign history reveals whether open rates are trending up or down, whether certain campaign types consistently outperform others, and whether the sending cadence matches the engagement capacity of the list.

Fifth, revenue attribution. We compare Klaviyo-attributed revenue to total Shopify store revenue. We break it down by flow versus campaign revenue. We look at which flows drive the most revenue and which campaigns perform best. This establishes the baseline that everything else gets measured against.

The audit typically takes 3-5 business days for a thorough review. The output is a prioritized action plan, not a generic report. We rank findings by revenue impact: what's the single change that would move the most revenue fastest? That becomes priority one. What's the second biggest lever? Priority two. And so on.

Common audit findings that change the engagement strategy include discovering that the Welcome Series (typically the highest-revenue flow) has technical issues preventing it from firing correctly, finding that the brand has been sending to their full list including 60-70% unengaged subscribers (which is destroying deliverability), identifying that authentication is misconfigured so 20-30% of emails never reach the inbox, and realizing that the brand has only one or two flows running when their traffic and purchase patterns warrant six or more.

Each of these findings changes what we'd build first. Without the audit, we'd be guessing. With the audit, we're prioritizing based on data.

The skeptical response is: "Can't you just start building and fix things as you find them?" Technically, yes. But this approach wastes the client's money and our time. Building a sophisticated Welcome Series on top of broken authentication means the Welcome Series won't reach inboxes. Setting up campaign sends for a list that's 70% unengaged means the campaigns damage deliverability before they generate revenue. The audit ensures we build on solid ground.

For brands that are starting from zero — no existing Klaviyo setup, no email history — the audit focuses on the Shopify integration, existing customer data, traffic sources, and competitive landscape. Even with nothing built yet, understanding the starting conditions shapes the build strategy.

The audit isn't a sales tool disguised as a deliverable. It's the first step in doing the work correctly. Every hour spent auditing saves multiple hours of building things that would need to be rebuilt once the real problems surface.