Email Program Health Check
Diagnose your email program in 90 minutes. Covers list hygiene, segmentation, content strategy, and send cadence — all calibrated for how HR buyers actually engage with email.
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How to use this health check
Work through each section with your email platform open. You’ll need access to your sending history, list data, and engagement metrics. Set aside 90 minutes for the assessment, then use the action plan at the end to prioritize fixes.
This health check is calibrated for HR Tech companies emailing HR buyers. HR buyers are among the most over-emailed professionals in B2B — they receive pitches from ATS vendors, benefits platforms, payroll companies, consultants, and recruiters constantly. Your email program has to earn its place in their inbox.
Section 1: List health
Your list is the foundation. If it’s dirty, nothing else matters.
| Metric | Your number | Healthy range | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total list size | ______ | — | — |
| Bounce rate (hard bounces, last 90 days) | ______% | Under 2% | ______ |
| Unsubscribe rate (last 90 days) | ______% | Under 0.5% per send | ______ |
| Spam complaint rate (last 90 days) | ______% | Under 0.1% | ______ |
| Contacts with no engagement in 6+ months | ______% | Under 30% | ______ |
| Contacts with no engagement in 12+ months | ______% | Under 15% | ______ |
| Contacts missing job title | ______% | Under 10% | ______ |
| Contacts missing company name | ______% | Under 10% | ______ |
The dead weight calculation
Contacts with no engagement in 12+ months are actively hurting your deliverability. Email providers (Gmail, Outlook) use engagement signals to decide whether your emails land in the inbox or the spam folder. Every send to a dead contact drags down your sender reputation.
Dead contacts count: ______
Option A: Suppress them. Stop sending. Your engagement rates will immediately improve.
Option B: Run a re-engagement campaign first (see Section 5), then suppress anyone who still doesn’t engage within 30 days.
Do not keep emailing people who haven’t opened in a year. Your deliverability to the contacts who do engage depends on it.
HR Tech-specific list quality issues
- Title inflation: “HR Manager” at a 50-person company and “HR Manager” at a 5,000-person company are completely different buyers. If your list doesn’t capture company size, your segmentation is blind.
- Role confusion: “People Operations” titles have exploded. Make sure your list distinguishes between strategic HR leaders (who buy software) and operational HR staff (who use it but don’t have purchase authority).
- Event list bloat: If you’ve been scanning badges at HR Tech Conference, SHRM, and Transform for 3 years, you likely have hundreds of contacts who visited your booth once and never engaged again. These are not leads — they’re list pollution.
Section 2: Segmentation audit
Sending the same email to your entire list is the fastest way to train HR buyers to ignore you.
Current segments
List every segment you actively use:
| Segment name | Definition | Size | Last used | Engagement rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
Segments you should have (but probably don’t)
| Segment | Why it matters for HR Tech | You have it? |
|---|---|---|
| By buyer role (CHRO vs. HR Director vs. HRIS Manager) | Each role has different priorities and different content needs | ______ |
| By company size (SMB vs. mid-market vs. enterprise) | A 200-person company’s HR challenges are fundamentally different from a 5,000-person company’s | ______ |
| By evaluation stage (awareness vs. considering vs. evaluating) | A prospect who downloaded a whitepaper shouldn’t get the same email as one who requested a demo | ______ |
| By engagement recency (active vs. cooling vs. cold) | Your most engaged contacts should get your best content first | ______ |
| By current tech stack (if known) | If they’re on a competing platform, displacement messaging works. If they’re using spreadsheets, education messaging works. | ______ |
The “one email equals one campaign” anti-pattern
If your current approach is: write one email, send it to everyone, call it a campaign — you’re not running an email program. You’re running a blast. Blasts train recipients to ignore you because the content is only relevant to a fraction of the list.
Test: Look at your last 5 sends. Were any of them sent to your full list? ______
If yes, that’s your first fix.
Section 3: Content audit
What are you actually sending? And is it what HR buyers want to receive?
Last 10 emails sent
| Date | Subject line | Type | Segment | Open rate | Click rate | Unsubscribes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ | ______ |
Content type distribution
Count how many of your last 20 emails fall into each category:
| Content type | Count | Ideal ratio |
|---|---|---|
| Product announcements (new features, updates) | ______ | 15–20% |
| Educational content (industry insights, best practices) | ______ | 35–40% |
| Social proof (case studies, customer stories) | ______ | 15–20% |
| Event invitations (webinars, conferences) | ______ | 10–15% |
| Direct sales (demo requests, special offers) | ______ | 10–15% |
| Company news (leadership changes, funding, awards) | ______ | Under 5% |
What HR buyers actually open
Based on patterns across HR Tech email programs:
- Benchmark data and salary/benefits surveys — HR leaders are measured against industry benchmarks. Content that helps them understand where they stand gets opened and forwarded.
- Compliance and regulatory updates — When the DOL issues new overtime rules or the ACA changes, HR buyers need to know. Timely compliance content has the highest open rates in the category.
- Peer stories — Not vendor case studies (those feel like ads). Stories framed as “how [company like yours] solved [problem you have]” with specific, named outcomes.
- “What we’re seeing” market intelligence — Aggregate trends from your customer base (anonymized) that help HR buyers understand what peers are doing.
What HR buyers ignore:
- Product update emails (unless the update directly addresses a known pain)
- Generic “thought leadership” that restates obvious industry trends
- Emails that open with company news before getting to what’s useful for the reader
Section 4: Send cadence and timing
| Question | Your answer | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| How often do you email your full list? | ______ | No more than 2x/month |
| How often do you email engaged segments? | ______ | Weekly is fine if content is relevant |
| Do you have a cadence for new subscribers? | ______ | Yes — welcome series within first 7 days |
| Do you have a cadence for post-demo no-decisions? | ______ | Yes — nurture series, not sales follow-up |
| What day/time do you typically send? | ______ | Test, but Tuesday–Thursday mornings tend to perform |
The cadence mistake HR Tech companies make
Sending too rarely is worse than sending too often. If HR buyers only hear from you quarterly (or when you want something), you’re not building a relationship — you’re cold-emailing with extra steps. A consistent newsletter or content series (2x/month minimum) keeps you in consideration when the buying window opens.
Your current average sends per month: ______
Your engagement trend over the last 6 months: Improving / Stable / Declining
If declining + infrequent sends: your list is going cold. Increase frequency with higher-value content.
Section 5: Re-engagement and sunset protocol
For contacts who’ve gone quiet.
Re-engagement campaign structure
Target: Contacts with no email engagement in 90–365 days
| Timing | Subject line approach | Content | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Day 0 | Value-forward — lead with something useful | Best-performing content from the last quarter |
| 2 | Day 7 | Direct — acknowledge the silence | ”We noticed you haven’t been reading — here’s what you missed” |
| 3 | Day 14 | Last chance — clear opt-out | ”Should we stop emailing you? Click here to stay, or we’ll remove you in 7 days” |
After email 3: Anyone who didn’t open or click gets suppressed. Not deleted — suppressed. You keep the record but stop sending.
Why this is hard (and why you should do it anyway)
Suppressing contacts feels wrong — you worked hard to get those email addresses. But keeping them on the active list hurts deliverability for everyone else. It’s better to have 2,000 engaged contacts than 8,000 addresses where 6,000 never open.
Section 6: 90-day improvement roadmap
Based on your health check results, prioritize:
Month 1: Fix the foundation
| Action | Owner | Done? |
|---|---|---|
| Suppress contacts with zero engagement in 12+ months | ______ | ______ |
| Add missing job titles and company sizes to top 500 contacts | ______ | ______ |
| Create at least 3 segments based on role and company size | ______ | ______ |
| Define what qualifies as a “newsletter” vs. a “nurture” email | ______ | ______ |
Month 2: Improve the content
| Action | Owner | Done? |
|---|---|---|
| Audit last 10 sends against the content type distribution | ______ | ______ |
| Plan next month’s sends with content type balance in mind | ______ | ______ |
| Build one re-engagement campaign (3 emails) | ______ | ______ |
| Create one piece of benchmark/compliance content | ______ | ______ |
Month 3: Optimize and measure
| Action | Owner | Done? |
|---|---|---|
| Run re-engagement campaign, suppress non-responders | ______ | ______ |
| Compare engagement rates month-over-month (expect improvement) | ______ | ______ |
| Establish monthly email reporting with 3 KPIs: deliverability, engagement, conversions | ______ | ______ |
| Set a recurring calendar item for quarterly list hygiene | ______ | ______ |
Building the business case for email investment
If your email program needs more resources (better tooling, dedicated content, or design help):
- “Our email list of [X] contacts is our most direct channel to HR buyers, but [Y]% are disengaged and actively hurting our deliverability to the [Z]% who are engaged.”
- “Our email engagement has [improved/declined] over the last 6 months. With proper segmentation and content strategy, comparable HR Tech companies see 25–35% open rates and 3–5% click rates.”
- “Email is the lowest cost-per-touch channel we have. Improving it from [current state] to [target state] requires [specific investment] and would increase our pipeline contribution from email by [estimated impact].”