Email Data Audit

Definition

An email data audit is a comprehensive examination of all subscriber data within an email programme. It evaluates data quality across completeness, accuracy, freshness, and consistency dimensions. It assesses data collection methods for consent compliance and privacy law alignment. It reviews data storage, access controls, and retention practices. And it examines how data is used across segmentation, personalisation, and targeting to ensure alignment with consent scope and regulatory requirements.

Audit Scope

• Data inventory: What data is collected, where it is stored, and how it flows between systems
• Data quality: Completeness, accuracy, and freshness of key subscriber fields
• Consent compliance: That consent matches collection method and scope, with proper documentation
• Data usage: That personalisation and segmentation use only data permitted by consent
• Data retention: That data is kept only as long as necessary and properly deleted when no longer needed
• Access controls: Who can view, export, and modify subscriber data
• Third-party data: Any enrichment or sharing arrangements with external data sources

Best Practices

• Conduct a full data audit annually with targeted spot checks quarterly
• Document audit findings and create a remediation plan with owner and timeline for each issue
• Prioritise compliance-related findings over quality-related findings in the remediation plan
• Use audit findings to update data governance policies and collection practices
• Include data audit results in programme health reporting to demonstrate governance to leadership