New to Claude Skills? Learn how to install them →

aaron-he-zhu on GitHub

Email Quality Auditor

Free

Ensure your email campaigns meet compliance and performance standards.

Get this skill

Free · Opens the source repo

What Email Quality Auditor does

The Email Quality Auditor skill is designed to help users audit their email programs and campaigns to ensure they meet necessary compliance and performance standards before sending. By utilizing a structured 20-item SEND profile, this skill checks critical elements such as authentication, consent, opt-out mechanisms, and claims against the program's own evidence. This ensures that your email communications are not only safe to send but also align with best practices in email marketing.

This skill is particularly useful for marketers and email campaign managers who need to assess the quality and compliance of their email programs prior to launching large broadcasts. It provides a systematic approach to evaluate various aspects of the email, including open rates, consent events, and suppression states, which are crucial for maintaining a good sender reputation and ensuring legal compliance.

The Email Quality Auditor operates by reading data from the specified email program and its associated evidence sources, then scoring it against established criteria. It does not alter any email settings or send any emails, making it a safe tool for pre-send evaluations. Users can quickly generate reports that highlight any potential issues or areas for improvement, ensuring that campaigns are optimized for engagement and compliance.

This skill is intended for users who require a reliable method to validate their email campaigns before they go live. It is not suitable for setting up deliverability configurations or designing email sequences, as those tasks are better handled by other specialized skills. Instead, this tool focuses solely on auditing and ensuring that existing programs meet the necessary standards for a successful email send.

When to use it

Use this skill before launching any significant email campaign to ensure compliance with authentication and consent regulations.

When not to use it

This skill is not meant for creating email campaigns or managing deliverability setups; other tools should be used for those purposes.

What you can build with it

Pre-launch Campaign Audit

Run an audit on your email campaign before launching to ensure compliance and effectiveness.

Compliance Check

Verify that your email program meets legal requirements for authentication and consent.

Performance Assessment

Evaluate the expected performance of your email campaigns based on historical data and engagement metrics.

How to install Email Quality Auditor

View source

1. Install with the skills CLI

npx skills add aaron-he-zhu/aaron-marketing-skills/email-quality-auditor --agent claude-code

2. Or install it manually

Download the skill folder and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/ for all projects, or .claude/skills/ to scope it to one repo. Restart Claude Code so it picks up the new skill.

Anthropic's agentic coding CLI, and the reference implementation of Agent Skills. Drop a skill folder into ~/.claude/skills and Claude Code loads it automatically whenever a task matches the skill's description. Claude Code docs

Inside SKILL.md

Written by aaron-he-zhu

Email Quality Auditor

Audit one email program/profile and observation window with SEND. Open rate is MPP-sensitive proxy evidence; direct action and the program's declared outcome truth set carry the outcome read.

When This Must Trigger

  • Before a material broadcast/sequence release when channel safety is uncertain.
  • When authentication, consent, suppression, complaints, frequency, claims, or attribution need a gate.
  • When the user requests an EQS/SEND baseline or rerun.

Quick Start

Audit this newsletter using the last 90 days, provider split, MPP share, and subscription truth set.
Check this promotional send against DMARC, consent events, live suppressions, claims, and order IDs.

Skill Contract

Reads: one program/profile, normalized window, provider evidence, live consent/suppression state, rendered messages, and outcome truth. Writes: only a permissioned v3 artifact. Done when: all expected SEND states are explicit and the scorer result is reported without sending email or changing provider settings.

Use deliverability-qa to repair authentication, consent-registry for lawful-basis/suppression facts, email-sequence-designer for journeys, and send-experiment-designer for preregistered tests.

Data Sources

NeedPreferred evidence
AuthenticationDNS, message headers, DMARC aggregate evidence
Consent/suppressionAppend-only consent events plus current live projection
Placement/reputationProvider/seed panel and dated ESP/provider reports
EngagementCohort/provider/MPP-segmented ESP export
LifecycleTrigger/flow configuration and event export
OutcomeEcommerce, CRM, subscription, sponsorship, or named equivalent truth set
ContentRendered message/destination and approved claim/disclosure state

Instructions

Runtime Reads

  • ../../../references/auditor-runbook.md
  • ../../../references/scoring-semantics.md
  • ../../../references/send-benchmark.md
  • ../../../references/runtime-invocation.md
  • references/auditor-runtime.md

Runtime and Setup

Read ../../../references/auditor-runbook.md, scoring-semantics.md, send-benchmark.md, and the SEND catalog entry. Standalone installs use bundled immutable references/auditor-runtime.md; never fetch mutable main. Before deterministic calls, follow runtime-invocation.md, resolve AARON_SKILLS_ROOT="${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null || true)}", and require the scorer, validator, and typed catalogs. If unavailable, return score_state: NOT_SCORED / score_confidence: not_scored with no gate verdict or persistent artifact.

Declare profile (promotional|retention|cold-outbound|newsletter), target/program, provider, market, normalized window, list age, MPP share, and observation date.

Evidence and Scoring

  1. Freeze evidence and reconcile provider cohorts/windows before comparing rates.
  2. Score all 20 S1..D5 criteria. Every observed state requires source/date/type/confidence.
  3. E2 is N/A with reason when opens/CTOR are not used. N3/N5 are conditional by program design. Missing records or exports are Unknown, not N/A.
  4. Verify vetoes:
    • SEND-S1: required authentication is demonstrably broken/unaligned.
    • SEND-S2: a purchased/scraped/unlawful list is verified; missing provenance is Unknown.
    • SEND-N1: opt-out is broken/absent or a recorded suppression is not honored.
    • SEND-D1: material claim/disclosure/offer term fails approved evidence.
  5. Run the typed scorer. Use clicks/replies/downstream actions as primary engagement evidence where available; opens/CTOR remain caveated proxy evidence.

For a send-only review without enough program evidence, report the verified red-line checks and exact gaps but return NOT_SCORED/UNDECIDED; “no blocker observed in supplied evidence” is not a full SEND SHIP verdict.

§2 SEND Worked Examples

  • Complete newsletter profile, raw 81, no veto/fail: DONE/SHIP, final 81.
  • Complete promotional profile, raw 76, one verified S1 failure: DONE_WITH_CONCERNS/FIX, final 59.
  • Complete profile, verified S2 and N1 failures: DONE/BLOCK, no final score.
  • Consent provenance absent: S2 Unknown, NEEDS_INPUT/UNDECIDED, no score.

§3 SEND Guardrails

  • DMARC p=none with aligned SPF/DKIM and active monitoring is not automatically an S1 failure.
  • Provider one-click-unsubscribe policy and statutory duties must be named separately.
  • Opens and CTOR require MPP segmentation/proxy caveat; they cannot establish human attention alone.
  • A newsletter need not have cart/post-purchase flows; score only journeys applicable to its declared program.
  • Over-frequency is a serious E4/E5 finding, not an automatic veto.

§5 SEND Translation

Explain channel and recipient risk in plain language. On trace request, qualify SEND-S1/S2/N1/D1 and show the underlying DNS/event/rendered evidence.

Report and Verdict

Begin with the auditor-runbook's exact typed conversation header. Never replace status, verdict, or score_state with prose; list each explicitly missing qualified item as ``ID: `unknown``` before findings.

Show verdict, profile/context, score or coverage/interval, confidence, S/E/N/D detail, outcome truth set, verified critical controls, Unknown inputs, and fix owners. Do not claim deliverability/inbox placement from DNS alone and do not execute a send.

Validation Checkpoints

  • Program/profile/provider/window/list age/market/MPP share are declared.
  • Live suppression state was verified by replay, not a stale projection or pending proposal.
  • All 20 states are valid; conditional N/A has a reason.
  • Provider metrics and reconciled outcome truth are separated.
  • No email/provider mutation occurred without separate explicit approval.

Persistence

Persist only after explicit authorization to memory/audits/email/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md. Preserve the scorer's orthogonal status and verdict; validate the complete v3 draft with validate-audit-artifact.py against the intended --relative-path, persist only through one full-content Write, and revalidate the target per the auditor runbook. Edit/shell/MCP mutations of the reserved sink are unsupported. Do not autonomously modify consent, claims, provider settings, or hot cache.

Reference Materials

Next Best Skill

Frequently asked questions about Email Quality Auditor

Similar skills