Mistakes in emails happen. Whether it’s broken links, incorrect data, display issues or that dreaded typo, we’ve all been there. But how can you prevent these errors from occurring? Here are 5 email checks you should carry out before you hit send.
1. Always test as an email
Your ESP will have a number tools for you to take advantage of, however, it’s always worthwhile testing your campaign as an actual email because your browser is good at understanding bad and broken HTML. As with all testing, it should take place in the environment it’s going to be seen in. Testing as an email will show up all sorts of issues you might not see otherwise – from broken HTML tags, special characters appearing as a ‘?’ or a square box, to broken links or any other ‘intelligent’ ways the email client will kindly try to destroy your HTML, all in aid of making things easier for recipients!
2. Preview personalisation
Any personalisation added in your email should be thoroughly tested. Whether this is simple first name personalisation or complex dynamic content, you should always check this against plenty of records. In Maxemail, you can preview any record, and filter by customer data points or dynamic content versions. This makes life a lot easier as other ESP’s require you to create special seed lists. And it doesn’t stop there – it’s always worthwhile sending a test email to a desired address or seed list, as well as taking advantage of Litmus testing.
3. Is your data correct?
So your email looks good, all the links work and everybody is happy. But is it actually going to the right people? Sometimes we see marketers forget this piece of the proofing puzzle. This is a crucial part to remember and can be as simple as looking at list totals or checking for records that should or should not get the email using the Preview tool in Maxemail.
4. Rendering
I’ve touched on the fact that email clients don’t like standard HTML. This is why it’s essential to test across all devices when sending a new template. Our integration with Litmus makes this easy, allowing you to test all major email clients in a few minutes without having to have accounts or devices. This is especially important for seeing what your email looks like on mobile devices – even if you have used responsive HTML, numerous places like Gmail on your mobile can ignore this.
5. Multiple pairs of eyes
The best person to test an email is someone who hasn’t seen it before, and ideally someone outside of your department. They will see things you will never see as you have been working on it too long. This is the most important check and if you don’t use it then you risk these same people spotting errors after all of your subscribers have received the email.
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