Don’t Forget to Test
No, not offer testing, or testing new design—though you should do that, too—the testing we’re referring to here is basic nuts and bolts testing. Why? To make sure the email you’re sending is perfect, of course. But you Previewed the message, isn’t that enough? No, not really—it helps to see and interact with the email again in your inbox; and not everything appears in the actual email as it does in Preview (i.e. personalization tags). You really can’t test enough when, for example, a bad or forgotten link can easily cost you sales and cause the failure of your campaign. Testing is grueling work, but it has to get done every time you send an email.
Here are some things to look for when testing:
Test appearance.
- Make sure it looks ok in the email client your company uses. This is important because this is where many of your coworkers and supervisors will see the email.
- If you can, also check the rendering in different email clients. How much trouble you go through to do this will depend on the likelihood of your customers receiving email in these different clients—i.e. Microsoft’s Outlook, Mozilla’s Thunderbird, and Apple’s Mail.
- Test the appearance of your email in different Web-based email services. Sign up for a few different free email addresses with Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. so that you can see how the email renders/looks in these different webmail providers. You can get a picture of the webmail providers you should prioritize testing by reviewing your email list for the domains the majority of your customers’ emails are with.
- Check these web-based email accounts in different browsers if you can (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari)
- Ensure any personalization code you’ve used resolves.
- See how your subject line appears—can you view the whole thing, or is it cut off? If it’s cut off, is the break acceptable or do you need to rewrite it to make more sense?
Test functionality.
- Make sure all your links work.
- Make sure the links go to the desired landing page.
- Double check open-tracking and link-tracking.
Double-check for errors.
- Make sure the From address and From name are correct.
- Check once again for design errors and typos. Seeing the email actually in your inbox can give you fresh eyes to look at it yet again and catch any mistakes.
- Ensure the footer info like company address, unsubscribe links, etc. are displayed correctly and that they work.
You’ll probably find you need to test the email more than once. For the final round of testing (or for what you hope will be the final round) you might consider setting up a “test group” (or Category in Mustang List) of test email addresses you’ve created with different email service providers. Then you can send the email once, but receive it at several different accounts and quickly check the email’s appearance. You’ll also be able to see the email as your subscribers will see it when it’s sent “for real.” For example, when you send yourself a test email by entering your email address in the Test Address Field, you will not see the personalization your subscribers will see—you’ll still see the code. To see the code populated with data, you must send the actual email to your list or to a category of the list.
Consider including in this “test group” the email addresses for supervisors and co-workers who need to sign off on the email. Since this email will be the closest to the version subscribers will receive—with any/all code populated with data—sending a test email to a test group in the system is a great way to get internal approval on the final version.