Monitoring Best Practices: Email Testing & Preview with MailMonitor
Today, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your audience. At the same time, it’s also one of the hardest channels to get right. Email subscribers are more wary than ever before and with good reason – according to Statista, roughly 44 billion emails are sent every day in North America alone.
Knowing this, after all the hard work that goes into designing and coding your perfect email, you’d probably want to know if it’s going to fail miserably once it hits your recipients’ inboxes. And even if you think your email looks great on every device, can you be sure that everyone out there will see it the same way you do?
Testing is an extremely important part of the email marketing process. It can feel pointless when you have a brand-new piece of code that doesn’t yet have any problems. But testing isn’t just about catching problems before they get to users; it also helps us identify things we might not have thought about while creating our campaign.
If you’re new to email marketing or planning to begin an email campaign, in this blog post we will show you how MailMonitor can help preview the design and test the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Dark Mode Optimization
If you’re sending emails to Outlook users, you should be aware that Outlook does not support the “dark mode” feature that Apple introduced with iOS 13. This is a significant issue for email marketers because a lot of people tend to spend their time in “dark mode” (either with Apple’s built-in setting or a third-party app like F.lux). As such, you’ll want to test your emails in both modes to ensure that they’ll look good to both types of readers. Similarly, Gmail’s built-in “dark” theme doesn’t fully match the “dark mode” in Outlook. As such, Gmail users will see emails that look similar to the screenshot below whereas Outlook users see a fully black interface.
Grammar and Punctuations Correction
You’ve probably noticed that every time you send an email, your computer or mobile device corrects any potential spelling or grammar mistakes as you type. But when your email is sent out to your subscribers, your computer doesn’t make those corrections for them. That means even a small misspelling or grammar mistake could be very confusing for your readers. For example, without the correction functionality, an email with a subject line like “It’s Time for a Vacation!” might be received by your readers as “Its Time for a Vacation!” Even if your readers understand the misspelling, that’s still an immediate red flag. To avoid this, you should always proofread your emails before you send them out. This is true even if you’re using a template because you can’t control how your readers will see your email.
No more broken links and images
There’s a good chance that you’re linking to and embedding other images or content in your email campaigns. At the same time, those links might not be clickable or functional on the devices used by your readers. If you’re sending your emails using an email marketing service like MailMonitor, you can use the “Image check” function to see if those links are broken. When you select an image, this feature automatically attempts to open the image in an iframe (a separate browser window). If it can’t open the image, it will report that the image is broken. By using this feature, you can make sure that your links are functional and your images can be seen properly.
Structure and Layout Inspection
Your email campaigns will look slightly different depending on the email client your subscribers are using. That means that even if you’ve used a template that looks perfect on your end, your readers might not see your email as you intended. Luckily, you can use the “Layout check” function to see how your email appears in different email clients. This tool will show you a screenshot of how your email would look in Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail. By using this function, you can make sure that your email is being displayed properly across different devices. This can be particularly helpful if you’re sending a long or complex email that might be difficult to read if it’s displayed incorrectly.
Design Template Review
While you’re testing and editing your email, you also want to make sure that the design of your email is appropriate. Ideally, you want your emails to look professional and trustworthy. However, many email marketing services allow you to use templates that are designed for maximum impact. While these templates can be great if you’re sending a short email, they can be distracting and off-putting if you use them in a long email. If you’re sending an email with a template, make sure your content isn’t overpowering the design. Your readers should be able to see what the email is about without having to navigate away from the email to a new page.
Subject Line Preview
Your email subscribers are likely to skim your subject line before deciding whether or not to open your email. That’s why it’s important to make sure that your subject line accurately reflects the content of your email. However, you might be tempted to write a misleading or overly promotional subject line. If you’re writing a long email, it can also be difficult to fit a descriptive subject line in a single line. Fortunately, you can use MailMonitor’s “Subject check” feature to see how your subject line will appear in mail clients like Gmail, Outlook, and Apple. You can also test out different variations of your subject line to see what works best with your audience.
Ultimately, email marketing is a long-term strategy. Even though you should strive to make each email campaign as effective as possible, it’s important to remember that email campaigns take time to work. That means that you should never feel rushed or tempted to send out an email before it’s ready. At the same time, you shouldn’t feel like you need to wait until you’ve published your first email before you start testing and editing. Instead, it’s a good idea to start testing your emails as soon as you’ve written them. This way, you can make sure that your emails are delivered properly and that they’re the best they can be.
