12 Reasons Why Marketers Should Test Every Email Campaign
When you don’t test every email you send, it’s a lot like not brushing your teeth every day. Something is going to end up stinking: your breath or your results. Stop testing or brushing for long enough, and you’re bound to have some serious problems.
Email marketers have a lot riding on their shoulders because a lot is expected from an email strategy. It needs to drive website traffic, help nurture and convert leads, build customer loyalty, and reduce churn. That’s just for starters.
Our survey on delivering email perfection found it takes most teams around a week or two to develop a new campaign. Taking the time to test every email might seem overly laborious considering all the other steps you’re taking to get an email out the door. After you’ve put in all that effort, email pre-deployment testing using an automated tool like Email on Acid’s Campaign Precheck is worth the little bit of extra time.
Don’t believe us? Let’s take a closer look. Check out the graphic below illustrating 12 reasons why email testing is needed with every campaign.
Table of content
Why Test Every Email with Campaign Precheck?
Because email mistakes happen
1. Typos and misspellings
It’s easy for a minor typo to slip through the cracks, even when you’ve got multiple people proofreading email copy and graphics. But every time it happens, your customers lose a little bit of faith in and respect for your brand. It’s not always minor, either. We’ve all heard the horror stories about a naughty word getting missed because it was just a little too close to the word you meant to use.
That’s why Campaign Precheck includes a content checklist that automatically calls out spelling errors in your emails so you can fix them before hitting send. It’s a safety net for mistakes after those last-minute copy changes are added.
2. Bad links
In most cases, one of the main purposes of email marketing is to drive people from their inboxes to your website. You want them to take a specific action: view a landing page, check out a new product, or read about important company news. But a broken link in an email is a costly mistake.
You’ll end up losing potential sales and you’ll frustrate your subscribers who land on the wrong content or see a 404 page instead of what they expected.
That’s why the Email on Acid content checklist includes URL validation to make sure every link in your message is verified. This feature even double-checks UTM parameters so you can accurately collect tracking data.
3. Personalization errors
Campaign Monitor says personalized subject lines increase email open rates by 26% and personalized marketing experiences lead to a 20% average increase in sales. Statista reports that an overwhelming 90% of U.S. consumers find marketing personalization appealing.
However, if you’re adding personalization to emails, messing it up can have the opposite effect. When a subscriber sees “Hey [firstname]” in an email, the curtain is pulled back and the magic of personalization disappears. Now they know they’re just another name on the list.
Pre-deployment testing can help you catch these kinds of email errors before you hit send. Email Previews from Email on Acid will show you if personalization fields aren’t populating correctly when you send tests through your ESP or use sample data for the auto-process address.
Because email is always evolving
4. Email client rendering inconsistencies
One of the biggest challenges for developers is getting emails to show up as intended on different clients and devices. The way things render on Gmail might be much different than Apple Mail, and Outlook can be a major challenge at times. There’s no standardization. What you need is a way to see your email across a variety of inboxes.
That’s why Email on Acid’s Email Previews give you a reliable way to review your work on 90 different clients and devices. You can’t fix email rendering problems you don’t know about. So, test every email!
5. Dark mode and accessibility
One UX trend that’s causing plenty of headaches for designers and developers is dark mode emails. As we’ve mentioned, email clients render things quite differently. Resolving those issues becomes even more complex when you throw dark mode settings into the mix.
Dark mode is related to email accessibility, which is yet another UX factor marketers must consider if they want to reach as many people as possible.
We’ve included an Accessibility tool in our platform to help you connect with more subscribers. Plus, Email on Acid includes dark mode previews so you can shed some light on how people experience your email with those settings turned on.
6. Interactive/dynamic emails
Cutting edging email marketers are actively investing in taking their strategy to the next level. For many, that includes exploring interactivity and dynamic content. The future of email includes the ability to fill out forms without leaving the inbox, personalized product recommendations, and real-time information.
The tools and resources you use to add these impressive features take time and cost money. Don’t put your efforts or the budget to waste. While you can't exactly test dynamic content for every subscriber, pre-deployment testing does serve an important purpose. View email previews to make sure the templates you're using to showcase these enhancements are rendering correctly. Plus, with sample data, you can check to see if variables such as geolocation and weather, or features like countdown timers, are working correctly. Email on Acid protects your investment in groundbreaking email technology.
Because pre-send email testing improves your reach
7. Avoid spam filters and domain blocklisting
You must address email deliverability issues if you want your campaigns to be successful. An email that lands in the spam folder is a wasted email. Domain blocklisting could be an even bigger problem.
Your ESP may not alert you to spam issues until after your email is sent. But, Email on Acid’s Campaign Precheck can run email deliverability checks beforehand. We test your email against 23 different spam filters and check your domain’s IP against several well-known blocklisting services.
8. Boost opens with better inbox display
There are a lot of different inboxes out there. How will your email’s subject line and preheader text look in each of them? Many subscribers will choose to open your email based on the subject line alone. So, optimizing inbox display is a strategic move.
Email on Acid helps you increase open rates as you preview what actually shows up in the subject line, pre-header text, and sender name. Your email only has one chance to make a good first impression!
9. Optimize emails for mobile devices
Your team is developing and designing emails on desktops, but a good portion of your audience is opening those emails on smartphones and tablets. There are a lot of different mobile devices out there. Are you sure your emails are always displaying as intended?
Some email teams use manual processes to check for device rendering issues, which often means sending a test email to a colleague with a certain type of phone. With Email on Acid, you can see for yourself exactly how it will look on dozens of different devices. Our mobile screenshots give you accurate results.
Because email testing provides protection
10. Protect your investment in email marketing
Whether you’re an email team of one or you’re leading a large email team – mistakes happen. But you can also easily avoid most of them. From your email service provider and all the email tools you’re using to the salaries you’re paying and the agencies and consultants you’ve hired, investing in email isn’t cheap.
It is, however, a worthwhile investment. Email remains one of the most consistently effective marketing channels. When you test every email, you’re making sure you get the most out of it.
Find out more about our email team management features.
11. Protect your brand’s reputation
Want to destroy trust and tarnish your brand’s reputation? Send out a few bad emails that frustrate and disappoint your subscribers. All you need is a few typos, some broken links, and designs that render in an unappealing or unreadable way.
Want to appear as professional as possible and remain in good standing with your customers and prospects? Test every email, every campaign, every time.
12. Protect your job security
It’s unrealistic to expect complete perfection from any email team. But let’s be honest, make enough costly mistakes and someone could be polishing up their resume and hitting the online job boards.
There are likely some people in your organization who don’t understand how hard it is to make email marketing work. All they see is an email that didn’t render right or a typo in your copy. When you test with Email on Acid, you’ll have a little extra job security.
Start testing with Email on Acid today
Email testing vastly improves your chance to deliver email perfection. And with the right solution, it’s pretty painless.
Maybe you subscribed to Email on Acid months ago, and you haven’t been using it lately. Perhaps you assume that since you’ve tested your templates, everything should be good to go. That’s risky.
Because email is always evolving and because there are so many things that might go wrong with each email, testing every email campaign should be a priority. Using Email on Acid relieves that dreaded “send button anxiety” and reduces email marketing stress, giving you confidence and peace of mind. Your investment, your brand, and your job are safe thanks to Email on Acid.
Ensure peace of mind -- log in now and start testing. Got questions? Contact us and let us know. If you’re not testing your emails yet … what better time than now? We offer a free seven-day trial so you can see how it works.
