10 Years of Acid: A Decade of Helping Email Marketers Send Better Email

Email on Acid turned 10 years old this year—a full decade of helping email marketers QA and send better email.

Suffice it to say, a lot has happened during that time:

• Our platform now includes Spam Testing, Advanced Email Analytics, Email Editor, and Campaign Precheck tools
• Our servers run millions of email tests
• The platform as a whole helps countless brands, from startups to enterprise, enhance their email marketing and increase their bottom line

Email on Acid was also the very first email QA platform to allow users to run accessibility checks and make ADA-compliant code adjustments with simple click-to-fix technology (patent pending). This is something we’re especially proud of, given how important accessibility is to both users who need accessible emails and brands who can now connect with them in a meaningful way.

Everything we’ve done in the last ten years (and will continue for years to come) has been in the spirit of saving brands time and budget so they can spend those on higher-level marketing activities.

In celebration of our 10th year, we’re highlighting the top 10 things we’re most excited that we’ve gotten to do for our users.

Email on Acid started out as an email testing platform. Since our launch, every subscription plan has included unlimited email tests and previews. Over the years, our offering of email clients and devices for email previews has climbed to more than 90, and we’re not stopping.

This achievement particularly excites us. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.3 billion people worldwide live with some form of visual impairment. Before Campaign Precheck’s Accessibility feature was introduced, there was no email QA testing platform that would check a brand’s email for accessibility. This was preventing email marketers from connecting with visually impaired subscribers.

We’ve seen this feature adopted into more and more workflows, which means that brands are improving their color contrast ratios, enhancing CTAs so they’re easier to act on, removing title attributes, and setting alt text and table presentation roles.

We credit the tool’s user friendliness for its quick adoption into people’s workflows. Having the ability to click a button that automatically adjusts the code to remove title attributes, set presentation roles, and even make color corrections has been paramount to clients’ success in using it seamlessly.

We counted them by hand. Just kidding, our data analyst used their fancy toolset.

Email marketers have run their HTML through our servers over 16 million times. That doesn’t even account for the number of previews each test returns.

On average, brands who use our platform save 45 minutes per email, which roughly translates to $100k in reduced annual expenses on email content checking. Those are substantial savings that can be put to more impactful use, simply gained from streamlining a workflow.

Any email marketer or developer is able to come into the Email on Acid platform with no email content, copy or code and create a polished gem they can be proud to send to subscribers.

Email Editor allows email marketers to build emails from scratch, or fine tune any coding issues that arise after running an email test. Code changes render instantly on the right hand preview so you can see adjustments.

By streamlining the email creation and QA process, email marketers have the assurance that their code will render as intended.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Being a SaaS company, we love rendering old processes obsolete in exchange for faster, more reliable techniques. This is why we’ve put such a heavy emphasis on the collaboration elements of our platform.

Lengthy email threads and reply-alls to managers and clients during the review, feedback and approval process are officially unnecessary. Thanks to the Mark-Up tool, Share Link, and Email Testing, every stakeholder can have eyes on and give feedback to email previews right in the platform.

No piece of direction goes unseen, and everyone stays on the same page throughout the process.

Email marketing is more than just pretty design and a send button. It’s an ever-evolving, bar-raising world of new tactics (like interactive functionalities) to engage subscribers. HTML tips and hacks extend beyond funky email tricks—they can also improve the overall rendering of an email and the user experience.

There is an abundance of content on our blog that discusses why code behaves the way that it does and things you can do to improve the reader’s experience on certain clients. These include how to use media queries, creating responsive emails, and even simple code fixes you can use in your very own workflow.

Without our customers, we wouldn’t be here. Simple as that. Our clients’ feedback allows us to continue improving and expanding our platform. If users have an issue or question about their workflow, we are here to help.

We’re in the business of saving brands time with a streamlined workflow, and that includes fast access to help and assistance. While we do have ample resources and how-tos available for solo problem solvers, our team is only an email/phone call/in-app Intercom chat away. Real humans answer every message as they come in real time. And that’s how we achieve five-star customer service.

Not only that, but selfishly, good customer service is in our best interest as well. Each customer contact is a learning that we take back to our Product team for the next round of updates and improvements. The workflow you use is what it is, thanks to users reaching out.

We may not have started out with email previews on more than 90 clients and devices, but they’re available now. We’re constantly adding more clients and devices so that brands whose subscribers are on them can guarantee their email will render correctly and quickly.

Outlook can be a real pill to work with. While it’s certainly seen improvements, it’s still one of the more finicky clients to please. Things like code, images, GIFs and more can all cause hiccups.

(one more for good luck…)

Email deliverability is a beast in itself. Spam Testing and blocklist checks improve your deliverability by helping you land in more inboxes. Spam Testing will even check for “spammy” words and phrases in your email that could trigger a spam filter.

Being able to proactively let users know their deliverability and blocklist status and content issues before they press send has been pivotal in their ability to reach more subscribers.

Progress is our M.O. and we only achieve that when you see success.

It’s been a ride so far, and we can’t wait to keep enhancing and ever-expanding the Email on Acid platform. Our goal is to continuously make it more valuable for email marketers with new products and features you didn’t know you wanted.

Thanks for being here with us. We wouldn’t have seen our 10th birthday without you.