Email Marketing
How to Use Email on Acid with Your Email Service Provider (ESP)
Email Marketing
Whether it’s on social media, at a conference, or through our support channels, one of the most common questions we hear is: Is Email on Acid an email service provider (ESP)?
The short answer is: No. The slightly longer answer? We’re an email testing platform, which means we help you QA your email code and design, but we don’t send your emails. We leave the deployment to the ESPs like Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, Jango Mail etc.
Although an email testing service doesn’t deploy emails, you can easily use it alongside your ESP. In fact, some ESPs already have Email on Acid testing services integrated within their platforms.
In this post, we’ll dive into the email workflow and how email marketers and developers can use email testing software like Email on Acid together with an ESP. We’ll also look at which ESPs include Email on Acid services built into their platforms.
There are a few different ways to test your email with Email on Acid. Some of our users prefer the manual method, which involves copying and pasting the email HTML into our system. You can also start a manual test by entering a URL or uploading a zip file.
However, we recommend using our auto-process testing directly from your ESP, if possible. Auto-process is our preferred testing method because ESPs can sometimes make changes to your email – such as getting rid of white space or adding a tracking pixel – which may mess with your design. When you send your test to Email on Acid directly from your ESP, you’ll know what your message will look like when it hits your subscribers.
To use the Email on Acid auto-process test, send a test email from your ESP to your Email on Acid auto-process address. This email address is unique for every account, and you can find it at the top of your Email on Acid Inbox.
Once you send the test email, your email test results will appear in your Email on Acid Inbox. We’ll also send you an email when your test results are ready.
If you’re happy with how your email looks, you’re all set to send it out from your ESP. If you need to make changes, you can do so in your ESP and re-test by sending another test email to your Email on Acid auto-process address. You can also paste the HTML directly into our Email Editor to make your adjustments and watch the changes in real time.
Most ESPs offer some email analytics, which you can use to track engagement and subscriber data. However, how much information – and how detailed it is – varies across ESP platforms and plans.
Although we don’t send emails, Email on Acid’s All Access and Professional plans have a robust set of email analytics. The Email on Acid Advanced Email Analytics can provide information that some ESPs may not have, such as read/skim/delete percentages and usage stats for devices and clients. This added data can bring extra context to the stats you pull from your ESP, allowing you to optimize your campaigns to fit your audience’s needs and interests.
How do we gather email analytics without sending the emails directly? Once you copy-and-paste your HTML into our analytics tool, we’ll give you a tracking pixel to add to your HTML code. Then, when you send an email with that code, our system will be able to track opens, clicks, forwards, prints, read/skim/delete percentages, subscriber location and more.
In some cases, your ESP may already have Email on Acid integrated. We offer white label solutions for our Email Testing, Spam Testing and Advanced Email Analytics, which means an ESP can work with us to add these tools directly into their platform.
Some of the ESPs that include Email on Acid services include:
Email on Acid also integrates with several other marketing platforms and customer relationship management tools. If you’re curious whether your marketing tool has email testing available, just ask! Or, feel free to contact us for more information.
Whether you use MailChimp, SendGrid, Campaign Monitor, Jango Mail, or another ESP, we play nice with all of them. Sending test emails to Email on Acid allows you to preview your message on more than 70 email clients and devices, so you can catch problems early and improve your email marketing ROI. Give our free trial a go and see for yourself!
