Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
Strategy, copywriting, design, development, list segmentation – there's a lot that goes into starting a new email marketing campaign. Experienced marketers know that thorough email testing before hitting send can save the day.
But sometimes the email team is in such a hurry to move forward and so excited about the results that people skip important steps in the pre-deployment process. An automated pre-shipment checklist helps your team thoroughly test each campaign and ensure costly mistakes don't leak out.
It's easy to think of automation as some kind of inhuman robot program or artificial intelligence taking over our jobs. Well, you can never be honest. But it doesn't have to be that way. Sometimes automation brings teams together and streamlines processes so we work more efficiently and effectively. That's exactly what an automated pre-deployment checklist like Campaign Precheck for email teams does.
Email checklists: manual vs. automated
It's almost time to hit send. Where is your email checklist? What if it's just a process document sitting in the cloud somewhere or a printout that the email team wants to hang in their workspaces? Are you sure your written email checklist is actually being used?
When we worked with Holistic Email Marketing to find out how email teams of different sizes work together to deliver email perfection, we discovered some interesting things about pre-deployment practices. You can read all about it in our white paper, “Error Emails: The Final Report.”
A telling finding from this survey was the fact that of the 52% of teams that have a documented email checklist, only 43% are using a state-of-the-art platform like Email on Acids Campaign Precheck, while the remaining 57% are testing email. Emails manually.
What is your current process for pre-deployment email testing?
The vast majority of teams with manual pre-deployment email checklists rely on the practice of sending test emails to colleagues who open and review them on different clients, devices and browsers to ensure everything is in place looks okay.
If you find that a bit lacking in efficiency and accuracy, then you're not wrong.
When testing email manually, it's important that the human gets it right every time. As much as you may trust your colleagues, it's not realistic to expect perfection. People have bad days, are forgetful, get distracted and make mistakes.
It also seems that the more people you include in the equation, the more likely email errors are to occur. Our email errors survey found that email team size is associated with a higher number of errors. Teams of six to ten people were significantly less likely to report 12 months of error-free results than smaller teams. For teams of 11 or more people, the numbers weren't quite as bad, but these particularly large teams were also the ones most likely to use state-of-the-art pre-deployment testing tools.
How many error emails has your team sent in the last 12 months?
Click for a larger image.
It's not hard to understand why this happens. There might be too many cooks in the kitchen making too many last minute adjustments. Or team members may ignore potential problems and assume that someone else will take care of it or that it is someone else's responsibility on the team.
A big benefit of an automated pre-send checklist is that it creates a consistent, repeatable process that teams of all sizes can use to test any email campaign. Machines and software only make mistakes when people program them incorrectly.
An automated pre-send checklist doesn’t do all the work for the email team. Rather, it keeps pre-deployment testing on track while empowering your team to do even more. With the pre-deployment process streamlined and the fear of hitting the “send” button removed, marketers, designers, and developers can focus on strategy, creativity, and innovation.
How email teams use an automated pre-send checklist
In our special report, “Email Marketing and the Next Normal,” we shared how our work and lives have changed due to the global pandemic and other events in 2020. These changes include the way email teams work together.
Let’s take the imaginary email marketing team pictured above as an example.
Previously, during pre-deployment testing, they would gather around a laptop to read the latest emails before launch. But now everyone is working from home. Since they are no longer in the same building, the process for reviewing and improving new templates or advertising campaigns is different and sometimes a little more demanding.
Luckily, this isn't just any email marketing team stock photo. This is a stock photo of an email marketing team using Campaign Precheck. This is how it works:
The email marketing specialist
This ambitious email marketing specialist has developed an exciting concept for a holiday-themed advertising campaign. He's done audience research, worked with copywriters and designers, selected subject lines for split testing, and it's almost time to launch.
But first he will use an automated checklist to ensure that everything is ready for use before shipping.
Using end-to-end content checks in the Email on Acid testing platform, he was able to optimize inbox display, perform a final check for spelling errors and profanity, validate the URLs for each link, and even detect deliverability or accessibility issues.
As he goes through Campaign Precheck's automated process, he is prompted to make changes and sees visual cues that track his progress through the checklist.
When using the automated pre-send checklist, this marketer realized that he had forgotten to use the pre-header text to support his subject lines. If there are other issues he can't solve, he can escalate them to the right team member.
The graphic designer
Let's say our marketer also notices some problems that he needs a graphic designer to solve.
There are some color contrast issues that impact email accessibility, and some graphics are too large, which could impact load time and thereby negatively impact subscriber retention.
So the email marketer pings the designer and requests some compressed or resized graphics. Campaign Precheck also pointed out accessibility adjustments that ensure the email is ADA compliant. The designer makes quick updates and the pre-deployment process continues.
The email developer
After you make the final changes to the design, text, and inbox display, the pre-send process passes to the email developer.
She's pretty sure her code is rock solid as always, but you never know how some email clients render HTML. Luckily, this developer can trust Email on Acid's email previews, which include screenshots showing how her code renders on more than 90 different clients and devices.
The developer uses the platform's email editor to make code changes in real time without having to switch back and forth between the ESP and the testing tool. She can also preview the email as many times as needed. Acid Offers Email unlimited testing in each of our plans.
The Senior Email Marketing Manager
Finally, the email team shares previews and test results with the boss. You notify the senior email marketer with shareable links that take her directly to the specific email client previews you want her to view.
The senior email marketer can then review the new campaign remotely and leave inline comments using collaboration features.
If she doesn't like something about the way the email is displayed in Outlook, she can give some advice. If there's a problem with Thunderbird, she might tell her developer not to worry about it, since that's just a tiny part of the list.
In addition to the benefits of the automated pre-send checklist, managers can also take advantage of Email on Acid's team management features. This gives our Sr. Emai Marketing Manager the ability to create custom user roles, control access to specific folders, and more!
Deliver perfect emails with an automated pre-send checklist
An automated pre-send checklist offers many other important benefits for email teams. This includes saving you time, reducing email marketing stress, and overcoming many of the challenges of the ever-changing email marketing world.
Ultimately, your subscribers are the most important reason to invest in pre-send email testing. They have given you permission to contact them through a very personal channel – their email inboxes. You deserve the best possible email experience.
If you're already an Email on Acid customer, sign in and start a Campaign Precheck project for your next email. Don't forget that templates and automations also need to be tested regularly!
If your email team needs to get used to testing every email, every campaign, every time, you can try Email on Acid with a free seven-day trial. Check out our plans and pricing to learn more about our automated pre-send checklist and all the other ways Email on Acid marketing technology helps you deliver emails perfectly.
Author: Betsy Grondy
With a decade of experience in email marketing, Betsy has developed email strategy and execution for more than 36 countries (for local brands as well as Fortune 500 companies) from the comfort of her home in North Carolina. As Acid's Senior Email Marketing Manager at Email, she enjoys being the meta in email marketing and striving for email perfection with every send. When she's not pushing the boundaries as an #emailgeek, she and her husband scour flea markets for cool vintage toys and mid-century modern furniture to restore.
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
