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When was the last time you looked at your email templates?
If you're like most email marketers, it may have been a while. It can be so tempting to “set it and forget it” like your email templates. After all, the whole point of creating them is to streamline the email sending process. But if you don't regularly check and test your templates, you could be sending emails with errors… and you'd never know.
Why you can’t simply “set it and forget it” templates
That's because inbox providers are constantly changing their software, so code that worked one day may not work the next time you send it. Just last month, I was testing one of our welcome templates and I kept seeing this weird error in Outlook 365 that I could have sworn wasn't there the day before.
Another time, an old temporary bug broke everything in Yahoo! for a few days. The solution was pretty easy to install, but when the Yahoo! team reverted the change, it was my solution that broke everything.
Wouldn't it be nice if email clients would notify you before important releases? Sigh. Maybe one day.
In the meantime, you need to establish a solid routine for reviewing and testing your email templates. That's why it's so important to go back to your tried and tested templates and test them again, especially when you're creating new email campaigns, because you just don't know when something like this will happen.
7 things to consider when testing templates
At Email on Acid, we test every time we send an email. This includes our newsletter and one-off campaign templates. However, it's important to set a reminder in your calendar once a month – or at least once a quarter – to quickly put your templates through another test. Here's what you should keep in mind:
1. Outdated code
First, look at the code of the emails. Does it match the code you currently write for new emails? Are you using makeshift workarounds that you no longer need? Look at the code and clean it up if possible – this will make your work easier later.
When it comes to outdated code, think about the little elements that get passed down from year to year. Check the copyright date and your footers at the beginning of each calendar year. Some ESPs like MailChimp have shortcodes that update automatically, but you'll probably have to do this manually each January.
Be sure to check and test any personalized tokens that appear in your email. You never know if a change in the data structure might accidentally display FIRST_NAME instead of… the user’s first name!
2. Broken links
The dreaded 404 page due to a broken link
The worst thing that can happen to an email is a broken link. Not only is this frustrating for your subscriber, but it often defeats the entire purpose of the email.
When you create new websites, update old blog posts, or switch from one CMS to another, it's time to double-check these templates. You never know when a redirect might not work properly or break.
Another thing to look out for? Double-check that link tracking is turned off in your templates when necessary (and make sure it's there in the first place!). If you want to know how well you're doing, having six different emails with the same UTM won't do you any good because you forgot to change the tracking the last time you copied the template.
3. Missing images
Damaged images. Doesn't look good.
Missing images can be caused by changes in email client support, but also by more mundane issues like an image file degrading or being accidentally deleted in your ESP or content delivery network (CDN). Double-check that the sizes still work, that the images still load on all clients, and that your GIFs remain optimized.
4. Dark mode support
One surefire way to find out when you last tested your templates is to check whether they're coded to support dark mode. Released in 2019 for both Android and iPhone, the mode is still a relatively new element of email support—but it's become so popular that it's worth confirming that email clients aren't inverting colors, eliminating contrast, or generally looking weird. We've put together a complete dark mode checklist here.
A 2021 survey by Ascend2 and Pathwire found that 59% of marketers are testing dark mode emails, with another 20% planning to start testing dark mode emails in the near future. If you're not sure if your templates will work in dark mode, now is a good time to check.
5. Changes in accessibility
It's always worth checking your templates for accessibility. This is about more than just complying with rules and regulations (which may have changed), but about making sure everyone in your audience can read and respond to your emails while providing the best possible subscriber experience.
This means you need to think about these and other aspects of email accessibility:
- Color contrast for links and branding
- Alt tags on images
- Font sizes
- Video subtitles
- General readability
- Empty space and total padding
6. Outdated branding
But what you're most likely to find with templates is simply a function of time: outdated messaging and branding. Even if you haven't recently redesigned your colors, fonts, or other styles, the look and feel of your emails will evolve over time.
You want to make sure you maintain consistency across all your email templates:
- Logo usage
- Fonts
- Brand colors
- Headlines
- Brand, product and function names
- Style conventions, such as headings with capital letters
Beyond standard brand elements, it's important to incorporate the results of your A/B testing into your templates as well. If a design element becomes consistent across the board—for example, a particular color for CTA buttons or a particular newsletter layout—you need to make sure your templates reflect that change. If you find that you're no longer using a certain color (remember when everyone had orange CTA buttons?), it's time to make those changes.
7. Changes in customer support
Sometimes it feels like email client support changes with the whim of the wind.
However, if you notice that something isn't working in your regular email campaigns for a particular client, it's definitely time to look through your templates. Email on Acid lets you see hundreds of previews of your emails across all major mailbox providers and devices, so you'll know in seconds if something isn't working.
If you encounter problems…
OK, so you've identified a problem with your templates. Now what?
If something is really wrong, it's always a good idea to check with the email developer community and find out if Outlook is causing havoc again (let's face it, it's almost always Outlook's fault) or if there's a missing curly bracket or something simple that's gone wrong on your end.
If you find broken links or outdated branding, be sure to involve your email designers and anyone else on the marketing team. They may want to take the opportunity to completely rework the template or at least look at the data and decide if it's worth A/B testing.
That's why it's so important to have an email style guide or design system so you know exactly what conventions to work with. Consider everything from button size to padding to heading capitalization so you have a checklist. Email marketing is hard enough without having to remember these tiny details!
Learn more about how email developers and designers can work together.
Test your templates with Email on Acid
Whether you choose to test your templates monthly or quarterly, Email on Acid makes it easy to check for broken links, missing images, customer support changes, and more.
Our automated pre-send email checklist walks you through each area and provides reliable email previews with feedback and collaboration features. Plus, our users enjoy unlimited email testing, so test as much as you need and you'll never hit a limit.
Author: Megan Boshuyzen
Megan is a graphic designer and email developer who has dabbled in all aspects of email marketing. She believes that good emails for good causes make a positive difference in the world. Megan currently works as an email developer for Sinch Email. Visit her website to learn more at megbosh.com.
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
