It is a bad feeling when you realise you have accidentally sent out an email containing a mistake. To minimise the risk you should always test and check your email before you send it out. We have put together this checklist you should use to check your email before you send. We have also created a PDF that you can save or print out. You can download the document here.

 

 

Email strategy

• Have you defined the strategy and purpose of your campaign?
• Have you checked that it doesn’t interfere with another campaign?
• Does your email have relevant and interesting content for the audience?
• Is it clear what you want the audience to do when they receive your email?
• Have you defined how you will measure success?
• Have all stakeholders approved this campaign?

Audience

• Have you added all the necessary contacts to your sending list?
• Have you added all the necessary exclusions to your lists?
• Do you have a legal basis on which to email these contacts?
• Have you included all the internal stakeholders on your list?

Legal

• Does it include your company registration number, name and postal address?
• Does it include a working ‘unsubscribe’ link?
• Does it include a link to a preference centre, if applicable?
• Have you included a link to your privacy policy?
• Have you checked your disclaimers or copyright copy?

Timing

• Have you selected an appropriate day and time to send your campaign?
• If you are scheduling the campaign, have you checked you’ve selected the correct day and time?

Campaign Details

• Have you selected an approved sending domain?
• Is your display From address accurate and relevant?
• Have you set up a valid reply-to address?
• Is the subject line engaging and relevant?
• Is your subject line shorter than 100 characters?
• Have you included pre-header text?
• Have you checked your subject line for spelling or grammatical errors?
• Have you checked your pre-header text for spelling or grammatical errors?

 

Content

Design

• Is your email consistent with your branding?
• Will your recipients know it’s from your company even with images switched off?
• Does your email follow design best practice?

Links

• Have you linked all images and headlines in your email?
• Are all links directed to the correct URLs?
• Have you included a ‘view in browser’ link?
• Are the links in your email obvious and clear?

Copy

• Is the body copy free of spelling and grammatical errors?
• Is your copy accurate, succinct, relevant and engaging?
• Have you included instructions on how to add to Safe Sender?
• Have you provided a way for subscribers to contact you?

Images

• Are there any broken images?
• Do all images have Alt text?
• Have you included links behind every image?
• Is your email still legible, even with images switched off?

Call to action

• Does your email have clear calls to action that are above the fold?
• Does each story or article have its own call to action?

Personalisation

• Have you added personalisation to your email campaign?
• Have you checked that your personalisation works?

Rendering

• Have you tested whether your email renders across the relevant email clients?
• Have you tested whether your email renders on all mobile devices and apps?

Other

• Have you set up a simple, plain-text version?
• Have you added any additional tracking codes to your campaign?
• Do your landing pages and forms work correctly?
• Have you enabled/disabled throttling on your account, if applicable?

After the send

• Have you agreed who should receive the reporting for this campaign?
• Have you checked your campaign performance and shared this with all stakeholders?
• Have you checked the contacts who hard bounced or unsubscribed?