Human error is inevitable and fortunately (for my job security), robots aren’t cranking out emails (yet). We’ve all been there, whether it was due to shortened timelines or getting a little too lax on processes, marketing emails have gone out with mistakes. And unlike a mistake on a website which can be easily fixed, once the email has gone out, well it’s out.
Maybe you are a one man band that tackles all the emails by yourself, or part of a larger team that divides and conquers. Regardless, in order to minimize mistakes and maximize success of your emails you need a defined checklist.
I’ve created a 20 item email checklist that can help you breathe a little easier before you hit send. This comprehensive email checklist is divided into three groups for easier digestion. Take a look at the technical, content and review checklist items before your next email is sent.
Technical
| Sender name & profile | Typically, you see the business or organization name as the “From” (like “Amazon”) and the sender email address (such as “orders@amazon.com”). Just don’t put “Jim Bob”, no one signs up for promotional emails from Jim Bob. |
| Text version | Fancy html emails with eye-catching images and CTA buttons are great, but some recipients will elect to receive only a text version, stripping out all those flashy items in your promotional email and only showing text. Make sure you spend time formatting the text version so you still have a shot at those recipients. |
| Alt image text | Some email inboxes (*cough* Outlook) make your job harder as an email marketer and will not display email images by default, meaning the recipient will have to specify within each email that they want to load the images after they open it. Bummer, but placing alt image text can still help convey what the image is to the recipient. Added bonus of alt image text, screen readers utilize it to help the visually impaired understand email content. |
| UTM’s appended to links | UTM’s (urchin tracking module) help generate Analytics data for reporting purposes. Essentially, they are a string of characters that get appended to the end of your link in an email. If you don’t include them in your email links, it will create holes in your reporting and email attribution. |
| List configuration | Properly configuring your list includes both who you want to send to and don’t want to send to. Fortunately, most email marketing tools have both inclusion and exclusion capabilities when it comes to putting together your recipient lists. The last thing you want to do is send a promotional offer to Canadian contacts when the offer is only valid to US residents. |
| Send date/time | Maybe you want to hit your email recipient list during office hours (especially common for B2B) or you need to send the email exactly four days before Christmas. Don’t forget to configure the proper time and date you want your email to go out. A Black Friday offer is useless when it hits an inbox the following Saturday at 4 a.m. |
| Throttling | Sounds cool right? When does it mean? Well, deliverability, or your emails actually going to inboxes, is pretty important. If you are sending an email to a large volume of contacts, it is best to play it safe and “throttle” your email, meaning send over several hours versus all at once. Luckily, most email marketing tools have this feature baked in so you can configure prior to sending each email. |
Content
| Subject line & preview text | Besides your sender name, the subject line and preview (or preheader) text will make or break your chance of contacts opening your email, no pressure. Think of the preview text as an extension of your subject line, as it typically appears under or after the subject line within the inbox. Keep them brief and engaging, 40 characters or less for each. And please, for the love of spam don’t include “Free” or multiple exclamation points or format in all caps (among many others). |
| Copy & headlines | If your email is borderline novel length, cut, cut and cut. While it may not seem too long on desktop, it will look far longer on mobile. Keep text concise and on point. Most contacts will scan the email, not read it. You have a very short time to get your point across and get the recipient to take action, don’t waste the opportunity because you wanted to tell them about the seventeen product features you really care about (but they don’t, truth hurts). |
| Images | Oh the fancy email images, they can make emails so very pretty when done correctly. Width is important, stay at 600 pixels wide. Also size is super important, if you put that 2MB image in the email the email load time will be incredibly slow or may not make it through to the inbox at all. JPEG or PNG file formats with 72 DPI are both acceptable, both formats have pros and cons. Easy on the GIFs friend, not all inboxes support GIFs so be sure to include a static fallback image in your email code. And please, please don’t make your entire email just one big image with nothing else to it. |
| CTA buttons/links | The holy grail of metrics within an email, did they click on the CTA and take action? The call to action button doesn’t have to be boring, use a contrasting color to make it stand out and use text that isn’t vanilla (aka “See More”). Formatting of the button is important, do not, I REPEAT DO NOT, use image based buttons. Remember, not all inboxes load images by default. I like bulletproof buttons myself, which will always display because they are not image based. |
| Personalization & dynamic content | From the kindergarten “first name in subject line” to the advanced “you may also be interested in these products”, personalization and dynamic content can take an okay email to an amazing email. Think a little bit outside the box with these. Have a product or activity of interest data available? Use it in the subject line. Know of past purchases? Create dynamic content for upsell or cross sell opportunities. The key here is data, you have to have the data in order to support this. |
| CAN-SPAM | While this only applies to the United States, let’s face it, domestically we have it easy compared to our counterparts in Europe and even Canada with email regulations. That being said, you always need to have a working unsubscribe link and physical business address in every promotional based email you send out. No cutting corners on this one or you risk legal recourse. |
| Social icons | Maybe your email missed the mark for some contacts, it happens. Including social icons linked to your social media pages is just another opportunity for your recipients to engage with your business. |
Review
| Inbox rendering | Email can be tough, really tough. Instead of a few browsers to check you realistically have dozens of different email inboxes to check in order to make sure your email is rendering properly. Some email marketing platforms have this capability within them. I prefer utilizing email testing tools designed for this purpose. My biased opinion says Litmus and Email On Acid are the top of the food chain for this service. If you are new to email marketing you will soon learn Outlook is your inbox nemesis. |
| Email proofing | If you are solely responsible for the entire email process as a team of one, I highly suggest you engage with others in your department or organization to help you proof. You stare at the same email for hours building it, it is incredibly easy to miss errors. Get several pairs of eyes on your email prior to sending, trust me it is worth waiting for because you are only one letter away from “ass” (instead of bass, pass, sass, etc) |
| CTA/link destinations | Far too often, I’ve received promotional emails with links that do not correlate with the CTA text and content or, even worse, the button or link has no destination specified at all, meaning nothing happens when you click on it. This can and will happen if you don’t check every link in your email and yes that means the CTA buttons, hyperlinks, social icons, unsubscribe link, view in browser link. Every. Single. One. |
| Personalization strings & dynamic content | Throwing in personalization strings can be so easy in most email marketing platforms (%%firstname%%, done). But what if some of your contacts don’t have data in their first name field, is there a default value defined (“Name” isn’t a good default value either). Same with dynamic content, which typically relies on if/then statements for displaying content. So if a contact doesn’t have “biking” as their interest, what will they get instead? Check any personalization or dynamic content or risk a less than stellar email for some of your contacts. |
| Spam check | Subject lines, preview text, content within the email itself. Inbox filters can mark your email as spam and damage your ability to deliver future emails. There are a whole lot of tools out there (some native to email marketing platforms) that will scan your email and assign a spam risk score, even providing you with actionable revisions to help decrease the chance of your email being marked as suspicious or spam. |
| Legal & branding | Legal can be a scary word. But in some organizations (think healthcare and financial) there is more red tape to get through. Also common with emails that contain promotional offers (think all the fine print text at the bottom of the email) and even just larger, enterprise businesses. Make sure you get the appropriate legal sign off if applicable in your organization. And at the least, stick to the brand standard guides (get these now if you don’t already have them) or send the email to your brand cohorts for review. |