What Marketers Must Know About Technical Email Testing

A talk from the webinar held by eSputnik, video can be found here https://youtu.be/mWML3nH-UCI

This webinar is focused on practical email testing for marketers. You will learn about the most common mistakes email marketers usually make when testing different types of email campaigns. In the end, you will get the email testing checklist that contains tools and tips for efficient email testing.

Learn more about efficient and easy email testing at https://mailtrap.io/

Transcript

1. What Marketers Must Know About Technical Email Testing by Diana Lepilkina Marketing Specialist
2. About Mailtrap Email sandbox service: • Capture SMTP traffic from staging and dev environments • Automate test flows and scenarios with flexible API • Analyze email content for spam score and support across email clients • View test emails in shared inboxes or forward to real recipients
3. Today’s agenda What does email testing really mean? • Why sending emails is more difficult than it seems • Why it's important to test emails • How broken emails can ruin email marketing efforts The difference in email testing approaches: • Pre-sending tests vs. performance testing • Common email testing mistakes for marketers Testing tech email aspects: • Why it's critical • Elements to test Full-cycle email testing: • Why you should do it • List of tools and best practices
4. What Does Email Testing Really Mean?
5. What are the problems with emails? Source: HubSpot Only a fourth part of all sent marketing emails are opened at all, and up to 10% of recipients click our links. Our goal is to increase these rates.
6. What are the problems with emails? • No exact spam identification criteria (unveiled by email clients) • No HTML rendering standards = images and other elements can display differently across email clients “On average 51% of emails never reach the inbox! So where do they go? 26% go to the spam or junk folder and 25% are never delivered.” (GlockApps)
7. Why it’s important to test emails Broken emails can ruin email marketing efforts. We need to test them in order to: • Guarantee your emails are being delivered • Avoid spam folders • Make emails polished in terms of design and content • Ensure your emails are displayed correctly for all recipients Emails are a part of the user experience along with your website or app. Treat them as a part of your product or service.
8. Email Testing Approaches
9. Performance vs. pre-sending tests • Tech email testing ensuring proper functionality of email infrastructure elements and debugging errors in emails to deliver correct messages to the correct users. • Split testing experimenting with email content and headers to improve the performance of campaigns.
10. Testing tech email aspects • Inadequately set email infrastructure →emails can't be sent at all • Poor email deliverability →emails will go to spam • Unsupported HTML/CSS →emails won't display correctly in users' inboxes • Broken links → negative customer experience (limited offer that doesn’t work)
11. Email testing mistakes marketers make • Carelessly selecting an email sending provider • Ignoring tech email aspects ◦ authentication ◦ spam checks • Checking email content only • Sporadically testing emails
12. Full-Cycle Email Testing
13. What is full-cycle email testing? Pre-sending checks: • Sending infrastructure • Email template ◦ Email copy and links ◦ Email headers ◦ HTML/CSS (email client testing) • Email deliverability ◦ spam and blacklisting ◦ email list health • Additional specific checks Performance checks: • Track opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and spam complaints • Run A/B tests to improve performance
14. Infrastructure testing tools Wormly • SMTP test GMass • SMTP tester • Email tester (SPF, DKIM, blacklisting) • Inbox, Spam, or Promotions (inbox placement) • Email verifier (contact list)
15. Email content checks What to check: • Email template rendering • Visual elements (images, animation, etc.) • Email copy • Links and buttons • Subject line and preheader
16. Email client testing • Litmus • Email on Acid • Email Preview Services Generate previews for a list of email clients and manually compare them:
17. HTML email analysis • HTML Email Check • Mailtrap Tools analyze your email template for HTML and CSS validity and provide you with an actionable list of errors for each email client:
18. Email copy checks • Grammarly • ProWritingAid • Hemingway Editor Content testing tools can help you check your email copy for errors and typos, improve readability, and adjust your tone:
19. Subject line and preheader • TESTSUBJECT • Preheader Testing Tool • Subject Line Tester • Send Check It Preview the subject line and preheader on different devices and optimize them to drive more opens:
20. Email deliverability tests • Mail Tester • GlockApps • Mailtrap Sender reputation, authentication, and email content influence deliverability. Use full-featured tools:
21. Email testing checklist 𝥷 Type of the test Tools to use 𝥷 Infrastructure testing GMass 𝥷 Email content Grammarly 𝥷 HTML analysis Mailtrap 𝥷 Subject line Subject line tester 𝥷 Spam test Glock Apps Create your custom checklist according to your flow and campaign type