Email testing…always a good idea

How could you make sure your HTML messages are well displayed by your recipients?
A good habit is to send out a test email to a couple of test addresses. Let’s see how to do it!
First, you need to create some test accounts at the most popular email services, such as Yahoo! Mail, AOL, Microsoft Live and Google Gmail.
Configure them in different desktop email clients, e.g. Outlook 2007, Eudora, Windows Mail.
Open SendBlaster (if you do not have it installed you can download it for free). Create a new list, name it “TESTLIST” . Now add the test addresses you previously created to “TESTLIST”.
Compose/import your html message and send it to “TESTLIST”. Wait for some seconds and check your email accounts. You will be able to see how your email looks in different web based and desktop email clients.

Your message could look great or you could notice something wrong. For example, your message might end up in some spam boxes or just not appear as perfect as expected.
At this point you may correct your message for example by cleaning its html code and performing a good spam check (for example with Mailing check).
After having completed this operation test it again. If results will satisfy you then send out your message to the “real” distribution list.
(To prevent your test messages being marked as spam  add the sender’s email address to your personal whitelists).

Email testing might be frustrating but it allows you to avoid poor quality campaigns and then improve your results.