The Ultimate Email Checklist: 29 Things to Check

E-mail marketing is sophisticated, and with over 300,000 likely renderings for an e mail, there’s no scarcity of factors that can influence how your email messages will essentially appear after they’ve strike your subscriber’s inbox.

So: what really should e-mail marketers have on their pre-send e mail checklists?

In this blog article, we dive into the what and whys of email marketing campaign checklists, the six phases to sending the excellent email, and 29 of the most widespread (and vital) checkpoints—all in one position.

Browse on to understand:

What is an e mail checklist?

An electronic mail checklist is a checklist of goods to evaluate before hitting deliver, applied as a reminder and support to enable lower problems.

The objective of an electronic mail marketing campaign checklist is easy: to support entrepreneurs steer clear of typical errors. An helpful checklist includes a checklist of essential factors to look at. They cover—and consider—the most crucial pieces of an e-mail.

Why you need to look at your e-mail in advance of you deliver them

Have you at any time opened an electronic mail to find that …

•  A url isn’t operating?
•  Images are not loading?
•  Personalization is improper? 

These email faults are just skimming the surface area of all the opportunity mishaps that can happen. With electronic mail consumer updates going on an normal of every single 1.2 times, there are a whole lot of factors that can influence your electronic mail displaying just as you experienced planned.

Broken e-mail guide to a poor subscriber practical experience they have the likely to harm your model and noticeably drive down the performance of your e-mails. That is why it is critical to come across a way to get ahead of them. By getting the time to review your e mail strategies from a checklist, you are going to cut down the danger of prevalent problems and errors.

Let’s choose a seem at the 6 phases to critique in advance of deploying your email advertising campaigns.

Section #1: Setting up and system

Very first thing’s to start with: prolonged in advance of your email goes into production you will need to outline your aims and audience. This incorporates identifying:

• What is the aim of your marketing campaign?
• How will you evaluate results?
• What is your audience/phase?

Let’s dive into each of these.

Figure out the purpose of your marketing campaign

Stage a person is—and should constantly be—to establish the objective of your campaign. At the commence of your setting up section, ask: what is the goal? Is it to teach your audience, persuade indicator ups, or winback your subscribers? 

Some thoughts consist of:

• Instruction
• Sign ups
• Referrals
• Buys
• Registrations
• Purchaser re-engagement

Ascertain how you’ll measure your accomplishment

Up coming, identify how you’ll measure success—aka, your KPIs. For example:

• Simply click-through price (CTR)
• Unsubscribe charge
• Bounce price
• Deliverability fee or inbox placement price
• Subscriber lifetime price (LTV)
• Return on investment (ROI)
• E mail list dimensions or progress amount
• Conversion charge (CVR)
• E-mail read fee/browse time
• Spam complaint price
• Profits per e-mail (RPE)
• Profits for each subscriber (RPS)
• Churn charge
• Subscriber acquisition value
• E mail creation time

💡 If you have established your KPI to be open up price, you should consider the impacts of Mail Privacy Safety (MPP) inflating opens on Apple units for those who’ve opted in. Our Electronic mail Analytics Survival Guide addresses all the alternate KPIs you can use to measure achievements, apart from the open costs.

Section your audience to increase effects

Then, you are going to require to specify your focus on audience. These can be centered on potential clients vs. clients, geolocation, engagement exercise, etcetera. Ensure all suppression or exclusion electronic mail lists have been utilized.

Stage #2: Craft your written content

After you have established your approach and e mail approach, you’ll need to create the written content of your electronic mail. This subsequent period requires you to feel about electronic mail copy, e mail structure, and e mail development—and what the scope of function appears like. Contemplate:

• Personalization. How will you be offering articles suitable to your subscribers?
• Your calls-to-motion (CTAs). Are they potent and compelling?
• Your subject matter line, sender title, and preview text. Do they function alongside one another to motivate subscribers to open up?

Here’s a tip from Jaina Mistry, Litmus’ Director of Electronic mail Promoting:

“Your subject matter line, sender name, and preview textual content all function hand-in-hand. Feel of your preview text as an extension to your subject matter line. Craft matter strains and preview textual content that perform alongside one another and make perception when study jointly. And avoid repeating your sender title in your issue line or preview textual content.” —Jaina Mistry, Director of E-mail Promoting at Litmus

 

Stage #3: Enhance your inbox perspective

Your inbox watch is what subscribers see from your brand name or small business in their inbox. It will seem a small one thing like this:

And includes your:

It’s one particular of the first things your subscribers see, so you’ll want to make a good effect. Below are some particular issues to look at:

• Use a recognizable and regular “from” identify and deal with. 
• Validate that your reply-to address is welcoming and energetic (i.e., not [email protected]).
• Optimize your preview text: Use our preview textual content hack in scenarios wherever copy is as well extensive or brief.

Phase #4: Optimize your email design

Well-intended e-mail are important for engaging your viewers and driving outcomes. Take into consideration double-examining these details to be certain your e-mails are beautiful, actionable—and optimized.

• Check that your e mail renders the right way throughout cell, desktop, and webmail environments. 
• Make absolutely sure your basic-textual content model is visually eye-catching and has doing the job one-way links.
• Use retina illustrations or photos to be certain photographs load and are not blurry. 
• Exam dynamic content material and personalization—and ensure you have fallbacks in place.
• Confirm that no illustrations or photos are damaged and ALT text is in area.
• Check in Dim Mode to make certain your colors aren’t inverted.
• Confirm merge tags function as meant and have fallbacks.
• Check out your load time: try to retain below two or three seconds.
• Make sure your e mail file dimension is much less than 102KB (the dimension at which Gmail will clip your e-mail).
• Be certain your e-mail is obtainable to monitor visitors and those with visible impairments. 

Period #5: Get ready your insights

In buy to analyze your insights, you are going to want to make certain they are set up effectively, and that you’ve confirmed the next:

• Examine your hyperlinks to assure they’re functioning and being tracked correctly (e.g. UTM parameters, if relevant)
• Insert an analytics code to your marketing campaign and make certain it is activated.

Period #6: E-mail deliverability

E-mail deliverability is all about getting your email into your subscriber’s inbox (and not spam). In this article are some checkpoints to consider:

• Validate your subscribers have specific opt-in.
• Comply with all relevant spam legal guidelines for the nations around the world where your subscribers reside (this differs by nation and region).
• Contain company speak to information and facts, including a bodily mailing tackle, to prevent spam filters. 
• Look at for spelling and grammar glitches.
• Contain a functioning unsubscribe url.
• Get a standing examine of your IP addresses and domain names.
• Run a Spam Filter Examination to guarantee electronic mail authentication data are in area.

Dive deeper into email deliverability in our Supreme Tutorial to E-mail Deliverability. →

Obtain Litmus’ E-mail Internet marketing Checklist! 

There is a lot more to deploying an e-mail than hitting ship. A ton requires to happen prior to hitting “send” and as depth oriented you might be, issues occur.

Obtaining a pre-send checklist on hand is your vital to reducing mistakes and mistakes—and finally, creating a unforgettable subscriber expertise.

Want all of these checkpoints in a person place? Obtain your no cost checklist these days.