Send Perfect Emails With This Checklist

Email Newsletter ChecklistDon’t you dare click that “queue” button.

I see you sitting there, with your AWeber account open, itching to get your next email newsletter out the door.

Yes, you’ve thought up some pretty interesting content, you’ve checked your spelling and you’ve aligned your images properly. You can’t wait to see what kind of response this one gets. I know.

But just hold on a tic. You’ve got one thing left to do. You’ve got to…

Get Your Email Past the Gatekeeper

You see, every email campaign has a gatekeeper. The gatekeeper keeps an eye on the quality of the emails going out, making sure subscribers see what the sender intends them to.

Usually, marketers have to serve as their own gatekeepers. But occasionally, they get lucky enough for someone or something else to play that role for them.

Today, you’re that lucky.

This Checklist Will Do It For You

We’ve put together a checklist you can run each new email past. (And yes, it’s free.) It will catch and correct any errors. It won’t let you get away with a single mishap or slip-up.

You see, this new gatekeeper subscribes to a fairly strict philosophy:

“Just because no one is perfect doesn’t mean your emails can’t be!”

So move your cursor off the “queue” button. Click to download this checklist instead. Run your new message past the 20 questions you’ll find inside.

Then when you’re satisfied that your email passes the test, go back to that queue button. This time, you can push it with the assurance that the message you’re sending is exactly as it should be.

Download Your Free Email Checklist

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15 Comments

  1. Christine

    How do you possibly check the email in all the different email browsers?

    Your #13 says:
    Does the message render properly in Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iPhone, Hotmail and Apple Mail…

    If you don’t own an iPhone… or have an apple or Mac…
    How do you check all of these?

    Seems a daunting task!

    4/12/2011 9:47 am
  2. Cosmin

    @Christine – Something like Litmus ;)

    If you have a Mac, you can test for pretty much all of those email clients, Outlook included.

    4/12/2011 10:55 am
  3. Amanda Gagnon

    Christine ~ You check as many as you can. You can also use an email simulator, such as this one for BlackBerry, to see what your emails would look like without having the device.

    4/12/2011 10:56 am
  4. Christine

    Thanks, Amanda… didn’t know such a thing existed.
    If I google for email simulators… do you think I’ll find others?

    4/12/2011 11:01 am
  5. Julie Boudreau

    Great tool!
    Lots of interesting details, we hadn’t thought of before.

    @Chritsine, it is also possible to ask work colleagues or friends to see how your newsletter looks in their browser or e-mail box. They could send you screenshots.

    4/12/2011 12:21 pm
  6. Adele Berenstein

    Here’s a tool to check browsers. I have never seen this many browser varieties before.

    It generates screenshots of how websites appear at 800×600 and 1024×768 resolution in six commonly used web browsers.

    http://browsershots.org/

    P.S. I have no affiliation with this site.

    4/12/2011 2:38 pm
  7. Peonie

    Getting an e-mail simulator is a great suggestion. I need to do that.

    4/12/2011 10:39 pm
  8. Kimberly Quiroz

    Very good tool.

    4/14/2011 1:38 am
  9. david otieno

    thank you much.

    4/15/2011 6:40 am
  10. Phil Hamilton

    Some nice tips.

    I have a difference of opinion on #5. It says, “Have I asked my subscribers to whitelist me to make sure they get my e-mails?”

    Telling subscribers to “whitelist” me is going to make no sense to a lot of subscribers. Years ago, that would have made sense to many email users. Nowadays, it doesn’t.

    Instead, we need to be more specific about what we want the subscriber to do. For example, “Please check to see if your spam filter has snagged an email I sent you earlier today. If so, please mark that email as “Not Spam”. Or whatever better specific instructions we want to give. Saying “put me on your whitelist…” doesn’t do it nowadyas.

    4/21/2011 11:20 am
  11. Amanda Gagnon

    Phil ~ Exactly. The concept is the same, but the language should be understood by subscribers, whether you ask them to add you to their contact list or de-tag them as spam.

    4/21/2011 1:25 pm
  12. Dr. Michael Haley

    Good checklist. Regarding branding, if your brand is a domain name, will putting it in the subject render it as spam?

    4/21/2011 4:17 pm
  13. Amanda Gagnon

    Michael ~ If you list the brand name and not the entire URL (with http…), you should be all set.

    4/25/2011 8:44 am
  14. Dr. Michael Haley

    Thanks, Amanda. That makes perfect sense.

    4/25/2011 9:21 am
  15. Donald Roderick

    Is there such a thing as a general mobile simulator or do you need thousands of simulators to test every phone model and type?

    Should focus be on a small set of the most used and popular mobile device/model types?

    4/26/2011 6:58 pm

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