Testing Your E-mail Newsletter
Posted by administrator on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Have you had experiences like these with your e-mail newsletters? I recently got an e-mail from a newsletter subscriber thanking me for the good information in the newsletter but explained that she was unable to view any of the pictures. Another person said they didn't get it because it went into their spam box. Many of us spend a lot of time crafting our newsletters and rely on them for a large share of our business.
Just as there are dozens of web browsers that display your website slightly (or not so slightly!) differently, there are dozens more e-mail programs people use to read their e-mail. This can range from classic desktop e-mail clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird (my personal favorite), and Entourage to popular web-based e-mail clients such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. Testing your newsletter to see how it appears in these e-mail programs is a great way to know how your newsletter will be read by your readers. However, many of us don't have the time to buy these different e-mail programs and testing our newsletters in them before sending them out. This is where e-mail newsletter testing services come to the rescue.
In recent years there have been companies offering services that will send you a screen shot of what your e-mail newsletter looks like in a variety of e-mail programs. Many also offer a Spam Box check too -- sending a copy of your e-mail through dozens of popular spam filtering software to see if the popular programs think it's spam. These services are tailored to those that can spend a little bit of money and have a lot of these tests automated.
I've done a little bit of research and found the following companies. I have not yet tried their services, but intend to look into trying them out for my own newsletters.
- litmusapp.com - Offers a free version that will test your e-mail in two or three popular e-mail clients. Paid versions start at $39 per month and will test your e-mail in 19 different e-mail programs. They also offer spam analysis.
- Inbox Inspector - Offered by Mail Chimp will test your e-mail in 25 different programs.
- Free E-mail Spam Analysis - Send a copy of your newsletter to this address before mailing it to everyone. It will tell you the likelihood of it appearing as spam.
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