Email Pre-Send Checklist

Sending emails takes time – usually lots of time and prep work! The last thing you need is all of your hard work and effort resulting in mistakes and typos. Have you ever hit send and realized that you made a mistake? Mistakes happen to the best of us! Using an email pre-send checklist is key to ensuring everything is correct before you hit send. You will also eliminate some of the worry and stress of email sending with a checklist to reference each time you send. While you could memorize a list – that’s a lot of work!

While every marketer’s pre-send checklist is not identical, we hope the guidelines below help you get started in customizing a checklist that fits your company’s needs.

Audience

Are you sending to the correct audience (email addresses/list) for this email?
Is this list a quality, current list for your audience? Do you have permission to send this email to this list?
Do you need to suppress any email addresses or lists?
If using personalization or conditional logic, do your lists contain all of the fields needed to support these features?
Do you have a test list that includes your own email address – to ensure personalization and dynamic content is working properly?

Message

Content

Check for typos and grammar mistakes!!
- Subject line – the subject line is the first impression you make.
- Preheader text – are you using accurate preheader text for your message?
- Body of message – make sure your copy is free from typos, mistakes and contains the correct info.
- Company Name and Address – make sure your company is spelled correctly as well as included the correct address.
Are you using the correct From Address, Display Name (friendly from name), and Reply-To Address?
Are the images used the appropriate ones for your message’s content and appropriate for your audience? Are images hyperlinked properly? Did you specify alt text?
Have you included a plain-text version? Does the plain-text version look good, particularly hyperlinks and their placement?
If using dynamic content or personalization, does a test to yourself show the correct personalization data?

Links

Does your message have the correct hyperlinks? Did you test all links to make sure they work and go to the right place?
Be sure to include the unsubscribe link and appropriate company and address information in the footer.
Is open and click tracking enabled for reporting purposes?

Design

Have you previewed the message across major email clients, including the ones most important to you?
Do you see any major design flaws?
Is there a balanced mix of text and images?
Is the message easy to read and meaningful?
Did you get this proofed by an additional set of eyes other than yourself? Have you gotten approval from necessary parties?

Timing

Is this being sent or scheduled at the correct time? Whether you choose to send immediately or schedule for the future, make sure it doesn’t conflict with anything else on your calendar.
Doublecheck dates and times listed within your email copy. Are you sending with the correct time zone in mind?
Are you and your team prepared to handle responses to this email campaign?
Did you leave time to correct any last minute changes before it sends?

We hope this list has helped you fine-tune your current checklist, or given you motivation to finally document that list you go over in your head each time!!

JangoMail offers several tools that are built into our platform to help you as you build and test your email campaigns.