{"id":4646,"date":"2021-01-25T13:47:48","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T13:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woocommerce-165896-1768999.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=4565"},"modified":"2021-03-09T14:27:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T13:27:22","slug":"how-email-testing-affects-deliverability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inboxroad.com\/email-strategy\/how-email-testing-affects-deliverability\/","title":{"rendered":"How Email Testing Affects Deliverability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sweat the Small Stuff: How Email Testing Affects Deliverability<\/h2>\n

Remember the time you opened an email from one of your favorite companies, and it looked like a garbled mess?<\/p>\n

You can see some text, but it doesn\u2019t look properly aligned. Images aren\u2019t even loading, which leaves a bunch of empty, grey areas. Clearly, something is off about this email\u2019s formatting.<\/p>\n

All these issues and more prove why you should always test your email campaigns<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Email testing affects not only the look of your sends, but can also have a direct impact on your efforts to get emails into the inbox.<\/p>\n

In the rest of this post, we\u2019ll take a look at why email testing matters, how it affects email deliverability, and what you can do to start testing your email campaigns today.<\/p>\n

What Is Email Testing and Why Does It Matter?<\/h3>\n

Email testing is where you evaluate the emails you want to send for inbox rendering, readability, and even things like link validation and your potential for being marked as spam. This process is similar to A\/B testing or split testing for websites and UX design.<\/p>\n

Essentially, email testing helps you preview what your email will look like across various email providers, browsers, and devices<\/b>so you discover any issues before you send and therefore deliver a unified, positive experience to your subscribers.<\/p>\n

This process is important for email marketers to follow because not all email clients display your messages the same way. This is also the case for different browsers, and devices, which can physically show only as much as their screen sizes and backend coding will allow.<\/p>\n

In fact,according to email testing and analytics company Litmus,<\/a> every email you send has more than 15,000 possible renderings thanks to the factors mentioned above.<\/p>\n

That being said, Litmus also found that testing your emails before you send them increases ROI. The company discovered marketers who tested their emails more frequently saw an ROI of 44-to-1, compared to an ROI of 38-to-1 from marketers who tested email rendering less frequently or not at all.<\/p>\n

How Email Testing Impacts Deliverability<\/h3>\n

While better user experiences and improved ROIs are definitely benefits of email testing, why should you care about pre-send tests for deliverability? After all, as long as your emails reach the inbox, they were delivered, right?<\/p>\n

Sure, technically they were. But email testing (or the lack of it) can have a direct impact on your overall sender reputation, performance, and therefore deliverability.<\/b><\/p>\n

The reason is because the better experience a recipient has with your email content, the more likely they are to engage with it. The more likely they are to engage, the better your sender reputation becomes and the higher chance ISPs will deliver your future messages to the intended inboxes.<\/p>\n

Think of it this way: if that garbled mess of an email you once saw had actually looked great, and every email from that company continued to display well in your inbox, you\u2019d want to keep opening them, wouldn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same with the emails you send your own subscribers. The more consistent you can make these emails look, the more likely recipients will know exactly what to expect and will open each message you send.<\/p>\n

How You Can Start Testing Emails Today<\/h3>\n

Now that you know why email testing matters and how it affects your deliverability, how can you conduct your own tests? And what should you be looking for when you get started?<\/p>\n

Previewing your emails involves many different factors, but these are five of the most important ones you should pay attention to<\/b>!<\/p>\n

Images, GIFs, & Videos<\/h4>\n

Media content like images, GIFs, and videos are one of the biggest stumbling blocks for providing a consistent email experience to your recipients. Many times, these media types aren\u2019t fully supported across all email providers.<\/p>\n

Media can also be blocked or prohibited in some way or another by email clients, and individual users can adjust their personal settings to automatically block media from displaying in their inboxes. And by default, many corporations block images and media content across all company email addresses as a safety precaution.<\/p>\n

This means that all the work you might put into selecting, editing, and embedding the right media for each of your emails will be a waste of time. Your images, GIFs, or videos will either not show up at all, or will appear to be broken. Either way, this is not a good look.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, you can do some things on your end to mitigate the effect of media blocking and display issues:<\/p>\n