Last month – July 17th to be exact – without notice, Gmail dropped support for background images. Billions of emails were potentially impacted. One day your beautifully designed marketing emails are looking great. The next day the background and some of the style coding are toast, along with the rendering you expected. The details are over at Parcel.io for you email geeks who need to see the workarounds, but apparently, this change is getting rolled back shortly, so fasten your seat belt for another round of testing.
This brings us to an issue we see more often than we should, that many sophisticated enterprises are still bogged down with manual email rendering tests
These visual spot checks to make sure the next big promo looks good on Outlook, Gmail, or iOS Mail are a waste of time, can lead to quality issues and make the marketing team less nimble. It’s impossible to get full coverage on devices, mail clients, and operating systems with this approach.
The solution
Systems like Litmus, Parcelo.io or Email on Acid get real email renders of actual devices and mail clients, and are a cost-effective way to streamline testing and sends. Implementing systems like these makes testing less labor-intensive for a broader spectrum of tests across devices, platforms, and mail clients. Tests will now include display as well as broken links, spelling errors, accessibility issues, and more. There is a streamlined review and approval of emails, even with revisions or last-minute changes.
Both of those platforms will do image validation as well, which allows you to not lose subscribers due to slow load times of your emails. In many of the most common manual processes for email validation, image validation falls by the wayside.
Think of services like these as ultimate campaign prechecks
In reality, it’s the equivalent of going to the auto shop before a long family vacation. You want to make sure everything is right and nothing is going to spoil the good times and keep you on the side of the road in 110 Arizona heat. If you deploy a campaign without the proper prechecks, the campaign may never come close to achieving goals – and if you deploy a campaign after a series of manual and time-consuming prechecks, the campaign may miss the market entirely. You need something faster and more comprehensive.
More velocity in testing means more time is available for other critical marketing functions such as testing promotions within different segments, and planning campaign improvements based on performance data.
Successful email prechecks also make sharing tests, collecting, and acting on feedback much easier. It’s inherently more collaborative.
EMail on Acid currently runs $134 per month – only three users included, though, which can often be enough for a midsized email-focused team – with most features intact. Professional, with 10 users, runs $449/month at present. Enterprise level is done with custom packages.
Litmus’ popular Plus level is $199/month for five users, including all the features of their $99/month Basic package and pre-send spam testing, ESP integrations, and more. Their enterprise pricing is also customized.
Parcel.io, which is a full platform for coding, previewing on multiple devices and platforms, and collaborating on email development and 5 users can work together for $120 per month. Their Business package which includes spam scanning, HTML to AMP conversion, PDF exports, and workflow around feedback and approvals is $45 per user per month.
We’ve worked with all three, and other email precheck options as well. If you’re still doing manual tests and approvals, it’s time to explore better options.
What we can offer you
We’d love to offer you a quick consultation where we look at your email processes, see where you’re at and what your current goals are, and compare your current processes to best practices. Maybe we can offer you some quick insights and guideposts, or maybe there’s a deeper opportunity to work together longer-term on maximizing email marketing ROI.
You can sign up for that consultation here:
