An important part of emailing customers is checking your email before you hit send. It’s commonly referred to as ‘QA-ing’ an email, or performing a quality assurance check. This is a crucial step in creating and sending a marketing email because errors, like typos or broken links, can detract from the effectiveness of your email. After all, customers are more likely to be distracted by an error than to take action on your email. 

There are a lot of long checklists out there that are built for complicated marketing automation setups and tools, so we decided to come up with the opposite: an actually practical email checklist you’ll want to use. 

Before you hit send on your next marketing email, use the checklist below to ensure it’s error-free:

• Subject line and pre-header: Confirm that you have an effective subject line and pre-header for your email. If you’re using an email template or copying a previous email, verify that you’ve updated your subject line and pre-header (even we forget this sometimes!).
• Copy: Give your email a thorough read and make sure there are no typos, spelling errors or formatting errors. Check that your headlines are the right size, bullets or numbering are formatted correctly, and you have the right font type, size and color throughout. True story: one of our ex-colleagues forgot to check their copy and sent out an email with a misspelling of the company name, and unfortunately the misspelling contained the word “ass”. 
• Layout: Verify that your layout is formatted correctly. If you are using different layout elements, like columns or boxes, double check to see that they display the way you want them to. Verify that buttons also display properly. 
• Images: If you are using images, make sure they are sized correctly for your email and that you have the rights to use them. Images should not be pixelated or overly large, as those will impact your email’s readability. 
• Links: Check every single link in your email by clicking on it and making sure it goes to the right place. This includes hyperlinks in text, in your header or footer, and on any images in your email. If you are using any sort of URL builder to attach UTM tags to track your links’ performance, check that they are still on your links and that they work properly. 
• Footer: Your email footer should contain your unsubscribe link (click here for more information about international email law), and any other helpful information for your customers. These links can include social media handles, your website, a “forward to a friend” capability, and more. If you're in the United States or have customers in the US, the CAN-SPAM Act also requires you to list a "valid physical postal address" where you can receive mail from customers.
• Audience: Before you hit send, make sure you have selected the right audience, or group of customers on your email list, to send your email to. If you maintain multiple lists, like ‘customers who have purchased’, ‘newsletter signups’, and ‘giveaway signups’, you need to check that your email is going to the correct audience otherwise it may not make sense when your customers receive it. 
  

Once you’ve checked everything in your email marketing tool, send yourself a test email to do a final check! Open the test email on your computer and on your phone, so you know what it will look like when customers receive it.

After you’ve done all of this, you should feel confident in queuing your email to send later or hitting the send button. Happy emailing!