17 Email Testing Tools and Tips to Optimize Every Campaign

Testing is critical to email marketing success. Here are some of our favorite email testing tools to get you started.

The goal of any marketer is to get the right message to the right person at the right time – but to do that you first have to think about what might go wrong. Before hitting “send,” you can test some of the biggest issues that affect your open and click-through rates. Refusal to optimize these aspects of your message hurts your chances of an email being even sent to your customers.

Consistent testing is essential to retain subscribers and increase engagement. The good news is that with the right email testing tool, you can automate almost everything you need to know. These tools provide comprehensive testing capabilities for marketing teams of any size and budget. Make them part of your workflow to improve your email marketing results.

Domain reputation and security tools

Deliverability measures how likely your message is to reach your customers in the first place. This is the first thing you should check because if people can’t see your email, none of the other tests matter. A low inbox placement percentage isn’t the end of the world, but it means you need to review some configuration and update practices.

Your mail may be marked as spam based on its content or due to your domain’s reputation and the IP address of your mail server. If spam or phishing emails come from one of your domains, your sender score, which tells you how likely the email is to be sent to the spam folder, is lowered. Protecting your system and then testing your content against spam filters can reduce the likelihood of deliverability issues.

Our favorite email security and spam scoring tools are:

• Sender Score from Validity is a free tool that shares numerical scores associated with your IP address. The site also provides a baseline to help you understand the results.A sender score above 80 is great; below 70, you’ll want Take steps to repair your reputation.
• dmarcian’s DMARC record checker, free of charge, allows you to view and verify Domain-Based Messaging, Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) records. This protocol prevents spammers from spoofing emails from your domain.When you use it, please SPF and DKIM records, which are also used by email providers to verify your identity.
• GlockApps DMARC Analysis, starting at $15 per month, provides continuous DMARC, SPF and DKIM monitoring. This tool alerts you to suspicious activity so you can shut it down before any damage is done.
• dmarcian, starting at $19.99 per month, also continuously monitors your DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records and prevents spammers from using your domain. The platform also visualizes data instead of sending you raw XML logs.
• mail-tester Newsletter Spam Testis a free service that generates an email address for you to send messages to. It then analyzes your content and checks your backend settings for misconfigurations.
• SendForensics Email Deliverability Testwhich has a freemium model that analyzes your emails and shares deliverability metrics and benchmarks for your target industry.
• Postmark Spam Test is a free, browser-based tool. All you have to do is paste your email into the text box to get SpamAssassin’s free spam score. Postmark also provides a JSON API if you want an easy-to-use SpamAssassin setup that can be integrated into your existing tech stack.

Email List Verification Tool

Your email list must be verified to keep your emails out of spam folders and keep your email addresses out of blacklists. Both high bounce rates and low open rates can damage your sender reputation. Email list decay happens naturally, so email verification and list maintenance is an ongoing process.

Several tools provide this service. While none are free, they charge one credit to check an address, so the cost is proportional to the size of your email list. We checked the price of 5,000 credits on several services to find the best budget-friendly email verification options:

* Offers Campaign Monitor integration

Content Optimizer

Your subject line is your first impression, and if it’s not interesting enough to drive your readers to open your email, it may be your only impression. Give yourself the best chance of winning over clients by using the subject line test tool to find the best word choices and lengths.

Likewise, the body content of the email must be engaging, readable, and accessible if you want to convert customers. While you can use OS-level tools like Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader to check how assistive devices interact with your messages, it’s much easier to do a full check (and advice on how to fix any errors) with the following tools:

• grammarfree, checks your grammar, spelling, and clarity beyond what Microsoft Word has to offer.
• Edited by Hemingwayfree, helps you improve readability by flagging long or complex sentences, passive voice and adverbs, and other writing faux pas.
• Title Analyzeris a free tool from CoSchedule that scores your subject lines based on factors such as word balance, mood, and clarity.
• Send Check Email Subject Line Testeris a free tool that provides real-time assessments looking at aspects like scannability and grade level. Even more valuable are its previewer, which simulates your subject line in desktop and mobile views, and the language checker, which looks for scams or other offensive words.
• accessible email.org, free, opens your HTML email in a code editor and points out issues that may reduce accessibility. You can also link to the online version of any past email campaign for a full report.

Email preview and functional testing tool

Optimizing emails for every screen size and customer is probably the most important thing you do in any email marketing campaign.more than 70% Delete an email within three seconds if it doesn’t look right on their device, and 15% go the nuclear route and unsubscribe entirely.

Your campaign needs to run on all operating systems, mobile apps and desktop browsers.Apple’s iPhone Mail app and Gmail currently have most market share, but if you optimize your email design only for these services, you will miss out on a lot of customers. When designing for multiple email clients and devices, complete unification is impossible. Instead, focus on usability and consistency. If everything looks professional, the links are clickable, and the spacing is good, all your customers will have a great email experience.

you can test How emails are rendered By sending to team members using different devices or email clients, the inbox preview and verification tools provide a more thorough (and efficient) view. Some email services (including Campaign Monitor) This feature is built in. Unfortunately, most independent services like Litmus PutsMail and Email on Acid are expensive. There is an email testing tool that is affordable and powerful:

• [email protected], which starts at $20/month, offers everything from email screenshots and HTML validation to browser plugins. It’s also a pay-as-you-go service, so you can try it out without making a huge commitment.

Roundup of the Best Email Testing Tools

In case you missed it, here is a list of our recommended tools for email testing and optimization: Domain Reputation and Security Tools

Email List Verification Tool

Content Optimizer

Email preview and functional testing tool

Get to the top of your email marketing game

Once you’ve improved your email reach and open rates by running the pre-send tests listed above, it’s time for the next round of evaluation. you can (and should) Use A/B testing Determine which email content and presentations will get the best response from your audience.

The challenge and beauty of email marketing is that you can never find a better way to communicate with your audience. Skipped tests lose opportunities to increase engagement and conversions. Don’t miss the chance to make your next email marketing campaign the best it can be. Take a few minutes today to set yourself up to use the tools in this article, and you’ll reap the benefits again and again in the future.