As comfortable as you may feel with your customers, sending an email marketing campaign isn’t like writing an impromptu message to your friends. Mistakes like typos and broken links can cost you valuable clicks and make you look unprofessional. That’s why it’s important to do a routine inspection of your email campaign right before you release it to the world.  

We’ve put together a list of the top sections you should review in our pre-send checklist: 

Think short, sweet and easy to scan. Remember, your email is a teaser to your website or landing page, so you don’t need to tell your whole story here. If your text looks a little long, break it up into bullet points or remove some unnecessary sentences.  

The purpose of your email is to encourage readers to move forward to your website or landing page, so don’t forget to include links. Aside from linking to buttons on your email, feel free to be creative and add it to key words and images. A few extra pushes of encouragement can’t hurt, and they’ll give readers more opportunities to click.   

No matter how well-written your content is and how many links you include, your email won’t get much traction with blurry or dark images. Make sure that all the ones in your email campaign have enough background lighting, and that they are in landscape mode. We’ve got tons of gorgeous (and free!) images for you to use, too.

Check that you added all of the subscribers or groups who you want to receive your email. If you’re missing anyone, you can also import new contacts. 

Want people to open your emails? Stand out in your readers’ inboxes with your subject lines, From Name and Reply-to-Email. It’s your first chance to make a good impression, so they should be clear, relevant and engaging.   

We can’t stress this enough - always test your email campaign before you send it. Preview it in your browser, and send an email to yourself to see it in your own inbox. Be sure to double-check all your links to make sure they work and that there are no spelling errors. Lastly, don’t forget to open and view it on your mobile device, too.

There’s a lot of thought and activity that goes into making an email campaign, from changing images to choosing your subject line. It can be easy to miss small errors during the creation process and accidentally send a less-than-perfect campaign to your subscribers. Using this checklist will help you catch mistakes beforehand so that you can hit the ‘Send’ button with confidence.