Email Testing/Proofing Best Practices

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

What's your process for reviewing, proofing, and testing your emails? We've had a couple of mishaps recently and are trying to identify a better process for testing.

Do you have outside people review your emails? How many people typically review the email before it's sent out? Do you proof your email before you code it in? Or proof after it's been coded?

Thanks,

Brooke.

[Julz_James]

Hi,

Our process is:

Field Marketer provides copy in word

Create Marketo Email

Send test to self and then to Field Marketer for approval (sometimes the Field Marketers will also send to the sales team)

Once approved its ready for send.

So it goes though a couple of eyes before being approved for send.  That is normally enough for us.

Hope this helps?

Thanks

Juli

[Anonymous]

Thanks we have a similar process but there have been a few slip-ups that both people have missed. I'm not sure if it's because we are too close to it. We are thinking of having an outside editor review before we send out the final version.

[Colin_Mann]

We use a similar approach to the one outlined by Juli James.

We proof the copy in Word across two sets of eyes and then build the email in Marketo. We then send a test email to ourselves (remembering to test every link too) and also forward that to a member of our Integrated Marketing Communication team for English language emails or to local Field Marketing for languages outside of English.

[Anonymous]

Ok great. So you do have an outside set of "eyes" that review the email before sending.

[Colin_Mann]

Yes we do. I find that the Global Campaign Managers in our business (of which I am one) get too close to the content and it becomes easy to miss issues when you've been reading and editing the text 20-30 times. I find that usually those issues are actually missing words rather than spelling mistakes e.g. missing words like 'to' or 'and' in a sentence so that it doesn't make sense (but it did to the creator because they've read it 20-30 times!).

Therefore we do ask someone else to take a quick look before we send it. We usually ask people who also have a vested interest e.g. sending German emails to the right people in country or an SMB focussed email to the SMB Product Marketing Team - doing this just means they care that little bit more.

[Anonymous]

Thanks!

[Julz_James]

We tried having an outside set of eyes, on top of the field marketers and sales but then it takes too long to get the email back for sending.

Our field marketers are very good at proofing (i always read the emails backwards line by line to see how it reads which stops you skim reading it) so thankfully we've rarely come across the issue.

[Katie_Marks]

We also have a similar process to the above, with an additional step (if we are given enough time, that is).

Like others, the copy is written, edited and approved in Word, and then built and tested in Marketo. Once the Marketo email is finalized, I schedule a "preflight" send to our team one day before the actual send. Once final approval is provided that day (or we decide to hold on the send), I schedule and approve the send in Marketo.

The preflight has been working well since we ideally have time in between writing/creating the email and the actual send to get our minds out of it. We do not usually have outside eyes on the email, unless the content requires it. We are a smaller team with a smaller database size, so this process works for us - I am not sure how it would scale up.