MindComet

The Litmus Test

If you’re managing email campaigns and you’re finding it difficult / time-consuming to properly test and QA your emails, consider this handy tool: Litmus.

Litmus delivers screenshots of what your email (or web page) looks like in every major client.  They currently test on the following platforms:

• Outlook 2007
• Outlook 2003
• Outlook 2002/XP
• Outlook 2000
• Gmail
• Hotmail
• AOL Mail
• Yahoo! Mail
• Lotus Notes 8
• Lotus Notes 7
• Lotus Notes 6.5
• Apple Mail 3
• Apple Mail 2.1

It’s a quick and convenient way to make sure that your email is rendering correctly across all clients.  It’s relatively cheap too!  Only $18 for a day’s worth of use, $55 per month for unlimited tests (ideal) and $185 a month for unlimited tests as well as 10 user accounts.

They have a blog that’s worth checking out.  They update it consistently with all of their updates and integration options.

If you’re currently using this, please comment below!  Share your thoughts!  We’d love to hear what you have to say.

View Comments

Posted by MindComet on May. 08, 2008

Testing and Segmentation to Avoid Full Email Boxes

Stefan Tornquist, Research Director of MarketingSherpa, has various presentations throughout the summit.  He addressed us this morning with an introduction to the day.  He addressed various challenges with email marketing that everyone has to face. 

The number one Challenge email marketers have to face:
All recipients email boxes are full. (36%) 

It was a great start which created a solid foundation for the various breakout sessions that are being offered today. 

He covered a hand full of email marketing lessons that I would like to share.  These may seem basic, but as we reported yesterday, we over complicated many pieces of marketing and overlook the fundamentals! 

• Newsletters still work!
  
• SPAM is in the eye of the beholder
  
• Reputation is also in the eye of the beholder
  
• Raising Opens and Clicks (High Segmentation is KEY)
  
• Vary your Templates
  
• Top Tests
  -Conversion rates 10-50% higher when removing navigation links!  Creative designers will fight this, but demand it
  -Repeat the main message on the landing page raised conversion rates up to 60%
  
• Testing is the Best Metric
  

Stefan’s Main Action Item was to “Invest in TECH.”  He noted that you need to update technology, it is imperative.  Success comes down to the segmentation of your database.

View Comments

Posted by MindComet on Feb. 25, 2008

The Week of Mistakes

I know mistakes happen, but I didn’t think my inbox would be so bombarded with them in just over a weeks time.  It started with a colleague emailing me a story about an email campaign gone bad where the company was sending out communication to update users on something particular to their software game.  The company sent out batches of emails (not sure how they were sending them out) but apparently they were supposed to use the BCC field for all the emails in that batch but forgot so everyone that received the email also received the long string of the other users emails. 

Next was an email to me, one of my favorite weekly emails I might add, however this time it was addressed to Brooke and not myself.  I began to question whether it was a joke considering the companies tone yet I find it hard to believe they would make that a joke.  Then I received an email I had already received months prior.  I remembered the email instantly because the content was good and it came from a credible source.  A server maintenance issue was a fault and I was immediately followed up with an explanation.

Lastly, and one of my favorites was an email I received in terms of requesting specific information that I never requested and of all things, it was about advertising on adult rated sites.  Fortunately enough I was immediately followed up with an apology email and explanation that it was a email-sending software error.  At least I got a good laugh out of that mistake.

Although it is nice to see that nobody’s perfect and mistakes do occur I couldn’t agree more with Chad White’s Media Post’s Email Insider column the other week about the Oopsy Hall of Fame and his pointers in terms of testing your emails prior to hitting the send button.  To recap for those that might have missed it, he noted the following guidelines to ensure flawless execution:

1. Develop an email testing process and stick to it!

2. Spell-check.

3. View a test send in accounts from all the major email clients such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN to ensure consistent rendering across platforms.

4. Check image source files to ensure they load accurately.

5. Only resend an email where the mistake has significantly impaired the first message that was sent.

6. Try to halt the send if you immediately catch a mistake that was sent. You may be able to stop your entire list from receiving the erroneous email.

7. Develop a protocol for your apology emails, to allow for quick responses when a serious mistake happens.

View Comments

Posted by MindComet on Feb. 03, 2008