Email QA Session: Webinar Recording + Q&A

Email testing and QA (quality assurance) is the groundwork for great emails. With all the time you spend writing, designing, and developing emails, they should arrive in the inbox looking the way you intended.

In this webinar, Joe Savitch (Director of Marketing and Operations at Altos Agency), Carin Slater (Email Marketing Specialist at Litmus), and I walked through common critical errors in emails—and how you can spot and fix them with Litmus.

Didn’t make the live webinar? That’s OK. We recorded the whole thing. Watch the recording here and check out the Q&A below.

Q&A

Thank you to everyone who chimed in during the webinar with a question! Here’s a recap of our answers.

Is there a resource site you recommend to fix Outlook format issues?

Carin suggests using tables as much as possible. This can alleviate a lot of Outlook headaches. You might also want to check out this blog she wrote on the rendering differences in Outlook.

I know we should be using role=”presentation” for email tables that are used for layout. Are there other roles or attributes we should be using to help make our emails more accessible?

Be sure to check out our ultimate guide to accessible emails to dive deeper.

Can you recommend sources to address errors in the screen reader?

Definitely check out the Litmus blog for articles on accessibility. But here are a few quick tips:

• Make sure you’re adding ALT text.
• Use roles to help screen readers understand how your email is laid out.
• Add semantic HTML (e.g., use an H tag if you’re creating a header).

What does the text being justified have to do with accessibility?

Great question! When text is left-aligned, the eyes know where to “find” the next line. But when it’s center-justified, it can be much more difficult for those with dyslexia or reading impairments to locate the start of the next line of text.

How can I take advantage of all these QA email mistakes features if my email team is building their emails in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC)?

Love this question! You can do this in a few ways:

• Set up ESP sync with Litmus and SFMC. This will allow you to quickly and easily import emails from SFMC into Litmus for testing. Then, you can navigate the Previews & QA tab to see your full QA checklist.
• Import your email from SFMC for testing. Use your Litmus test address to send your email into Litmus for testing. Again, you’ll navigate to that Previews & QA tab for the full QA.
• Use Litmus Extension. This is a Chrome extension that lets you “pull” your QA checklist into SFMC as an overlay. It’s a fun and easy way to test as you build!

Are there issues with using multi-tracking UTMs or pixels in each mailing? (i.e., each HTML block/module has its own pixel/UTM codes)

Multi-tracking UTMs for different links/modules would be useful if you want to understand which modules are getting clicked on outside of your ESP within Google Analytics—or you need to differentiate between the same link used across multiple modules and your ESP tracks that as one link. (We do that by using the utm_content variable in our Google Analytics tracking to differentiate between links in our webinar emails.)

However, we wouldn’t use different pixels. The pixel will always load. It’s just an image, so it wouldn’t track anything different if it’s added to different “modules” in an email.

Do we think Microsoft’s move to make Outlook electron/WebKit-based will mean a lot of the Outlook issues we face will begin to disappear?

That’s an interesting question—and the answer depends on whether or not this actually happens. We’ll be in the “wait and see” camp.