Cross client email testing using MailChimp

Anyone who has worked on websites will have dealt with the issue of cross-browser compatibility – it's one of the accepted headaches of our profession. Also, there are only a handful of browsers that need to be tested for, and they are becoming increasingly standards compliant as they mature.

But what about testing rich HTML emails? That is a whole different ballgame, but one that MailChimp fortunately makes much easier.

The number of email clients and webmail providers out there is vast; far more than the dozen or so browsers that need to be tested for a typical website. MailChimp's Inbox Inspector takes screenshots of your campaign being displayed in 29 different email clients, including webmail, and shows how your email is displayed with images turned off and with spam filters on or off.

Why bother testing your emails in different email clients?

In the right hands, HTML emails can be powerful, highly engaging marketing tools that have a high return on investment. It is possible to do a lot more with HTML email than many realise – animated GIFs and even HTML video email are both possible.

Now let's say you have a big call to action promoting an amazing offer. The main drive of your campaign is to get your readers to respond to this call to action and click on the graphic to see your special offer. The trouble is, GMail (and many others) do not display graphics by default for security reasons.

So rather than this:

All you see is this:

(tumbleweed...)

Yep, nothing unless you put an alt tag on the image. Call to action gone, all that effort on crafting your email wasted. ROI: £0. A quick check with inbox inspector would highlight this immediately when you might otherwise be oblivious. By the way, always make sure your images have font styles applied to them so that your alt tags look good when images are off...

And here is what Hotmail/Windows Live Mail does to sliced images in tables unless you apply display:block to them (not only that, but this email is 720px wide – a full 120px wider than the maximum recommended size for emails):

It looks dreadful. Yes, I have mentioned this to them in the past (it's only polite). It looks even worse with images turned off.. Once again, a quick check with MailChimp's Inbox Inspector would flag this up.

It's an impressive tool that has enabled me to create some really rich emails and test them with confidence before hitting that big send button.

As MailChimp experts, we have a lot of experience in producing attractive, compelling email marketing campaigns for ourselves and our clients. Surveys have shown that email marketing is the single biggest factor in increasing profit margins through the web and getting it right is crucial. The inbox inspector is an important tool to achieving success.