Build and Test Emails Like a Pro

September 9, 2021September 18, 2021 Stan

Do you find your organization creating great, targeted, time-sensitive content that can’t get used because it takes too long to build or test assets? Are you constantly shying away from complex customer nurture campaigns because of the heavy building lift?

We’ve all heard of best practices for content creation when it comes to our digital marketing strategies, but what about best practices for building and testing emails? There are actually many that will save time and give you peace of mind knowing that each contact will get the best experience possible.

Let’s start with email building best practices.

You’ve likely found an email layout that generates activity with your contacts. Eloqua makes it easy to turn any email into a template, which can be accessed at any time to create as many new emails as necessary, without needing to build each asset from scratch.

You can get as in-depth with template creation as you wish. It’s possible to make a template completely driven by a specific purpose that is used over and over, such as content download auto-response used by multiple teams at your organization.

You can also create templates to capture different header and footer presets, sender and reply to email information, and various branding. Whatever the need of your business, creating group of templates to address your recurring email needs will save time on the building of assets.

Another great way to speed up any email creation without sacrificing the complexity of the segmentation is with dynamic content.

If your team has never used dynamic content before, don’t be afraid.

Within the building interface, you can easily set logic rules for each version of the content you create. What exactly does that mean? Say you are launching a product that could be useful to contacts across multiple industries. Instead of creating three emails with three header banners depicting your product for the three different industries – therefore requiring 6 assets to be built – you can create one dynamic content banner with three contingencies, and place it in one email that will display the banner differently depending on the industry data associated with the contact to whom you will send the email.

Right now you may be thinking – you have all these hacks for building faster, but how do you test them to make sure you built them correctly? No amount of time saved in the building is really helpful unless we can be sure we won’t have to rebuild multiple times.

Don’t worry, with a little setup, you can create test personas in Eloqua that will allow you to send test emails and view them as if you were each of the personas included in your segmentation. To set up these personas, create contacts within the Eloqua database that include each of the key data points used for your segmentation. To continue the example above, create three test contacts in Eloqua that include the test conductor’s email addresses, and associate a different industry with each. Another way to accomplish multiple personas with one email address is to create one contact but update the industry data before each test email send.

Once those are set, create your dynamic content and the email, save it, and send the email to the three industry personas as a test.

Another easy way to make sure your QA process is always functioning at the highest standard is to create a checklist that each test conductor can use to check off that every detail has been executed correctly. For example, you can include line items like, “Is there a header selected for this email?” or “Has the correct sender name been applied?”

Since there are so many small details that go into creating each email (how an email displays in the inbox, working links, spelling errors, image display, etc.) don’t worry if it takes your organization a couple of tries to create a QA checklist that meets every need. If you need ideas to start your own checklist, best practice leaders like Email on Acid, Litmus, and Campaign Monitor have created lists of their own to help. And don’t be afraid to revisit and revise the checklist often, as your organization’s needs may change over time.

Next time you’ve got to get content out in a hurry, give these practices a try!

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