As online sales and marketing evolved the need for testing became increasingly important so now we test Web applications and services for reliability and performance and Web content for browser compatibility. But there’s one area of compatibility testing that’s often overlooked and you’ve seen the consequences of no or poor testing a million times: HTML email.
As online sales and marketing evolved the need for testing became increasingly important so now we test Web applications and services for reliability and performance and Web content for browser compatibility. But there’s one area of compatibility testing that’s often overlooked and you’ve seen the consequences of no or poor testing a million times: HTML e-mail.
The world’s largest error message
Just think how often you’ve received HTML e-mail that renders weirdly. You get images that overlap text or are missing all together, text that’s interpreted incorrectly so that foreign characters wind up being displayed, and what looks like links that either don’t work or result in 404s.
It’s not surprising that HTML e-mail would be problematic given how many e-mail clients there are; it’s essentially that same problem that we have with browser compatibility testing because many of the e-mail clients use the same underlying rendering engines but amplified because the client adds a layer of content presentation.
This means that if you’re designing and implementing Web applications then it’s very likely that HTML e-mail will be part of the system so if you’re going to be thorough, your plans should include rigorous validation of your messaging content.
Enter Litmus, a service published by Salted Services, that does a conceptually similar job to the focus of last week’s Web Applications Alert newsletter, Browser Shots.
Litmus takes your HTML e-mail and loads it into the most common e-mail PC client and rendering engine combinations (AOL Mail IE & Firefox, Apple Mail 4, Apple Mail 3, Entourage 2008, Gmail IE & Firefox, Hotmail IE & Firefox, Lotus Notes 8, Lotus Notes 7, Lotus Notes 6.5, Mobile Me IE & Firefox, Outlook 2010 Beta, Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2002/XP, Outlook 2000, Postbox, Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail, Windows Mail, and Yahoo IE & Firefox) as well a selection of mobile devices (Apple iPhone 3GS, BlackBerry 8800, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile 6.5).
You can submit your HTM e-mail content through a Web page submission or by e-mail and the company claims immediate results delivered on the Web. The service also tests landing pages and spam filtering (AOL Mail, Apple Mail 3, Apple Mail 4, Barracuda, Gmail, Hotmail, MessageLabs, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Postini, SpamAssassin, and Yahoo Mail are supported) to test complete end-to-end functionality.
Another feature Litmus offers is analytics: The company provides an HTML snippet to add to your HTML e-mail content that collects a range of metrics including e-mail clients used, which recipients read (rendered) the message (broken out into actually read, skimmed, or glanced and deleted), and whether they forwarded and/or printed the message. These data are collected and analyzed in real time providing a constantly updated view into e-mail campaign performance.
Litmus’s client roster is impressive and includes jetBlue, 37signals, The Guardian newspaper, and Oxfam.
Pricing starts at $49 per month for one user running unlimited previews, increasing to $99 for one user running unlimited previews with analytics for one campaign and unlimited spam filter tests to $399 per month for unlimited everything.
