When people receive your emails, the formatting can look different than intended based on what program is used to read your emails.

To reduce the chance for error, you can test an email newsletter in multiple accounts to try to gain the perspective of what the users will receive on their end. To start, it's important to view the test email in not only various hosted email accounts (like Gmail) but also local email clients (Outlook) and different browsers (Mozilla Firefox).

Where I Test My Email Newsletters:

Hosted Email Accounts:

•  Your organization email account
•  Gmail
•  Yahoo
•  AOL
•  Hotmail

Local Email Clients:

• Microsoft Outlook (Beware: Outlook reads your email formatting different than most programs, but it is currently the top used email service so make sure to test!)

• Mozilla Thunderbird

Browsers:

• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
  

Other Tips:

- Testing newsletters can be exhausting. Make it easier by setting yourself up on your computer to be able to test your newsletter. Some ways to start:

• Create a "test" email account for each email service that your organization does not currently have.
  
• Download multiple browsers on your desktop so you can view with ease.
• Open an outlook and thunderbird account - even if you don't use them yourself - to check the newsletter.
  

- This is not a complete list of places to check. Look at the most common email account domains on your current email list to help guide what test accounts you should also include (i.e. sbcglobal.net, comcast.net, Apple Mail, iPhone, mobile devices)

More Resources:

- To gain more perspective, read another Answr: Which email clients do you need to test when you initially set up your email template, and which ones do you need to check for every email?

- A reoccurring error in email newsletter formatting is how images are displayed in the different email services. There are some tricks to get the pics to look good in all the email programs and browsers. Get the tips here: Image Best Practices for HTML Newsletters

- Stay informed: Top 10 Email Clients from Litmus.