Which email clients do you need to test when you initially set up your email template?

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When setting up an email template for an enewsletter, testing in a variety of clients can be the most time-consuming aspect, but also one of the most important. Because of the (sometimes very) different ways that email clients display the emails that they receive, it is imperative to see what changes and tweaks you need to make so that it looks presentable in all of the clients. The issue at hand is the different way that email clients display HTML and CSS. The code of each of these languages is interpreted in slightly different ways by different programs. But these slight differences can turn into major errors in an email template and are therefore important to check out.

Keep in mind while testing that emails can look different across clients (Yahoo, Gmail, Thunderbird, Outlook), operating systems (Mac OS X, Windows XP) and browsers (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer). While it might seem a little daunting to test across so many different permutations (Yahoo on Internet Explorer on Mac OS X vs. Gmail on Firefox on Windows VISTA), keep in mind that by putting a variety of people on your test list, you can get a lot of feedback on different permutations without having to do too much work yourself. That being said, you can never test too much for an email template. However, the good news is that once you're satisfied with how your template looks on a variety of platforms, you can reuse it. It is a template after all. This makes writing email newsletters infinitely easier because the majority of testing is done before the email message is even written.

Another thing to consider is (if you have the information) what clients are people using to look at your emails. Most email blasters will allow you to see what domains the emails in your list are associated with. For example, you might find that most people in your list have email addresses with the domain yahoo.com. Then you would want to concentrate your customization efforts for your template on how it looks in Yahoo. Sometimes this domain information is hidden however, and just because a domain is gmail.com or yahoo.com doesn't mean that they don't use a desktop email client like Thunderbird or Outlook to view their emails.

Lastly, there are software programs available like Email Advisor and Campaign Monitor that will give you a snapshot of what your email will look like in different clients. This service is almost always a fee-based service so for most, taking the time and manually checking out the template in different settings is the preferred option

At the end of the day, the key is to create a simple, clean email without too much complicated CSS and create a good, varied testing list to send the template to in order to get feedback. For more specific information on email clients and their display criteria, check out these links: