Best practices for validation and testing

HTML validation

Use HTML code validation to catch problems before you begin testing your code in email clients. A large percentage of rendering issues are caused by improper HTML syntax and bad coding practices.

The World Wide Web Consortium offers a free resource for validating your code at http://validator.w3.org. Paste your code directly into the form field on the Validate by Direct Input tab and instantly see how your code does. You can safely ignore errors that flag proprietary code that is used in Acoustic Campaign.

Testing

After you are sure that your message is coded properly, it’s time to start testing. Unlike a website where an error can be corrected, an email cannot be taken back or updated after you send it. Set up test accounts on as many different email clients as possible so that you have the opportunity to see how recipients view your message. Look for any rendering issues and content errors.

If you are targeting a predominantly B2C recipient base, you can focus mainly on popular web-based clients such as Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL Mail. If your recipients are mainly B2B, you should pay close attention to clients such as Outlook and IBM Notes®, which are ubiquitous in large organizations.

When you begin testing, it's likely that you'll run into a few issues that are caused by the way different email clients render your code. However, if you followed the best practices, you should avoid most problems.