The Email QA Checklist: 20 Checks Before Any Campaign Goes Live

Most email mistakes are small, and most of them are public. A broken link, a wrong date, an offer code that does not work or a footer that still says last year. Once the email is sent, there is no undo button. The only reliable defense is a short, boring checklist that someone runs every single time.

Here are 20 checks, grouped by where mistakes usually hide. They work for a single brand sending a weekly campaign and for an agency shipping dozens of client emails a month.

Content: checks 1 to 6

1. The subject line and preview text are final and read well together.
2. Every date and day of the week is correct, including the year.
3. The offer wording matches the offer that is actually set up in the store.
4. Discount codes work at checkout, and the code in the email is spelled exactly as created.
5. Personalization fields have a fallback, so no one sees an empty greeting.
6. Spelling and grammar have been checked by someone who did not write the copy.

Links: checks 7 to 10

7. Every link and button has been clicked, not just looked at.
8. Product links go to the right product, in stock, at the right price.
9. Tracking parameters are added consistently, so results can be measured later.
10. The unsubscribe and preference links work.

Images and layout: checks 11 to 14

11. Every meaningful image has alt text that describes it; decorative images have empty alt text.
12. Key information, such as the offer, the deadline and the button, is live text, not part of an image.
13. Images are compressed, so the email loads quickly on mobile data.
14. The email still makes sense with images turned off.

Rendering: checks 15 to 17

15. The email has been viewed on a phone first, then on desktop.
16. It has been checked in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, since each one renders email differently.
17. Dark mode does not hide the logo, invert the buttons or make text unreadable.

Audience and sending: checks 18 to 20

18. The right segment is selected, and suppression lists are applied.
19. The send time is set in the correct time zone.
20. A final test has gone to a small internal list, and the named approver has signed off.

Who should run the checklist

The person who built the email is the worst person to check it. They know what it is supposed to say, so their eyes fill in the gaps. Wherever possible, have a second person run the checklist, even if that person sits outside the marketing team.

For agencies, make the checklist part of the handoff between designer and account manager, and keep a simple record of who checked each campaign and when. When a client asks how a mistake happened, that record turns an awkward conversation into a quick fix.

Make it a habit, not a rescue

Checklists fail when they are treated as optional on busy days, which are exactly the days mistakes happen. Keep the list short enough to finish in fifteen minutes. Put it in the same place the team builds campaigns, so it is impossible to miss. And when a mistake does slip through, add a check for it to the list rather than a new rule nobody remembers.

Start with better-built emails

A checklist catches errors, but well-built emails create fewer of them. Designs made for email from the start, rather than converted from a social graphic or a web banner, tend to pass the rendering checks the first time. Reusable modules help too: a footer, a product grid and a button style that have already passed QA do not need to be fixed again every week.

That is the approach behind Nexmail, which designs campaigns inside a brand’s locked guidelines and exports them as production-ready HTML for Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend or Constant Contact, built to render in Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail and on mobile. Teams that want fewer surprises at the QA stage can start with production-ready email design for ecommerce and spend their checklist time on the offer and the audience instead.

Copy it, then use it

Paste these 20 checks into your team’s campaign template today. The first few runs will feel slow. By the fifth campaign the list will take a few minutes, and the mistakes it catches will be ones your customers never see.