Today we are going to unbox the email technology company that, without a doubt, has the coolest name: Email On Acid.
Founded by web programmer John Thies and designer Michelle Klann in 2009, Email On Acid (based in Denver) is primarlily an email visualation tool but also has analytics capability and provides tools to increase inbox delivery and help blocked images render properly in the email client.
The first step is to go to the Email on Acid website and create an account:
Email on Acid offers a 7 day free trial, with monthly, yearly, and pay as you go options. The "Basics", which is the level we will be reviewing today, includes the ability to test your emails and preview them as they would be seen by dozens of different email clients, but does not include the more advanced features such as analytics, or the use of Mozify which converts images into a format that renders even if images are turned off on the email client side.
Once your account is set up, you can go to your Email On Acid dashboard. The Dashboard is where you can run your tests and review the results.
The right side of the dashboard provides access to the various tests you can run. At the top of the menu, you can choose to look at your inbox, where you can access the results of each test, run an analytics report, or see "design inspirations" to get your creative juices flowing:
In the menu you can also choose which type of test you want to run: Email test, Spam test, an analytics test, a web page preview, a program to optimize your emails before they go out, and the ability to create an image that will render on the client side even if images are blocked using Email on Acid's Mozify tool. In addtion, there are tons of resources, white papers, templates, webinars, and a library of tips and tricks available to you at the click of a button.
So Let's look at the results:
Email on Acid provides you an email address to add to your email list. I sent a test email from last week's OI newsletter to Email on Acid system. It takes only a few minutes to generate the test and the results are broken down into Desktop Clients, Mobile Clients, and Webmail clients:
You can also limit the number of clients that are tested. For instance, if you decide not to support an antiquated email client like Lotus Notes 6.5, you can delete that from your test clients. The thumbnails can be opened to do a visual examination of how your email will look in that client. In the preview mode of each email client, there are further tools for teams to markup the email, approve it, or get coding tips:
Code Analysis
The code analysis module allows you to see all the errors and warnings for each email client, giving you a line by line analysis of your code. As we can see from my test, Email on Acid identified over 1,200 critial errors and 259 moderate errors:
Email on Acid let's you validate your links as well. As you can see, for each link, I can see if it is a valid link as well as discover that links "reputation":
Spam Test
Besides testing your email for errors, you can also test it to see if it trips any spam filters broken down by B2B delivery, B2C delivery, and Overall Deliverability. Fortunately, the OI newsletter did great on the deliverability test, scoring 100% delivery! (screenshot below was taken before it completely processed) :
Summary
Email on Acid is an extremely easy to use tool to test how your email campaign will look on all the top email clients. It provides analytics tools, delivery statistics, spam and link checking. You can pay monthly, annually, or by campaign. They provide a free 7 day trial.