How to quality control your emails before sending them to your list

Hey, Michael here.

We’re back with another edition of The DTC Letters.

In today's newsletter, we are going to over:

• Why Quality Controlling your emails matter

• A FREE quality control checklist for you to steal

• The best links I’ve found since the last email

  • Including Triple Whales INSANE Ai assistant

  • And Shopify showing the evolution and future of ecommerce

If you haven’t already, check out this new training I posted on YouTube, The 6 Step Guide to Beat Your Best Performing Campaign Email of All Time (link)

Actionable Tip

This weeks action item is to ensure your brand is using a proper quality control process when regularly sending emails to your list.

Why? Because 1 miss click can cost you $30,000+ in weekly sales.

There’s nothing worse the sending an email that gets 60%+ open rates and 4% click rates just to find out you attached the a broken link to the email and all that traffic went to waste.

That’s why have a proper quality control checklist for yourself or your team IS A MUST, especially as a 7-8 figure brand with hundreds of thousands of email subscribers.

If you aren sending 2-4 weekly emails to your list WITHOUT a quality control checklist, you’re at risk of losing tens of thousands of dollars every email you send.

So what should you be checking for?

Below is the exact checklist my agency, AdSumo Digital, uses while sending out hundreds of emails of emails a month.

Here’s a checklist to steal and use for yourself:

Quality Control Checklist:

• Device Optimization

  • Is your email both mobile AND desktop optimized

  • Is it readable and clear on mobile

• Dark Mode Compatible

  • Check to make sure all elements are still visible in dark mode (nothing should be hidden from the reader)

• Dynamic Content Blocks

  • If applicable, ensure that the dynamic product blocks in the email are working correctly

• Copy Review

  • Proof read to check for spelling or grammar mistakes

  • Does the copy align with the goal of the email

  • Subject Line and Preview Text have no typos

  • Cross reference the copy in the final email with the copy sent from the account manager or copywriter

• Visual Elements

  • Is the email size below 80 KB to avoid getting clipped by gmail

  • Are all imaged compressed BUT not blurry

  • Does every image have Alt Text

  • Cross reference the final product with what your designs had in Figma (or canva if you use that for designs)

• CTA’s

  • Make sure all links and buttons are connected properly and clicked to verify they send your reader to where you want

  • Make sure that any coupons in the emails are displayed properly

  • Check that the coupon code parameters are set correctly ie, minimum spend, expiration date, product category, etc

• Final Test

  • Ensure (if this is a flow) that the flow triggers and filters are correct as well as time delays, conditional splits, and profile filters

  • Check your smart sending

  • Send yourself a test email from Klaviyo and check both on mobile and desktop

  • Check Subject line, preview text, and sender name

Be sure to USE this checklist.

On average, the brands I audit will make a mistake on one of these things 7 out of 10 emails they send out.

Not doing the above is costing them tens of thousands of dollars and monthly sales.

The Best Links

Here are some of the best links I've found since last time I emailed you:

✔️Strategy

Have you seen the Ecommerce Compound Effect? (link)

The EXACT 3 Stage Strategy We Used To Add $1.6M in EXTRA Yearly Revenue To Our Clients Ecom Brand In Less Than 90 Days (link)

How to generate more revenue WITH THE SAME amount of ad spend (link)

Tests that actually move the needle, even if your emails are doing well already (link)

Check out this winning time delay test that you can replicate in 3 minutes or less (link)

🧵 News

Triple Whale launched Moby, their new Ai data scientist and I have to admit… it looks scary good (link)

Shopify shows just how far ecommerce has come and what the future looks like in their eyes (link)

How I Can Help You

If you like this newsletter and want to work with me, there are a few ways we can do so:

1. You can apply to work with my Agency, AdSumo Digital (link)

2. I will be posting free weekly training videos on my Youtube channel (link)

3. I have over 7,000 tweets on scaling your DTC brand using your brands Email List (link)

4. If you are looking to better monetize your DTC brands email list, we have worked with brands in several niches from Health & Wellness to Luxury brands and helped Country Life Natural Foods increase their email list revenue add $1.6M in EXTRA yearly revenue in less than 90 days. (Apply Here)

or, so can just reply to this email.

I reply to absolutely everybody who replies to me :)