Gmail and other email providers make it easy to test your email campaigns.
Do you have an email marketing alias?
Testing opt-in forms, especially ones that trigger any automation, can present challenges when you use only one email address. Most email marketing companies make it impossible to send a test email to and from the same email address.
Subscribing and unsubscribing the same email address as we track down problems can also get tiresome.
This is where email aliases become a hidden hero tool in your auditing tool box.
An email alias is simply a forwarding email address without the hassle of creating new email accounts. A single user account can have multiple email aliases.
Review the email domains used by your subscribers. Gmail and Apple Mail will probably top the lists. Create accounts in each one (and Outlook, Hotmail and Yahoo, too). Then create multiple email aliases in each one to test, test, test your campaigns.
Gmail, for example, makes it super easy to create multiple email aliases.
Let\’s say super email marketer Jane uses gmail address janerocks@gmail.com.
Jane can create an alias using the dot or numbers and the + sign:
jane.rocks@gmail.com
janerocks+23@gmail.com
anerocks+19@gmail.com
Gmail treats these aliases as acceptable versions of janerocks@gmail.com. So do most email marketing providers.
If you submit janerocks+23@gmail.com to an opt-in form you\’re testing, your ESP should trigger any automation you have set up.
You can unsubscribe this alias when you\’re done testing the form. Considering keeping a few of the aliases as subscribers. It never hurts to send campaigns in real time to such email addresses in case you need to track down problems later.