Every email marketer has sent an email they’d love to take back. Maybe it was a typo in the subject line. A broken link. An image that didn’t load. Or perhaps the email looked perfect until somebody opened it in Outlook.
Sometimes the mistake isn’t even in the email itself. It’s the wrong audience, an expired offer, a product page that wasn’t updated in time or a personalisation field that didn’t populate as expected.
It happens to beginners. It happens to experienced email marketers too.
However, experienced marketers tend to make fewer mistakes. And that’s because they build processes to catch them before they reach the inbox.
Over the last decade, I’ve made it a rule that no campaign gets sent without a second pair of eyes reviewing it first.
“You don’t need a second pair of eyes because you’re careless. You need them because you’re too close to the campaign.“
“When you’ve spent hours writing copy, tweaking designs and checking links, your brain stops reading what’s there. Instead, it starts reading what it expects to see.”
That’s why someone who’s never looked at the campaign before can often spot a mistake in seconds.
Why we miss our own mistakes
When you’re building an email campaign, you’re involved in every decision.
- You wrote the copy
- Chose the images
- Built the layout
- Tested the links
- Selected the audience
By the time you’re ready to send, you’ve probably looked at the same email dozens of times. That familiarity is exactly what makes mistakes harder to spot.
Your brain stops reading the email like a subscriber. Instead, it reads what it expects to see. Typos disappear. Broken links get overlooked. You assume the website has been updated. You trust the audience selection because you remember choosing it early that day.
That’s why a colleague who’s never seen the campaign before can often spot an issue you can’t. They’re seeing the email for the first time, just like your subscribers will.
“Most email mistakes aren’t caused by bad work. They’re caused by unchecked assumptions.”
The goal of a peer review isn’t to prove someone has made a mistake. It’s to challenge the assumptions that naturally build up during the campaign creation process.
My email QA and peer review process
Over the years, I’ve found that the best peer reviews aren’t about proofreading. They’re about reviewing the campaign from the subscriber’s perspective.
A good reviewer isn’t there to check whether you’ve used an Oxford comma or whether your button is five pixels out of alignment.
They’re there to experience the campaign for the first time and ask the questions you no longer think to ask:
- Can I immediately understand what this email is about?
- Would I know what to do next?
- Does everything work as I’d expect it to?
- Is there anything that feels off?
That fresh perspective is incredibly valuable because your subscribers won’t have spent the last three hours building the campaign either. They’ll judge it in seconds.
Over the years, that second pair of eyes have caught everything from:
- The wrong audience being selected
- Dynamic content issues caused by Excel spreadsheet imports doing Excel things
- Websites that weren’t ready for the campaign by still showing old pricing
- Externally hosted images that had become unavailable moments before send
- Mobile formatting problems that had simply been overlooked as everyone focussed on the desktop render
None of those mistakes were caused by poor email marketing. They were caused by assumptions that nobody had challenged.
“The biggest risks to your email often aren’t in your email.“
Sometimes the email itself is perfect. It’s everything around it that isn’t:
- The landing page isn’t live
- The discount hasn’t been activated
- The product pricing hasn’t been updated
- The website images have changed
- Or another team hasn’t quite finished their part of the campaign
A good peer review looks beyond the email itself and checks the entire customer journey.
Give yourself time to spot the mistakes
One of the biggest causes of “Oops” emails isn’t poor copy or bad design. It’s time. Or more accurately, the lack of it.
When you’re building an email in the morning and sending it that afternoon, every review feels rushed. The pressure to hit a deadline means it’s easy to skim over the details, make assumptions and move on.
Whenever possible, try to build your campaigns ahead of schedule. Even leaving an email overnight can make a huge difference.
When you come back to it the next day, you’ll often spot things you completely missed the day before. Better still, it gives your reviewer the time to properly test the campaign instead of feeling like they’re holding up the send.
Of course, not every campaign can be planned days in advance. Last-minute announcements, breaking news and urgent customer communications don’t always give you that luxury.
But for planned marketing campaigns, creating a little breathing room between building and sending is one of the simplest ways to reduce mistakes.
And then there’s the phrase every email marketer has heard…
“Can we just make one quick change?”
- A last-minute tweak to the subject line
- A different hero image
- A pricing update
- An extra CTA
On their own, these changes often seem harmless. The problem is they don’t trigger another full review of the campaign. That’s when broken links, formatting issues, incorrect pricing or unintended consequences start slipping through.
Whenever a last-minute change is made, treat it as a new assumption that needs challenging.
The email QA checklist, AKA The assumption test
Every email campaign is built on assumptions. The purpose of a peer review isn’t to tick boxes. It’s to identify those assumptions before your subscribers do.
✅ Are we assuming the inbox looks right?
Before opening the email, review it exactly as your subscribers will first see it.
Check the:
- Sender name
- Subject line
- Preheader
Do they clearly communicate who the email is from and why it’s worth opening?
✅ Are we assuming the email works on every device?
Don’t just review the desktop version you’ve spent the morning designing.
Check:
- Mobile rendering
- Dark mode
- Font sizes
- Accessibility
- Image scaling
It’s amazing how often small formatting issues sneaks through.
✅ Are we assuming every click leads somewhere useful?
Click everything. Not just the main CTA.
Check:
- Images
- Buttons
- Text links
- Navigation
- Social icons
- Preference centre
- Unsubscribe link
If a subscriber can click it, you should too.
✅ Are we assuming the data is correct?
The email might be perfect. The data feeding it might not be.
Review:
- Personalisation
- Dynamic content
- Segmentation
- Product feeds
- Pricing
- Discount codes
Even something as simple as a spreadsheet import can introduce unexpected problems if the Excel cells were saved in the wrong format.
✅ Are we assuming the rest of the campaign is ready?
This is the one that’s most often overlooked.
Before you send, ask:
- Is the landing page live?
- Does the pricing match?
- Are products available?
- Have externally hosted assets been checked?
- Is every supporting team ready?
Remember… the biggest risks to your email often aren’t in your email.
✅ Are we assuming we’re sending to the right audience?
One final pause before pressing send.
Double-check:
- Audience
- Suppression lists
- Exclusions
- Test accounts
- Send date and time
Selecting the wrong audience or sending on the wrong date can undo hours of great work in a single click.
That little fear moment before you press send
If you’ve worked in email marketing for any length of time, you’ll know the feeling:
- Your campaign has been built
- The links have been checked
- The audience has been selected
- Everything looks ready
Your cursor hovers over the Send button. Then comes the little voice in your head.
“Have I missed anything?”
That feeling never completely goes away. And that’s a good thing!
A healthy amount of doubt means you’re invested in the campaign. You understand that one click could put your email in front of thousands, or even millions, of subscribers.
“The email marketers I’d worry about are the ones who press send without ever questioning themselves.”
Pressing send should never feel comfortable
No peer review process will ever guarantee that an “Oops” email never happens. I’m living proof of that, alongside countless other email marketers.
After all, email marketing is a fast-moving channel. Deadlines change. Last-minute requests appear. Websites go down. Data changes.
People will naturally make mistakes under pressure
The goal can never be perfection. Instead, we build a process that catches as many mistakes as possible before your subscribers do.
That’s why you should never send an email without someone else reviewing it first. Not because you don’t trust your own work. Because you know you’re too close to it.
The moment before pressing Send should probably always come with a little hesitation. It means you care about the campaign and the people receiving it.
The difference is that a good peer review process replaces that feeling of “I hope I’ve not missed anything…” with the confidence that you’ve challenged your assumptions, tested what matters and done everything reasonably possible to get it right.
That’s how experienced email marketers avoid sending “Oops” emails.
And that’s why your subscribers should never be the first people to review your campaign.
