Trends & insights
What should be included in a marketing ops pre-flight email checklist?
Summary
Include segment size sign-off, exclusion checks, link testing, personalization rendering, and sender profile verification.
A comprehensive marketing ops pre-flight email checklist should cover technical, administrative, and content-related verification steps before any send. First, it must require a manual sign-off on the final segment size and a comparison against projected counts. Second, the checklist should verify that all exclusion lists and suppression rules are actively applied to the campaign. Third, it must include a step to test all links, UTM parameters, and tracking codes to ensure accurate analytics. Fourth, the team must verify that personalization tokens and dynamic content blocks render correctly across multiple email clients. Additionally, checking the sender profile, reply-to address, and subject line for typos is essential. The checklist should also confirm that the plain-text version of the email is formatted properly. Finally, documenting the date, time, and team member responsible for the send ensures accountability and continuous process improvement.