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New Tool Allows Real-Time Email Testing Against Multiple Platforms, Clients


Litmus
, a provider of cloud-based email marketing tools, recently introduced a new feature that allows email marketers to do something their Web development colleagues have done for years: test their content on multiple client platforms.

The Litmus Interactive Testing tool, billed as the first of its kind, will render a test marketing email against more than 30 desktop email clients, Web-based email services (using multiple browsers) and mobile platforms. The tool shows screenshots of an email as it appears on each client, allowing marketers to test their email content for platform compatibility or HTML rendering problems.

"It's incredibly important to test marketing emails across different environments before hitting the 'send' button," said Paul Farnell, CEO of Litmus, in a company release. "The problem is, we can't have all the different versions of Outlook, Lotus Notes, Thunderbird, etc. installed on our computers."

"What's surprising to me," Farnell added, "is that this kind of QA has been common practice for Web designers for about a decade."

In addition to showing how a marketing email will render on multiple clients, the Litmus Interactive Testing tool allows users to edit messages in real time in order to make changes and view the results.

The full Litmus product suite also includes spam-filter testing and email analytics tools. According to the company, its products are compatible with any third-party email provider; API access is also available for enterprise developers.

A Litmus subscription costs between $49 and $299 per month, based on the number of users and access to advanced analytics and spam filter testing.