The last hour before a campaign send
A repeatable checklist for the final hour: send a real test, capture the delivered email, walk the evidence in order, and recheck after every fix. Together with the report it produces, it replaces "I clicked a few links and it seemed fine" with a record you can stand behind.
Phase 1 — before the test send
-
Send the test through your real platform settings.
Link tracking on, production sending domain, the same auto-tagging as the real send. A test sent with tracking disabled contains different links than the campaign your subscribers will receive — checking it proves nothing about the actual send.
-
Send it to an inbox you control.
The delivered message — after the platform rewrote links and added tracking — is the artifact under test, so it has to land somewhere you can export it from.
-
Save the delivered message as a .eml file.
Works with an email saved from Gmail, Outlook on the web or Apple Mail. Save the message that arrived, not a forward of it — forwarding produces a new message with different content.
Phase 2 — on the delivered test
-
Upload the .eml and read the report.
Every unique link and remote image is classified before any request, then eligible public destinations get bounded checks. Each resource lands in one of six states — the full vocabulary is worth knowing before your first real run.
-
Walk Broken items first.
Each one records the HTTP status or an explicit error code. These are deterministic failures — a 404, a timeout, a dead redirect — and they get fixed in your sending platform before anything else.
-
Then Warnings.
The destination answered, but something recorded needs a human decision — a UTM issue on the final URL, an HTTPS downgrade inside a redirect chain, an unexpected image content type. Decide each one deliberately; do not skim.
-
Then Protected items — by hand, deliberately.
SendProofs recognizes unsubscribe, sign-in, reset and similar action links by URL and link-text patterns; recognized links are never opened, and the report lists them marked "Not opened". Open each one yourself, knowing it is real: clicking the unsubscribe link in your test actually unsubscribes that address. That is exactly why no tool should click it for you. How protected actions work.
-
Confirm tracking on the links that matter.
Read the final UTM values on your primary call-to-action links — the UTM review runs on the final URL after redirects, so what you see is what the chain actually ends at. Reviewing UTM values.
Phase 3 — after fixes
-
Fix in the platform where the campaign lives.
SendProofs reports evidence; it does not edit links, templates or tracking. The fix always happens in your sending platform.
-
Send a fresh test after any fix.
The old .eml is evidence about the old campaign. A fixed link only counts as fixed when a new delivered test proves it.
-
Upload the fresh test and recheck.
Repeat until the report shows an outcome you are willing to approve against — Warnings decided and Protected items reviewed by hand, not just the Broken items gone.
Still yours to check
- Subject line and preheader — read them on a real device, out loud.
- The send list and segmentation — the report says nothing about who receives the campaign.
- Rendering across email clients — SendProofs takes no screenshots and checks no layout.
- Whether the offer, dates and copy are right — evidence about links is not evidence about content.
A report with every item resolved is evidence about the campaign's links, images and tracking at check time — it does not guarantee the campaign as a whole is ready. The human checks above stay on the checklist.
Run this checklist on your next campaign
Free workspace — 100 resource checks each month, no card at signup.