Email Proofreading Checklist: What to Check Before You Send

Published July 21, 2026

The 30 seconds that cost the most

You’ve built the email. You’ve previewed it on desktop and mobile. You’ve sent a test to your own inbox and it looks great. Your finger hovers over send — and that’s the moment small, easy-to-miss problems become expensive ones.

The button label says “Shop now” but the link is still #. The hero image has no alt text. The subject line is blank. There’s no unsubscribe link, which means every complaint this email generates goes straight against your sender reputation. None of these show up in a preview. All of them hurt you the second the email leaves your account.

A pre-send proofread is the step that catches them. Not a vibes check, not a copy edit — a structured pass over the specific things that get emails blocked, sent to spam, ignored by screen readers, or flagged by regulators.

What email proofreading actually is

Proofreading an email means checking it against a fixed list of known failure modes before it goes out. The list is the same every time, so the same email always gets the same review. There’s no judgment call about whether the copy is “good” — that’s on you. The check is narrower and more useful: does this email have the problems we already know get senders into trouble?

A good pre-send check covers five different dimensions:

1. Links — do they go somewhere real, and is the destination valid?
2. Accessibility — can screen readers and low-vision readers actually use the email?
3. Spam signals — does anything in the copy trip a spam filter?
4. Size — is the email heavy enough to get clipped or flagged?
5. Structure — does it have the pieces commercial email is required to have?

Each of those maps to a specific kind of failure — a broken CTA, a discrimination complaint, a spam-folder delivery, a clipped message, or a regulatory fine. Skip the check and you find out about the failure the hard way.

Why it matters

The cost of a pre-send problem is rarely the problem itself — it’s that you don’t see it until after the email is in your readers’ inboxes. By then the damage is done.

• Broken links kill the conversion the email was built for. A reader who clicks a dead CTA doesn’t try again; they close the email.
• Missing alt text fails WCAG and alienates the readers who rely on screen readers — and the readers whose email clients block images by default, which is more inboxes than you’d think. See Email Accessibility.
• Spam signals — ALL-CAPS, exclamation runs, red text, a missing subject — push your email toward the spam folder even when everything else is clean. See How Email Spam Filters Work.
• Missing unsubscribe and postal address aren’t just bad practice — they violate CAN-SPAM in the US, CASL in Canada, and GDPR in Europe. Each carries real penalties. See CAN-SPAM Act Explained.
• Oversized email gets clipped by Gmail past roughly 102 KB, hiding your footer (where the unsubscribe and address live) along with anything else below the fold. See Why Gmail Clips Your Emails.

A pre-send check doesn’t fix any of these for you. It surfaces them, ranked by severity, so you can decide what to fix and what to ship.

The pre-send checklist

Below is the full checklist — 22 checks across five categories. Each one catches a specific, common problem.

Links

• Every link goes somewhere. No empty href attributes. A button that doesn’t navigate when clicked is the worst possible outcome for a CTA.
• No placeholder links. A link still pointing to # is usually an unfilled navbar or button slot you forgot to wire up.
• No disallowed URL schemes. Anything other than http, https, mailto, or tel — for example javascript: or data: — gets stripped on render and silently dies in the inbox.
• Every link has a protocol. example.com without https:// gets treated as a relative URL by some clients and breaks navigation.
• mailto: links have a valid recipient. A contact button that opens an empty compose window is frustrating and unprofessional.

Accessibility

• Every image has alt text. Missing alt fails WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.1.1. Screen readers announce the file name (or nothing at all), and readers with images blocked see an empty box.
• Alt text is descriptive, not generic. A single word like “image,” “photo,” or “logo” adds no information. Replace filler with what the image actually conveys.
• Alt text stays under 125 characters. Long alt gets truncated by screen readers. If you need more, move the detail into the body copy.
• Every button has a label. An empty button renders as a blank rectangle — no accessible name, nothing to click.
• Text has enough contrast against its background. Body text should meet WCAG AA at a 4.5:1 contrast ratio. Low contrast is hard to read for low-vision users and tends to render even worse in some email clients. See Email Color and Contrast.

Spam signals

• No excessive ALL-CAPS. Multiple ALL-CAPS words in subject or body copy read as shouting, and spam filters treat them as a signal. Use case for emphasis sparingly.
• No excessive exclamation marks. Runs of !!! — or frequent single ! marks — are a classic spam-filter trigger. One per sentence is plenty.
• Avoid pure red text. #ff0000-style red on white reads as “alert” or “urgent” and is common in phishing, so filters flag it. Use a branded accent color instead.
• The email has a subject line. A blank subject is a serious deliverability signal and destroys open rates.

Size

• Block count stays under 50. Long emails tax the reader and approach Gmail’s clipping limit. If you’re over 50, consider splitting into a series or trimming.
• Image count stays under 30. Image-heavy emails trigger spam filters (no text to validate) and load slowly on mobile. Pair every image with text content.
• Preheader is between 40 and 100 characters. Under 40 wastes the preview real estate; over 100 gets truncated before the meaningful part is visible. See Email Preheader Text.

Structure

• No empty text blocks. A blank text block in the middle of an email looks broken. Delete it or add copy.
• Every image block has a URL. An image block with no source renders as a broken-image icon.
• Every button has a link. A labeled button with no destination is unclickable — the CTA is dead.
• Include an address block. CAN-SPAM (US) and CASL (Canada) require a valid postal address in every commercial email. See Email Footer Design.
• Include an unsubscribe link. CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL all require a clear, working opt-out. Sending without one is the fastest way to generate spam complaints. See Email Unsubscribe Best Practices.

How to read the results

A pre-send check is most useful when it tells you not just what is wrong, but how much it matters. Issues fall into three levels:

• Errors — fix these. High-confidence problems that will hurt you: a broken link, missing alt text on a real image, a button with no destination, a missing unsubscribe link, a missing subject. Don’t send with errors unless you understand exactly what you’re doing.
• Warnings — look and decide. Likely problems that depend on intent: a placeholder # link, generic alt text, excessive ALL-CAPS, low-contrast text. Read the issue, look at the specific block, and decide whether it’s a real problem or a false alarm.
• Notes — worth knowing. Opportunities more than problems: a missing preheader, an image-heavy email, a block count creeping upward. Not blockers, but worth fixing when you can.

Treat the check as advisory, not as a gate. You can still send an email with errors — sometimes you have a reason. But when the check is clean, you can hit send knowing the obvious failure modes aren’t there.

Common pre-send mistakes

• Skipping the check because the preview looks fine. Previews show rendering. They don’t show broken links, missing alt, spam signals, or a missing unsubscribe. Those need a different kind of check.
• Fixing the obvious error and ignoring the warnings. Warnings are where the spam-filter problems live. A clean preview plus a !!! in the subject will still land you in the spam folder.
• Trusting the unsubscribe check blindly. A pre-send check looks for the word “unsubscribe” somewhere in the email — it doesn’t verify the link points at a working opt-out page. Click it yourself to confirm.
• Sending without an address block. It’s easy to forget, and it’s one of the most common CAN-SPAM violations. Every commercial email needs a valid postal address in the footer.
• Only checking once. If you copy a template, change the copy, and send — the new copy can introduce problems the old copy didn’t have. Run the check on the final version, not the template.

How to handle pre-send checks in Temway

Temway has a built-in proofread panel in the email editor that runs all 22 checks above against the email you’re working on. Open it before you publish or send a test copy — it’s the step between “I think this is done” and “I know this is done.”

The standard pre-send flow is:

1. Build the email using blocks, previewing on desktop and mobile as you go.
2. Run the proofread panel. Work through errors first, then warnings. Clicking an issue takes you straight to the block it’s about, so you can fix it in place.
3. Preview the cleaned-up email one more time across desktop and mobile.
4. Send a test copy to your own inbox — this is where you verify the inbox preview (subject plus preheader), check dark mode, and confirm the unsubscribe link actually works end-to-end.
5. Export the HTML or push to your ESP for the real send.

Because Temway is a builder and exporter, the actual send happens in your ESP — which is also where you’ll pair the email with its subject line at send time. The proofread panel checks both the email body and the subject and preheader fields you’ve set in Temway, so what you see in the panel matches what your readers will get.

Known limits worth knowing about

No automated check catches everything. Two cases where the proofread panel can under-report:

• Contrast on background images. The contrast check uses solid colors only. If your text sits on top of a photo or gradient, the check may say it passes when a real reader struggles to read it. Eyeball those sections yourself.
• Unsubscribe verification. The check looks for the literal word “unsubscribe” in your email. It doesn’t verify the link destination. Always click the unsubscribe link in your test copy and confirm it leads to a working opt-out.

For everything else — broken links, missing alt, spam signals, missing address, missing subject, oversized email — the check is reliable and worth running on every send.

Frequently asked questions

What is email proofreading?

Email proofreading is a structured pre-send check against a fixed list of known failure modes — broken links, missing alt text, spam signals like ALL-CAPS or red text, missing unsubscribe, missing postal address, and the rest. The same email always gets the same review, so problems are reproducible and fixable before you send.

How is proofreading different from testing?

Testing checks how an email renders across different email clients and devices — Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, desktop, mobile, dark mode. Proofreading checks the email’s content and structure — do the links work, is there alt text, is there a subject line, is there an unsubscribe link. You need both. See How to Test Emails for the rendering side.

Should I send an email with proofreading errors?

Usually no. Errors are the high-confidence problems — broken links, missing alt, missing unsubscribe, missing subject. They will hurt you. Warnings are softer; read them and decide. Notes are opportunities, not blockers. The check is advisory — it tells you what’s wrong; you decide what to fix.

What counts as a spam signal in email?

The common ones a pre-send check looks for: excessive ALL-CAPS, runs of exclamation marks, pure red text on white, and a missing subject line. None of these alone will land you in the spam folder, but each one is a signal spam filters weigh — and stacking several is a reliable way to get there. See How Email Spam Filters Work.

Does the check verify my links work?

It verifies the links are well-formed and point at a real destination — not blank, not a placeholder, not a disallowed scheme, not missing a protocol. It doesn’t visit each URL to confirm the page loads. For high-stakes sends, click every link in your test copy yourself.

Why is my email missing an unsubscribe link?

Either you forgot to add one, or it’s worded in a way the check doesn’t recognize. CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL all require a clear, working opt-out in every commercial email. Add an unsubscribe block or link in the footer and use the word “unsubscribe” so readers (and the check) can find it. See Email Unsubscribe Best Practices.

Where to go next

• Understand why checks like this matter for inbox placement: How Email Spam Filters Work.
• Get the accessibility side right: Email Accessibility and Email Color and Contrast.
• Stay compliant with the regulations behind the structural checks: CAN-SPAM Act Explained and Email Unsubscribe Best Practices.
• Cover the rendering side too: How to Test Emails and Why Gmail Clips Your Emails.
• Start from a template that already has the structural pieces in place — like the SaaS welcome aboard template — or browse the full templates gallery.