Email proofing glossary
The vocabulary of email review and approval, in plain language. These are the terms that come up when a campaign moves from a finished design to a confident send.
- Email proofing
- Reviewing a finished email campaign for mistakes — copy, design, links, and rendering — and collecting feedback before it is sent. Proofing is the quality check between "design done" and "cleared to send."
- Email approval workflow
- The process of routing an email campaign to the people who must sign off — a manager, a client, legal — and recording their decision. A clear workflow replaces reply-all threads with a single, auditable Approve or Request changes.
- Pixel-pinned annotation
- A comment attached to an exact point on the rendered email, shown as a numbered marker. Instead of describing "the button under the hero," a reviewer pins the note directly on the button so there is no ambiguity.
- Guest reviewer
- Someone who reviews or approves an email without a Proofel account. They open a share link, enter a display name, and can comment, annotate, and approve in the browser — including on a phone.
- Version and version compare
- Each new draft of an email is captured as a numbered version. Comparing two versions side by side — or with a draggable wipe divider — shows exactly what changed between drafts, with each comment kept on the version it was made on.
- Gmail clipping (102KB)
- Gmail hides part of any message whose HTML is larger than roughly 102KB behind a "Message clipped" link, which can bury content and even the unsubscribe link. Keeping the HTML under that threshold prevents clipping.
- Dark-mode simulation
- A preview of how an email looks when a mail client applies dark mode. Clients differ: Apple Mail honors authored dark CSS with a partial inversion, while Gmail and Outlook force a full color inversion. Simulation approximates these so surprises are caught early.
- Link visualizer
- A tool that extracts every hyperlink in an email, follows redirects to the final destination, and captures a live screenshot plus HTTP status for each — so wrong URLs, dead pages, and stale tracking links are caught before sending.
- .eml file
- A standard file format that stores a single email — its subject, sender, and HTML. Exporting an email as .eml lets you open it in a mail client or hand it off to whoever sends the campaign.
- Multi-step approval
- An approval that requires more than one sign-off before a campaign is marked Approved — useful for regulated or high-stakes sends where several stakeholders must agree.
- Tracking pixel
- A tiny invisible image an email service provider adds to measure opens. When an email is ingested for review, Proofel skips these pixels so proofing does not fire false open events.
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