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If you design your HTML e-mail without checking to see how it will look without styles or without images, you'll have no idea of what a good share of your audience may experience AND you probably won't have taken all the steps you could to minimize the ugliness.
First, look at your HTML e-mail with images turned off and styles on. If you've given your images 'alt' tags, you should see those tags. Additionally, you can wrap your image tag in a style that will style the 'alt' text. This is particularly useful for images that exist only to display a specific font.
Next look at your e-mail again with both images and styles turned off.
Testing. Just as various Web browsers and platforms can change the look of a Web page, different e-mail clients will treat HTML differently. What may look just fine on Microsoft Outlook might break on Eudora. This applies not only to the HTML part of your message but to the text-only part as well; always check both parts of the message in the clients you test with.
Validation. Be sure to validate your HTML to make sure it doesn’t break. The W3C has a free online validator that allows you to copy and paste your HTML into their Web site for validation.
Note that the coding standards for mass e-mail suggest excluding certain items, such as DOCTYPE. It may be necessary to include DOCTYPE, a title in the <head> section, and a character set definition to ensure that your code is validated properly. These elements need not be included in the final e-mail communication.
When sending a message only to umn.edu recipients, you may be able to save time by testing only the common clients used at the University. OIT recommends Thunderbird for Windows, Macintosh OS X, and Linux, with Microsoft Outlook as the best alternative for Windows and Apple Mail as the best alternative for OS X. Additionally, GopherMail is the preferred webmail client and is heavily used by both students and staff.
At a minimum, messages should be tested in GopherMail and the OIT-recommended desktop clients and alternatives.
When external recipients are included in your communication, testing becomes both more involved and more imperative, due to the wide range of e-mail clients in use. Testing should include a standard set of desktop clients, with considerations for Macintosh and Windows users, and the common free webmail clients (Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL).
Use templates with defined areas and styles for text and images placed where they will always be. Test your template thoroughly and stick with it so you don't have to test every message. It's not trivial to correctly place differently-sized graphics in different messages and expect them to render correctly. Templates, templates, templates!
Before creating a message or template, review client HTML compatibility/rendering information, such as that found at the e-mail standards project, so you can address issues before you spend time testing.
When testing final messages, don't forget to test both the HTML and text-only parts, and verify that all links and e-mail addresses within your e-mail work properly.