We signed up to nine online stores. All nine had an email gap.

The fastest way to see a store's email marketing is to become its customer. So we did, nine times. A fresh email address for each store, a signup through the store's own site, and then we waited and watched the inbox. Where we could, we also put something in the cart and left.

All nine had something switched off or half finished. Here is what we found, without names, because the point is not the stores. It is how common these gaps are.

What we found

A code that was given away

One store showed its discount code before anyone signed up. A shopper could copy it and leave. The store might get the sale, but never the email address.

Six weeks of silence

One store took our signup and then sent nothing. No welcome email, no offer, no campaign, for six weeks and counting.

A sender that fails its own check

One store's marketing emails failed DMARC on the store's own domain. That is the check that tells Gmail an email really comes from you. Fail it, and the spam folder gets closer.

Links to the wrong address

One welcome email linked to the store's myshopify.com address instead of its real domain. It works, but it looks wrong, and a careful shopper notices.

A code that never came

One store had changed its email tool and never sent the welcome code its signup promised.

Check your own store in ten minutes

1. Open your store in a private window and sign up with a new email address.
2. Check the inbox, the Promotions tab and spam. Did a welcome email arrive within a few minutes?
3. Does the code in it work at checkout?
4. Put something in the cart and leave. Does a reminder arrive within a day?
5. Open the welcome email on your phone. Do the links go to your real domain?

If any answer is no, your store is paying for visitors and losing the follow-up. That is exactly the gap a working email system closes. You can also run the short version with the store check on our home page.