Methods and systems for improving designs of electronic mail message templates

1. A method for monitoring for and identifying variations in user interface designs and making recommendations for improving designs of electronic message templates based on identified variations, the method comprising:

importing, by a capture engine executing on a first computing device, an email template into an email client;

rendering, by the capture engine, the email template in the email client;

generating, by the capture engine, a screen shot of a portion of the rendered email template;

comparing, by a comparison engine executed by the first computing device, the generated screen shot with an archived screen shot of the rendered portion;

determining, by the comparison engine, that a first level of variation between the generated screen shot and the archived screen shot exceeds a first threshold level of variation;

transmitting, by an alert engine executed by the first computing device, to a second computing device, a notification of the first level of variation and a recommendation to modify the email template to minimize the first level of variation;

replacing, by the comparison engine, the archived screen shot of the rendered portion with the generated screen shot;

subsequent to replacing the archived screen shot with the generated screen shot, comparing, by the comparison engine, the replacement screen shot with a subsequently generated screen shot of the rendered portion of the email template rendered by the email client;

determining, by the comparison engine, that a second level of variation between the replacement screen shot and the subsequently generated screen shot exceeds the first threshold level of variation;

transmitting, by the alert engine, to the second computing device, a second notification of the second level of variation and a second recommendation to modify the email template to minimize the second level of variation; and

replacing, by the comparison engine, the replacement screen shot with the subsequently generated screen shot.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising receiving, before importing the email template, a request from the second computing device to monitor for variations in rendering of the email template by at least one email client.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein generating further comprises generating a screen shot of all portions of the rendered email template.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein comparing further comprises comparing a subset of a plurality of pixels in the generated screen shot with a subset of a plurality of pixels the archived screen shot.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein comparing further comprises performing a pixel-by-pixel comparison of the generated screen shot and the archived screen shot.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining, by the comparison engine, the first level of variation based upon the comparing of the generated screen shot with the archived screen shot.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising storing, in a log, an identification of the first level of variance.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising storing, in a log, an identification of the transmitted notification.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising storing the generated screen shot in a database of archived screen shots.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

rendering, by the capture engine, in the email client, a HyperText Markup Language (HTML) document associated with the email template;

comparing the rendered HTML document with an archived HTML document associated with the email template;

determining, by the comparison engine, that a second level of variation between the rendered HTML document and the archived HTML document exceeds a second threshold level of variation; and

transmitting, by the alert engine, to the second computing device, a second notification of the level of variation and a second recommendation to modify the email template to minimize the level of variation.