Testing real emails and production deployment considerations

This question is really a theoretical one regarding tests and something like sending real emails, and then testing those emails.

So lets say we are using TDD and have emails that we need to test in our real email inbox, verify the content correctly - these tests are also used for continuous deployment, so that naturally I dont really want to be sent these emails for this specific tests in any test suite, every time a deployment is done.

So theoretically what does one do in this situation - I want to use the tests to check the email sending feature works and content is good, I don't however, what that every time we deploy - is it as simple as making the deployment ignore these specific tests ? That would be a pain I would think over time ... any thoughts ?