Overview
Before sending out a campaign to your contacts, it's important to test it thoroughly.
Testing allows recipients to proof your email, to confirm that it contains all of the expected content, and they can feed back to you about what it looks like in their different email clients and devices.
After all, you don't want emails going out with mistakes in them, or looking bad! This is why we highly recommend test sending your campaigns. Many eyes make light work.
The platform provides testing tools for you. After creating the content of your HTML and plain text versions of your campaign, the third step of the campaign creation process, 'Test', takes you to the 'Test and proof your email' page.
There are two possible testing options available:
- Test send to contacts in your 'Test' address book
- A charged inbox and spam filter test service
These are both outlined below.
Send to your test contacts
A test send will send a copy of the campaign to your selected test email addresses.
- The subject line will be prefixed with 'Test: '
- You can test both the HTML and plain text versions of your campaign
Different email clients and devices show HTML differently, and as such it's wise to test your campaign in a number of settings (Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, and so forth).
If there are email clients/devices that you don't have access to, then you can make use of the inbox and spam filter testing tool (see below) to simulate this.
Information
If your test sends are going to your spam inbox, don’t worry because the test send IP is different than the ‘live’ (actual) send IP. If you’re feeling uneasy and want to make sure your campaigns aren’t going to spam, do a campaign send to yourself or a test address book.
Inbox and spam filter test
If enabled on your account, you can use the inbox and spam filter testing tool to:
- test what your campaign will look like in dozens of different email clients and devices
- assess your campaign's content to highlight how it scores against all the key spam filters, identifying which words, images, and code may cause you deliverability problems
Depending on your account setup, there may be a charge for each use of the inbox and spam filter testing tool. The cost will be displayed in the app.
The difference between preview and inbox and spam filter testing
The Inbox and spam filter test tool doesn’t support views for advanced personalisation and dynamic content; it should be used to see how campaigns look on different types of devices. Use the Preview button to view your advanced personalisation and dynamic content.
Up next: Learn about campaign send settings
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More ways to make sure your campaign is perfect
- Our preview tool can be used to test any dynamic content, personalisation, or split tests you have in desktop, tablet and phone formats.
Read Preview tool vs inbox tests for more detail on the differences between these two ways of reviewing your campaign content.- Accounts with multiple users can use our permission settings to ensure campaigns are approved before they can be sent