Best practice: testing your email

Modified on Wed, 3 Jul at 10:56 AM

Test emails are just representations of how the email should look when it is sent; they are not actual emails that have been sent.

We advise clients to send a few emails to their internal team to test and make sure the actual sent email looks correct because different email clients (such as Gmail and Outlook) and devices will display emails differently.

What to check for when testing your email

Are the images in your email working as expected?
Make sure the images have been uploaded correctly. Check to make sure that all of your images are hosted on your public web server.
Are all your links working properly?
Click on each of your links to check that each link works as expected.
Are you getting blocked by spam filters?
Be cautious of spam filters as you create your emails to ensure they won't get stuck in your recipients' spam/junk folders. Make sure your domain has been authenticated before you send your email.
Still getting blocked even if your domain has been authenticated?
One common reason why emails are sent to spam is if subscribers have marked a bunch of your emails as 'spam' in the past, and after that point, all emails will bounce or go to their spam folder. Hotmail or Gmail itself will be bouncing those emails because the subscriber previously marked them as "spam"
If this is the case, we would advise the subscribers to check their blocked list to ensure that the your domain email address is not on the list.
Have you tested in different email accounts? Every email account displays HTML differently, so your email's appearance may appear slightly different from one email client to the next.
Note: Please ensure only one team member is working on the current email draft (in 1 open tab) otherwise any new changes made will not be saved.

Send a test email

You can easily send a test email to team members, preview the email, and share a preview link from the email builder.

Use the shareable preview link to share with your internal team to get feedback on the overall format and display of the email. *Please note, this is a webpage preview, not an actual email*
Send a test email for the final stage of testing before sending your actual email *we recommend you send test emails to ensure your email build is correct*
*Please note: Unsubscribe links are not functional in Test emails, your unsubscribe links will be activated when you send the actual email.
Proof-read your email content: Look for any typos and review your design.
If you want to test the email send itself, you should create a message list that contains the personal email addresses of your internal team members. This will provide a better representation of the sending process when sending a message to your contacts.

How to send a test email

Go into the email builder
In the top right-hand corner, click Preview
From the drop-down menu, click Send test email

Type the email addresses that you want to send a test email to
Click Send test email
Click Done

How to preview the email

Go into the email builder
In the top right-hand corner, click Preview
From the drop-down menu, click Preview email

Click on Desktop and/or Mobile to preview

How to share a preview link

Go into the email builder
In the top right-hand corner, click Preview
From the drop-down menu, click Shareable preview link
Select copy to clipboard
To view the link, open a new tab and Paste the URL

Show Structure Outlines

This is a visual change that happens in the email design, to display the separation of each content row (in grey dotted lines)
*Please note: the dotted lines are not visible in your final email that has been sent. This will only display during the building process of an email (if enabled like below)

Shareable Preview link on Sent messages

Go into the message
Click View Message

Copy the Shareable Preview link

Related articles

Create an email template

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