The SEND TEST button on the Edit Template page allows you to send a copy of your content to any email address in order to ensure your message is correctly formatted and no errors exist before deploying a campaign.
Before a template is sent to a contact list, it should first be sent to a test recipient or a group of test recipients to check the content and rendering of the template. Test messages can be sent to email addresses that are not subscribed to a specific list. These messages will appear with the same formatting and tracking links as a campaign, but will not collect tracking data or send to contacts. If the email does not exist as a Contact already in the database, no custom data fields in the template will be filled in the message content.
While the Send Test feature is useful for checking the formatting and layout of your message, not all features of the message will work. FTAF, Display Message, and Preference Management links require an encoded string with campaign details and do not work in Send Test messages. To test these links, deploy a campaign with a segmentation rule to select email addresses only.
However, if you click the unsubscribe links, any contact associated with the email address sent will be unsubscribed. This is only an issue if you send to recipients who also are subscribed to the selected test list.
To Send a Test Message
- Go to CONTENT > TEMPLATES.
- Select an existing template or click ADD TEMPLATE.
- Click SEND TEST.
- Select a List from List Settings to apply the properties, such as From address and List Attributes.
- Select an Account Profile to use when filling the Account Profile tags in your content. The Account Profile defined in the List is selected by default. If no Account Profile tags are defined in your content, you can skip this step.
- If your Realm support Recovery Campaigns, you can select a Product Catalog to pull in products from a given feed or catalog when a Product Layout tag is included in your content. Select the # of Products to display (Limit of 6).
- Enter one or more email addresses as Recipients. Separate multiple addresses with space, comma, or semi-colon. You may use any email address, including those not subscribed to the List. If Contact or Custom data exists within your Template, it will appear empty for any non-existing Contacts.
- Select the content Formats to send: Multipart MIME, Plain Text, HTML.
- You may enter an optional string to add to the subject line by including a string in Test Prepend. Text defined in the textbox will appear at the beginning of the subject line in the test message.
- Click SEND.
Each recipient will receive a copy of each format selected. If all three formats are selected, a recipient will receive three messages, one of each type.
*Released in v16.00