This article explains how to preview and test campaigns before you send them, so that you can catch potential issues before it's too late to fix them.

Before sending any campaign, it's important to thoroughly test it to make sure that it looks good and works smoothly. Emma's drag and drop editor has several tools that can help during this testing process; we'll go over each one and how to use it and then put everything together in a convenient pre-send campaign checklist for you.

In this article Video tutorial Preview New drag and drop editor Legacy* editor Plaintext Sending a test Proofer Pre-send campaign checklist

Watch a quick video tutorial on how to test your campaign

Preview

While creating your campaign, you can click on the Preview button at the top of the editor to get an idea of how your email will look in the inbox. This tool is handy for checking things like content spacing between sections or how images look when resized. It's also a great way to spot text wrapping issues and to make sure the campaign has a good text-to-image ratio.

New drag and drop editor

In the new drag and drop editor, the preview tool allows you to toggle between desktop view and mobile view so that you can get an idea of what your campaign looks like in each. Click on the Dark Mode Preview toggle to view a generic dark mode version of the campaign. To exit the preview tool, click on the X icon.

Ⓘ	Dark mode rendering can vary across different email clients and inbox providers. We recommend thoroughly testing your campaign before sending to ensure consistent appearance.

 

Legacy* editor

In the legacy* editor, the preview tool allows you to toggle between desktop view, mobile view, and tablet view so that you can get an idea of what your campaign looks like in each. You can also click on the three dots to change the dimensions of the previewed email. To exit the preview tool, click on the Back to editor button.

Plaintext

The vast majority of email campaigns are HTML emails sent with color in the standard rich-text format. However, Emma's editors automatically create a plaintext version of the campaigns that you create. The plaintext version is what is sent to contacts who have opted for plaintext as their preferred format, or to those who can't view the HTML version — for example, someone using a wearable smart device like a watch that doesn’t support HTML emails.

In the legacy* editor, you can edit the plaintext version of your mailing by clicking on the Plaintext icon. In the event that one of your campaigns is not accepted by a recipient's mail server on the first try, Emma will continue trying to deliver your email for a few hours and if the HTML version can't be delivered, we'll try the plaintext version instead. This is why it's always worthwhile to check the plaintext version before sending a legacy* campaign because what looks great as HTML might need adjusting for text only. Here are some helpful tips on reviewing and editing your plaintext.

Ⓘ	It is not possible to edit the plaintext version of campaigns created in the new drag and drop editor.

Sending a test

The best way to make sure that your campaign looks good and works correctly is to send yourself a test. Always test your campaign before you send it to your audience. Sending a test of your campaign is a crucial step that should not be overlooked. What you see in your account, while working on a mailing, can be quite different from what ends up in the inbox. The differences can include padding and margin changes, the spacing between elements, background images not showing up, font changes, CSS being ignored, and more.

To send a test, simply click on the Send test button at the top of the editor. Fill out the recipient information and the subject line and then send the test.

You can create test groups to send your test campaigns to, in which case, the email subject line will be automatically prefaced with [TEST]. A test group might include colleagues who can proofread the email for typos, or stakeholders who want to see the content before it's sent, but one thing is for sure, one set of eyes is never enough. You'll need to plan for enough time for your test group to receive and view your test email campaign, so you can then make any adjustments needed before scheduling to send the campaign to your intended audience.

Ⓘ	If you send a regular campaign to a test group, Emma will still add [TEST] to the subject line.

 

It's also helpful to check that your email is readable and visually appealing to multiple email clients. To do this, you can set up free email accounts for web-based clients like AOL or Gmail and send a test to those addresses. To test other desktop or mobile email clients, ask friends or colleagues if they use different services and devices that you can send a test to. After they receive the test email, ask them to take a screenshot of the mailing as it appears in their inbox and send it to you so you can make sure it looks the way it should.

While there are many things that can prevent an email from reaching the inbox, if you're failing to receive emails sent from someone@yourdomain to someone@yourdomain, it's likely they're being blocked by your receiving mail server; in which case, we recommend that you allowlist our IPs to prevent this.

Proofer

Whenever you click on the Send test button or the Review / Review & send button, the editor will automatically run your campaign through a proofer that checks for things like malicious links, problems with personalization tags, and the likelihood your email might get filtered to spam.

Among other things, the proofer looks for spammy words or phrases that may cause the email to be sent to junk. It also validates any personalization tags that you may have used and will let you know if the mailing size could be reduced (see below). When the proofer finds something that needs attention, it will notify you so that you can fix it before sending your campaign to your audience. Here are some common proofer errors that you may encounter:

Mailing size

All of the content in your email (text, images, links, colors, and fonts) adds to its overall weight in kilobytes (K). When you test your campaigns any mailing over 100K will trigger an alert. If you get this kind of alert, it's best to reduce the size before sending it, but the system will not prevent you from sending it. This means that if you choose to disregard the alert, we cannot guarantee that your campaign will reach all of the intended inboxes.

To fix a mailing size alert, you can reduce the size of your campaign by:

• Removing some text or images from the email.
• Reducing the file size of images used in your email.
• Removing hidden formatting from content copied from formatted documents or websites.

Personalization tags

Invalid personalization tags are also a common mistake that will prompt an alert. In most cases, it will be something minute and simple like the personalization tag is missing a bracket or percent sign. For example, someone might type: [% member:first_name default="Friend" instead of the full tag: [% member:first_name default="Friend" %] (where %] was left off the end).

Links

In general, it's best to use the shortest functional version of a link that you can. This particularly comes into play when copying a link directly from the URL bar in your browser and pasting it into Emma. Many times, these links will contain user session data that is specific to you and your device. This user session data commonly contains a lot of percentage signs (%) and other characters that can make Emma interpret them as malicious links. When adding links to Emma, always make sure to check them for this information.

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Typically, if you notice a question mark (?) followed by a long string of characters, that's a good sign that your link contains personalized data related to your user session. Try removing everything after the ?, copying the URL that remains, and pasting it into a private browser window to see if it still works.

Pre-send campaign checklist

It never feels good to discover an error in your mailing shortly after sending it. Since it's not possible to stop or recall a sent email after it's left our servers, we always recommend that you thoroughly test your campaign first. We've put together this checklist to help you remember the 10 essential things that you should check before sending any mailing to your audience.

1. Preview the campaign and make sure that it looks the way that you intended.
2. Make sure that all of the images in the campaign have alt text. This improves the experience for contacts who use screen readers and those whose email clients block images.
3. If sending a legacy* campaign, check the plaintext version of the campaign for errors.
4. Check the spelling and grammar of the:
   • Subject line
   • Preheader text
   • Campaign body / content
   • Your organization's name and address
5. Send a test to confirm the following:
   • All personalization is working correctly.
   • All links behind text, images, and buttons work and lead to the correct destination.
   • The campaign looks correct in different email clients.
   • If you linked to a file from your document library, that you chose the correct file and it loads properly.
6. Test the sender name and subject line and confirm that they are the best choice.
7. Check the audience for the mailing and confirm that you've chosen the correct contacts, groups, segments, or subscriptions.
8. Check the reply-to address and confirm that it's correct.
9. Check the signup link in the footer of the campaign and make sure that it links to the correct form.
10. Have another person check the campaign for errors.

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*In April 2022, Emma's legacy editor was replaced with a new drag and drop editor. Accounts that existed prior to this change still have access to the legacy editor through their previously saved templates and campaigns, however new, from-scratch campaigns can only be created in the new drag and drop editor. Accounts that were created after this change only have access to the new drag and drop editor. Please refer to our new editor FAQ article for more information.