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Testing your Campaigns and Automations
Testing your Campaigns and Automations

Learn how to test and preview your emails and SMS

Ira avatar
Written by Ira
Updated this week

Before you send Email Campaigns and enable Automation workflows, you may want to check the results your customers will see in their inboxes.

In Omnisend, you can find different options to review the design of your emails:

  • Preview your message design in the builder;

  • Send a test message;

  • Send the Campaign to the test segment;

  • Trigger Automation workflow in real conditions.

Preview Message Design

Each channel has its way of previewing the layout of the message. To preview your email message in the Email Campaign and Automation workflow, you may use the Preview & test option at the top right corner. Click on a small arrow at the top right corner → Click Preview & test.

Here, you may preview the email design for desktop and Mobile devices by clicking the respective icons.

Dynamic Preview

Dynamic email template preview lets you see how your emails will look with actual contact data before sending them. This feature is available for both campaigns and automations, offering a comprehensive view of your communication strategy.

Discover how this feature can assist you in creating more personalized and engaging email campaigns.

Dark Mode Preview

To access the dark mode preview in Omnisend, open your email and click Preview in the top right corner. Once in preview mode, switch the toggle to Preview in dark mode.

You can preview your email using two types of color inversion: Full and Partial. The guide linked below will explain the meaning of each type further.

Test Email

You may also send a test message if you wish to test your messages with different devices.

To check the design of the email message, you may send it to one email address or a selected list of email addresses. You can send a test directly from the Preview & send tab → Send test email.

If you enter one email address, the email will only be sent to that address. However, you may also enter a list of emails separated by commas, such as [email protected], [email protected], etc.

Confirm the email address or addresses the test has to be sent to and click Send.

The subject line of the Test emails is marked with the [Preview] keyword, as shown in the screenshot below. The test messages sent with Omnisend will be delivered to your customers' inboxes through the shared domain. Even if you sign your domain with Omnisend, test emails will be sent through the shared one.

Please note: you can only send 50 test emails for your automations a day.

Test SMS Campaigns

If you wish to preview your SMS campaign content, you may also use the test option.

However, the test message won't show personalized content, such as your customers' names or the link to the cart they abandoned (for SMS in Automation).

Items in Test Email Messages

In the test email message, personalized items won't be populated with custom values.

The list of these includes:

  • Billing and Shipping (for Order-related automation emails);

  • Order Details(for Order-related automation emails);

  • Order Total(for Order-related automation emails);

  • Ordered Products (for Order-related automation emails);

  • Abandoned Products (for Abandonment automations);

  • Product Listing;

  • Discount;

  • Unsubscribe page (Unsubscribe link in footer);

  • Preference management page (Update preferences link in footer).

Testing in Real Conditions

If you wish to test your emails in real conditions, we suggest sending the email to your email address or triggering the automation in your store.

Before sending the email to your email address or the list of selected emails, you should create a Test Segment.

Create a Test Segment

If you want to send a real email to your email only, you should create a segment for this email. For this, navigate to Audience→ Segments → Create segment → Create from scratch → Pick "Email address" filter → Email address is → fill out the value with the needed email address. 

Send an Email Campaign to Test the Segment

Once you have the Test Segment, you may send your Email Campaign to the customers included in the Segment.

Trigger Automation Workflow with the Test Segment

In the Automation workflow settings, you will need to add the Audience filter to prevent the automation workflow from triggering when the customer enters the sequence.

Once you do this, we recommend you enter the store using the Incognito window of your browser and perform the action specified in the trigger settings - for example, place a test order or abandon a cart on your website. In that case, you will get a complete view of your emails' performance, whether the trigger is appropriately matched, and how personalized Items will be displayed in your customers' inboxes.

Links in Test Emails

To prevent bad actors from using test emails, we add specific restrictions to the operation of the links:

  • all links in the test Campaigns (automation workflows are not affected) will expire after 10 clicks;
    OR

  • each link of the Campaign (automation workflows are not affected) test email will expire 48 hours after the test email was sent.

After clicking on the expired link, the user will be redirected to this landing page https://landing.omnisend.com/expired-link/.

Have any additional questions? Contact us at [email protected].

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