Email Testing Tips

We encourage you to test every email before you send, to make sure everything looks just right for your recipients.

In this article, you'll learn about some email testing tips.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• There's a limit on the number of test emails you can send per email and per 24-hour period, depending on your plan type. To see your limits, check out our About Test Email Sending Limits article.
• When you send a test email, we can't replace contact-specific tags with any data. We recommend that you preview your email and test your merge tags with the Enable live merge tag info slider toggled on, or send a live email to a small test segment of your audience.

Testing tips

Here are some tips to help you with your email.

• Proofread your content.
  Remember to proofread your content and review your design. Reading your content aloud may help you catch any typos.
• Use the Link Checker in the classic builder.
  The Link Checker tool checks the links in your email to make sure there's a functioning site on the other side.
• Preview your email design as you go along.
  Preview your email to check for broken images and to see how the email will look on mobile and desktop devices.
• Use A/B and Multivariate testing.
  A/B tests and Multivariate tests are paid features that help you understand what your contacts interact with. Test multiple versions of your email with a randomly selected part of your audience. We'll automatically send the email with the best open rate to the remainder of your subscribed audience, and you'll learn more about what content appeals to your contacts. To compare plans, check out our pricing page. To change your plan type, visit the plans page in your account.
• Send a test email.
  After your content has been added, send a test email to your own email address.
• Test in different email clients.
  Every email client renders HTML differently, so your email's appearance may vary slightly from one email client to the next. To get the best idea of how your email will display in your recipients' inboxes, set up email accounts on popular email clients, like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail, and send tests to those accounts. If you have a paid account, you can also use our Inbox Preview feature to see how your email will look in different email clients.
• See how it looks on your mobile device using the classic builder.
  Send tests to your phone, so you can see how your email will render when viewed on mobile devices. To do this in the classic builder, click the Preview drop-down and choose Push to mobile.
• Ask for testing volunteers.
  Ask friends and colleagues to review your email content. Since they won't be as familiar with your content as you are, they will likely catch typos or unclear content that you may have missed.

Testing merge tags

Merge tags are contact-specific and won’t populate in a test email, even if the test email address is the email address of a contact in your audience.

To see how your tags will look for your recipients, try one of these methods.

• In preview mode, toggle the slider to the green checkmark to enable live merge tag info to see how the merge tags will appear for certain subscribers.
• Send your email to a test segment with the required audience field data to make sure the merge tags display as expected.

Troubleshooting specifics

Here are some tips to help you with troubleshooting your email.

• Are all the images in your email working?
  Make sure the images in your Mailchimp templates have been uploaded properly. If you provided your own code, make sure you're using absolute paths for images. An absolute path uses the full image URL, not just the file location on your server. Also check to make sure that all of your images are hosted on your public web server and not on a password-protected site.
• Are all your links working properly?
  Click on each of your links and use the Link Checker in the classic builder to check that each link works as intended.
• Is open and click tracking enabled?
  We enable tracking by default, but you can check your settings in the Settings & Tracking section of the Email Builder. If they're disabled, you won't see open and click activity in your email report. Remember that open and click tracking aren’t activated when you use the Send a Test Email option. Links in a test email won’t be tracked until a live email is sent to an audience.
• Are you getting blocked by spam filters?
  Keep spam filters in mind as you create your emails to make sure they won't get stuck in your recipients' spam filters.