Testing personalized content

Article author
Miguel Panayotty
  • Updated

Preview personalization (data fields and conditions) in email campaigns using Subscriber Preview or by updating your Default Test List to include specific data.

 

Test personalization with Subscriber Preview

In any email campaign you can use Subscriber Preview to review how your data fields and dynamic tags will display to a subscriber. You will need to have an email and subscriber list assigned to the campaign to use this feature.

 

1. In your campaign, click the Testing step

 

2. Select Subscriber Preview

 

3. Hover over the right side of an email address and select Preview

Subscriber Preview provides up to 250 email addresses for review. You can use the search bar to search for specific addresses within the entire list.

Note: The subscribers that display in Subscriber Preview are not filtered by any segments applied to the email campaign. Segments are applied when the email campaign is sent.

 

4. Preview

Check your preview to make sure all your data fields and conditional blocks are displaying as expected. Review your subject line at the top and make sure personalization displays correctly there, too. Use the scroll option to check the mobile view as well. Links cannot be loaded from the preview, but you can update your default test list data to review links in test emails.

 

 

 

Take screenshots of previews

You may need to send a copy of the preview to someone on your team to review before the email deploys. Since test emails by default won’t contain the same personalization data that your list contains, you may find it easiest to take a screenshot of the subscriber preview to send along to your reviewing team.

 

1. In Chrome, download this extension: GoFullPage

2. Then, in Chrome, open subscriber preview and preview an email address

3. Click the GoFullPage camera icon in the upper-right corner of the browser

This will start taking the full page screenshot. You can download a PNG or PDF of the screenshot when it is done.

 

 

Test personalization with a test email

When you send a test email in any WordFly email campaign, you’ll notice that list data field (e.g., Performance Name) personalization does not appear in test emails. This is because a test email uses data from the Default Test List which is made up of all the addresses you have available for testing. The test email is not using the list you have assigned to your campaign.

 

Note: Since subscriber data fields (e.g., First Name or Last Name) are saved to WordFly profiles you will always see subscriber data fields pull into test emails.

 

You can update your Default Test List to include specific list data so that your test emails display personalization. This allows you to send a personalized test email to someone on your Default Test List.

 

Follow these steps to update list data fields for someone on your Default Test List:

 

1. Search for your subscriber record in WordFly using Subscriber > Subscriber Search

You will search for one of the email addresses on your test list. This is the list that you see when you go to send a test email in any email campaign.

 

2. Select the Subscriber from the results

 

3. From the subscriber's profile page, select the Lists section

 

4. Find the "Default Test List" from the available subscriber to lists

 

5. Click on the list name, and select View list data

 

6. Customize the data here

 

7. Save your list data updates

 

8. Return to your email campaign to send a new test email

After updating test list data you can send a new test email which will show the data you customized.