Churchday
Book a demoSign in
Back

Testing and Previewing an Email Before You Send

Before an email reaches your people, you can see exactly how it will look and send yourself a copy to check. Two tools do this from inside the email builder: a live Preview panel and a Test button.

Before you begin

  • You need access to the Email tab.
  • Have a draft open in the email builder. The Preview and Test buttons sit in the top bar of the editor, on the right.

Step-by-step

  1. Open your draft in the email builder. From the Email page, open the campaign you're working on so the editor fills the screen.
  2. Turn on Preview. Click Preview (the eye icon) to open the What recipients get panel on the right. This panel is not a rough sketch. It runs the exact same steps that build the real email, so what you see is what lands in an inbox.
  3. Read it with sample details filled in. Wherever your email uses a personalization tag, such as the recipient's first name, the preview fills in a sample person named Sarah Johnson. That lets you check that a greeting like "Hi Sarah," reads naturally.
  4. Set the inbox snippet. Below the preview, type into the Preview text (the inbox snippet) box. This is the short line of text shown next to your subject in most inboxes. If you leave it blank, most inboxes show the opening words of your email instead.
  5. Send yourself a test. Click Test to open the Send test email window. Your own address is already filled in, so just click Send test to get a copy in your inbox. Change the address first if you want it to go somewhere else.

The personalization check before sending

When you click Send, Churchday first checks every personalization tag against your recipient list. If some people are missing a detail (say, a first name), a review window titled How recipients will see your email appears before anything goes out. For each tag, it shows how many people will see their real detail and how many will see stand-in text instead:

  • First name falls back to there, so those recipients read "Hi there,"
  • Last name and full name fall back to Friend

Review the numbers, then click Continue to move on to the send window, or Cancel to go back and adjust your list or copy. This window only appears when something is actually missing. If every recipient has the details, you go straight to sending.

Good to know

  • Tests and previews never reach your people. A preview only draws on your screen, and a test goes only to the one address in the box. Neither one emails your list or counts toward it.
  • A test subject starts with [TEST]. That helps you spot the copy in your inbox at a glance. Personalization tags in a test fill in with "Test User" rather than a real name, so a test is for checking layout and links, not the exact greeting each person sees. Use the Preview panel for that.
  • Demo churches don't send real test emails. In the demo, a test looks like it sent, but no actual email goes out.
  • Tests are limited to a handful a minute. You can send up to 10 tests per minute, which is plenty for checking a draft.

What's next?

Related