Testing your cold email campaign before you send it

What a test checks, and what it does not

A test is there to check the content: filled-in variables, spintax, links, signature, how it looks on a phone, how the follow-ups chain together. It says nothing about your deliverability: whether it lands in your inbox or your spam folder says nothing about what will happen with your prospects.

Step 1: go through your contacts with the preview

In an email step's editor, click Preview, at the bottom of the step. The message is shown with the real data of a contact from your list, and the Previous contact and Next contact arrows scroll through the others.

Highlighted variables have no value for the contact shown: that is where the "Hello ," are hiding. Spintax is picked at random each time it is displayed. LinkedIn steps have the same Preview button.

Step 2: send yourself a test email

Still at the bottom of the email step, click Test your email. Enter the address that should receive the test in Recipient email (Emelia remembers it in your browser for next time), then click Send test.

The test goes out from one of the mailboxes chosen in Connected accounts: select at least one in the campaign before testing, and attach your lead list too, since the test fills in the variables with a random contact from the campaign. The button stays greyed out as long as no email mailbox is connected to your account.

Step 3: read the test like a prospect

The test arrives with [TEST] in front of the subject line. The rest is the email as it will go out: variables are filled in with a random contact's data, and one option of each spintax is picked. Send two or three to see other contacts and other variants. What to check, in order:

• Variables: no "Hello ,", no forgotten curly brace, no name in capitals or with broken accents.
• Spintax: each option reads well, with no double space.
• Links: a single link, in https, that opens.
• The unsubscribe link: present and clickable. In a test, it leads to a demo page.
• The signature: displayed, light, with working links.
• How it looks on a phone: open the test on your mobile, that is where many of your prospects will read it.

Test from the last step

A test launched from the first email only shows the first email. Launch it from the last step of the sequence: the subject line is the one the prospect will see ("Re:" followed by the first email's subject, if you left the follow-ups' subject empty), and the previous emails are quoted underneath, as in the real thread. You check the rendering of the follow-ups, the variables and the spintax in one go.

If a step has several versions (A/B test), each version is tested separately: open it, then click Test your email.

Testing on several mail clients, without fooling yourself

Send your tests to two or three addresses at different providers, a Gmail address and an Outlook address for example: the same email renders differently from one mail client to another.

My test email does not arrive

This question comes up every week in support. In order:

• Is the test address close to the sending address? Same domain, a close variant (.fr and .com), or a test sent to yourself: that is the number one cause, and it says nothing about your real deliverability. Test to a Gmail or Outlook address that has nothing to do with you.
• Was an error message shown? It points the way: a mailbox to reconnect on the Accounts page, no mailbox attached to the campaign, an attachment to remove and add again, or a provider that did not respond (try again a few minutes later).
• Nothing arrives at several different recipients? Then the problem comes from the sending domain: a DMARC policy that is too strict, which Gmail enforces harshly, or a signature too heavy in HTML. Send a normal email, from your mail client, to the address mail-tester.com gives you: the score and the state of your SPF, DKIM and DMARC will tell you what to fix.
• Did you send tests back to back? Ten or so tests in a few minutes from the same mailbox can be enough for its provider to block its sends, taking them for spam. Space them out.