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Sending a test message

To check your messages in Horizon before you send them in a campaign, you can send yourself or your colleagues a test message. 

Create a contact to send your tests to

If you don't already have a contact record for yourself and/or your colleagues, create one.

  1. Give your test contact(s) a name that will help you find them easily e.g. by adding "Test" as part of their last name.
  2. Add one or more channels to the contact. If you will sending test messages regularly to several members of your team, it will be quickest to create a single "test" contact that contains all their email addresses (rather than creating a separate contact record for each team member).
  3. Don't forget to tick all of the opt-in categories for each channel. For more information see Setting up your Opt-in Categories.
  4. Save the contact.


 

How to send a test message

1. Create a new message or open an existing message by clicking on the "pencil" icon.

2. Click the | Send test message | button.

3. In the pop-up "Send test message" box, click |...| and select your test contact.

4. Click the | Start test | button:



5. The delivery progress for the test message will then be shown.

Note: You don't need to wait for it to be delivered before you click | Close >> |.

6. Check your inbox(es) to find your message(s). Things to check include:

  • Images: Are they displaying nicely in smartphone view (if you're using a responsive layout)?
  • Links: Do they go to the right pages when clicked, including your "Unsubscribe" and "Update your preferences" links?
  • Wording: Is your subject line compelling? If your layout supports a pre-header, are you using it? Does the plain-text version of the email look OK? Have you triple-checked for typos?

We recommend using an inbox preview service such as www.litmus.com for checking your email design against all the popular desktop, webmail and mobile email software programs that your recipients might be using.

Note: If you haven't received your test message, you can look at the Contact Activity log for your test Contact to see see why a message hasn't delivered.