Email testing

This guide explains how to test your email campaigns. Testing is an important part of any campaign creation. Use at least one of the options below before launching any live campaign.

Preview an email

Preview customer-specific rendering

The Overview tab in the TEST section shows a rendered preview of your email for specific customers, including their individual personalization.

To browse previews, use the arrow buttons to move between customers, or type a customer's email address into the input field.

1. Click the filter icon to narrow the preview to a specific customer segment — this is especially useful when your email includes personalization.
2. Use the toggle to switch between desktop and mobile views.

Preview in specific environments

The Email Previews tab generates previews of your email template across a wide range of environments — for example, the iOS Gmail client — to identify any visual discrepancies such as image fitting. The content of your template is placed within a screenshot from each environment to recreate how it would appear there.

Go to Test > Email Previews to generate previews. Select a specific environment to see a full-scale rendering of how your email appears there. Use the controls at the bottom to regenerate the preview after making changes to the template.

1. Switch between all environments.
2. Navigate between environments using the list on the right.

Bloomreach strongly recommends sending a test email to your address or a list of your colleagues' addresses before launching the live campaign.

Preview with on-event trigger data

If an on-event trigger is configured in your email campaign settings, the preview automatically looks for an event of the same type to render the campaign using past customer data.

If the email campaign is part of a scenario, you can select which on-event trigger filter to use by its action ID and type. The platform then finds the first event of that type for the selected customer — specifically, the first-ever sent email from that customer profile — and renders the preview using it. If no matching event exists for the selected customer, the platform uses any event of the same type found in the project.

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Important

Rendering a campaign preview with on-event trigger data works only on the Overview tab. It does not apply to Send test email or preview link or Email Previews.

Send a test email or preview link

To open the testing modal, click Send test email or preview link in the top-right corner of the email editor.

Test email

Send a test email to a specific address to examine the appearance of the email from a customer's point of view. You can send to a maximum of 20 addresses at once. Separate multiple addresses using a common separator such as a space, comma, period, colon, or semicolon.

The generated email uses the currently open language version, A/B test variant, and selected preview customer to populate personalization.

Web preview link

Generate a shareable web preview link for your email. Share it with colleagues without requiring them to access Bloomreach or receive separate testing emails. The generated email uses the currently open language version, A/B test variant, and selected preview customer to populate personalization.

Preview links are valid for 91 days after creation. Generated links are saved to your local storage, so when you return to the modal, your existing link displays if it matches the current language and variant version. Note that links are not saved globally — you only see links that you have generated yourself.

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Note

Previewing or sending test emails does not generate any campaign events. If recommendations are used inside the email, no recommendation serve event is tracked.

Other testing methods

In addition to the TEST tab, the following methods are commonly used to validate emails before launch.

Use a seed list

For inbox placement testing, import your desired addresses into Bloomreach as customer profiles with a way to identify them. You can then include them in your campaigns or standard segmentations.

Use a tester segment

Import internal addresses of people who review or need to see an email before it gets sent out as customer profiles. Include them in your segmentations or scenarios to receive campaign emails as part of the normal flow.

Send to multiple inboxes using an alias address

The Send test email feature in any email node accepts only one address at a time. To reach multiple inboxes, create a group, alias, or role address such as [email protected] that forwards to all relevant recipients. Enter that single address in the Send test email field.