Hi everyone, Jason here. We just rolled-out a really slick new feature that will improve your workflow and campaign review/approval processes. It's called Test Mode. Essentially it allows those preparing and delivering campaigns to send a "Test" version of your emails with all functionality intact to a test or seed list - complete with test reporting.

I could already do that - what's the big deal?
While you could painstakingly (we know - we manage client mailings for them and need to get tests and approvals) add "Test" or "T1:" to your subject line and send it off to your internal or client team for review and approval - the margin for error or the pain of entering/removing "T1:" or "Test" from the subject line prior to a live deployment was just too stressful. Another benefit is seperate test reporting. This way you (or your review group) can click around, open the email, and check the real-time reporting to see if all those cool metrics are recording properly. Now, when you log into your report screen you can choose between Live Mailing reports versus Test Mailing reports. Ahhh - very nice for ANYONE managing email campaigns and deployments for their team or client!

I thought I could already send a "preview" using the preview function?
While you can currently send a quick "preview" when composing your newsletter or email, Test Mode again allows for seperate reporting and the entire message is delivered intact (complete with merge data, unsubscribe links, etc.) to an entire test or seed list for testing purposes. It also sequentially appends T1, T2, T3 (for Test 1, Test 2, Test 3) depending on the number of tests you send. No more editing the subject-line or loosing sleep over whether or not you remembered to remove T7 from your subject line!

How it works
Log in and compose your email as normal. From the Manage Emails screen, look to the right next to the Actions column. You will now see a new column called Deploy. You will see a link called "Send Test 1". Instead of choosing Send or Schedule, use this to send test messages to your seed lists. It will automatically append T1: to the beginning of your subject line for the first Test send and T2, T3, sequentially - depending what version of testing you are at in the work-flow.

Obviously the reason for testing is to ensure everything is in order before a live broadcast to your customers or prospects. It allows multiple people to review, check for issues with copy, formatting, rendering, and checking that all links work, etc. Need to make changes after the first Test? No problem. Go back to Manage Emails and you will see the link Send Test 1 has now been set for you to Send Test 2. (and of course, T2: will be in your subject line letting everyone know this is the next test message for review with changes made.) Pretty neat eh?

We implemented this feature to make our lives easier - hopefully it makes yours easier too! Try it and let us know what you think! Questions or feedback? Drop us an email!