Testing content before sending out live campaigns to your list in Klaviyo is a crucial step in any serious email marketing strategy – every time! Even when you’re sure your email looks right, and you’ve used the template 100 times in the past, our team of Klaviyo experts will always say you never want to skip the test send process.
A couple of minutes work could save you a lot of trouble, and embarrassment, if you send an untested email with broken links or glaring errors.
Depending on your testing process, sending out Klaviyo test emails will also give you an idea about whether your content is landing in the spam inbox or not – this is especially crucial if your open rate is usually low (under 10%).
Here’s what we’ll cover in this guide:
How to Preview Your Email in Klaviyo
After you’re done creating the first draft of your email in Klaviyo, you have a couple of options to preview it – regardless of it’s a regular email campaign, email template, or part of a flow.
You can check the preview either Klaviyo’s template editor as well as sending a live version to yourself or your team. Tests can also be sent to third-party testing software such as Litmus or Email on Acid.
To access the new template editor, go to the Email Templates Tab > Create Template > Use New Editor. Here you’ll be able to customize your templates and use them while creating regular email campaigns or flow emails.
To preview an email with a trigger based on a certain date, segment or list, follow these steps:
- Click “Preview and test” in the new template editor
- Then, look for “Search for a profile” and specify the recipient that you want to include (you can have multiple email addresses by splitting them up with a comma)
- Click “Done”
You can preview an email with an event trigger following a similar process:
- Use the “Preview and test email” option
- Search for “Preview data source” and click “Event”, then select the event you want to use
- Now you should be able to see the preview window. If you want to send out a test email, click “Send Test”
- Click “Done” if you want to go back to the template editor
The preview email can show you what your messages will look like on desktop/mobile. But you must test these yourself on different devices too. Remember that dynamic coupon codes or unsubscribe links look different on a live campaign and will just show as placeholders while in preview mode.
The number of preview emails you can send depends on your current billing plan. Free plans can send up to 100 preview emails each calendar month, while paid plans can send from 1,000 emails up to 25,000 depending on your Klaviyo pricing plan.
You can check your current billing plan by heading to Account > Billing > Email Plans
Why send Klaviyo test emails?
Simply previewing an email in your browser won’t be enough to determine what the content will look like in a real user’s email inbox. There is no substitute for live tests.
An email’s content always looks slightly different when viewed in various email clients due to how the platforms read HTML code.
It’s impossible to optimize your email perfectly for each email inbox across desktop and mobile devices. Still, you want to make sure things look at good as they can – and definitely check for spelling errors and broken links across both desktop and mobile.
How to send a test email in Klaviyo
As well as using the preview feature in the template builder, you can also follow these steps to send a “live” campaign to a collection of email addresses you or your team have access to:
- Go to your “Lists” and create a new list of recipients if you don’t already have a test list.
- Add your address or team members via the “Quick Add” feature.
- Save your email as a template so you can return to it later
- Name your new campaign
- Choose the preview list you want to use under “Send to”
- Then, click “Continue to Content”
- Fill out the subject line, preview text and a from name
- Head over to the drag&drop menu and go to “My Templates”
- Customize your email
- Choose the Template you want to preview
- Use the Preview tool and click “Send as an email” under the Review email area.
Double-check your content
Before sending a test email, ensure you’ve read the whole message twice. It is always a good idea to have it read by someone else who didn’t write or design the email as well. It’s much easier to spot another person’s errors than to spot your own! Look for all grammatical and typos in your email content and subject line.
Ask other people to review your email
Gather a list of recipients you want to send your test email to – these can be your alternative addresses, team members, or friends willing to give you their own opinion about your content and to make sure your email is viewer friendly.
Even if you’re highly confident about your copy or design, you will never know what your target audience thinks of it until you get direct feedback. That’s why getting an opinion from someone else will be valuable to you and your team.
Test your email across various email providers
Each email provider will render your actual email accordingly to their rendering settings. Ensure you don’t just send your test email to a Gmail or Microsoft Outlook inbox and assume it’ll work perfectly fine for other platforms.
Third-party tool testing
If you want to ensure your email will show up correctly on different email clients, you can use a third-party tool for testing your emails.
Litmus mentioned earlier is a tool recommended by Klaviyo itself, and they offer a free trial to let you test your deliverability before deciding on their monthly plans.
Optimizing your email for all email providers and devices is almost impossible, but you can determine what works best for the major platforms and stick to it.
Use text in your email campaigns and a dedicated sending domain for best results
Your email campaigns might often land in the Google Promotional tab instead of the primary inbox because Google automatically flags Klaviyo’s domain as promotional content. To avoid this from happening as often you can use a dedicated sending domain and make sure your email uses a good amount of text, rather than 100% images.
Check Klaviyo’s guidelines for using and warming dedicated sending domains if you plan to use this strategy.
Summary
By sending test emails directly to test groups and using third-party testing tools, you’ll see how recipients will view your live emails across various platforms and devices.
If you want to learn more Klaviyo best practices, check out our email marketing course for Ecom stores.
We show you exactly how we use Klaviyo every day for our clients here at the Ecommerce Intelligence agency.
Lastly, we do offer a Klaviyo consultant service here.
Thanks for reading!