After creating your email, you might be curious to know how it will appear before sending it. Brevo makes it easy to preview how your email will look to your customers on different devices and email clients but also send test emails.
Before you start
- Ensure you have completed all the steps to have your email campaign ready. To learn more, check our dedicated articles Creating an email campaign and Creating A/B test email campaigns.
- To preview your email as a customer, ensure your contact list and their information are up to date.
- To send a test email, ensure your test list is complet and that your test recipients' contact attributes are up to date. To learn more about your test list, check our dedicated article Create and use a test list.
✅ Access the preview and test options
To preview and test your email, click Preview & test from either the email campaign creation page, Drag & Drop email editor, or email campaign listing page:
| Email campaign creation page |
|---|
| Drag & Drop email editor |
| Email campaign listing page |
👁️ Preview your email
Brevo makes it possible to preview your email before sending it to your recipients. You will be able to:
- Preview as a customer to see if the personalization variables you have added are working correctly, such as contact attributes or event data.
- View in inbox to compare how your email design will appear on different email clients, such as Google Mail or Outlook.
The Preview tab allows you see exactly how a specific recipient will receive your email when you add personalization or variables to it and ensure they work perfectly.
To preview your email as a customer:
- Access the Preview & Test options.
- From the Preview tab, in the Select a contact field, start entering a recipient's email address and click it. Your email design automatically reloads to show how it will appear to this specific recipient, with personalization variables replaced with their attributes.
- (Optional) Click the 🖥 and📱icons in the header of your email design preview to switch from one view to the other.
The View in inbox option allows you to see what your email looks like to your customers, depending on the email client they use.
To preview your email on different email clients:
- Access the Preview & Test options.
- Go to the View in inbox tab.
- Click Generate previews to load the different email clients' previews.
- Next to your email preview, click the different email client names to view how your email design will appear on it. You can test as many email clients as you want from 3 categories: Web-based email apps, Mobile-based email apps, and Desktop-based email apps.
- (Optional) Click Load more under each category to display more email client previews.
🧪 Send test emails
Send your email to your test list before you send it to your contacts to ensure everything works as expected and that the design of your email looks great when they receive it. For example, it can be useful to include the email address of your colleagues who will be able to give you feedback on your email design.
- Access the Preview & Test options.
- Go to the Send test email tab.
- In the Recipients field, select the test recipients you want to send your email to. You can add as many test recipients as you need.
- (Optional) To add other recipients to your test list, click Manage test list. Refresh your web page to see recipients added.
- Click Send test.
❗️ ImportantIf you are on a Free plan, the links used in your email design will expire approximately 30 minutes after the reception of the test email.
Your test recipients will receive your email in their inbox as if they were your customers. Check with them if your email appears as expected! Here is how the test email appears in inboxes:
❓ Why didn't I receive my test email?
There are many reasons why you may not have received your test email. Understanding these reasons will help you improve your email deliverability:
Domain authentication adds a digital signature to email, reducing spam and phishing risks while improving email delivery to recipients' inboxes.
➡️ To learn more, check our dedicated article Authenticate your domain with Brevo (Brevo code, DKIM record, DMARC record).
Email may not reach you due to domain security or firewalls, which can block suspicious third-party emails. This is common with corporate and academic filters. Firewalls, like spam filters, control email based on server rules. You have to whitelist Brevo's IPS and domains.
➡️ To learn more, check our dedicated article Best practices for email deliverability.
If the email doesn't appear in your primary inbox, you can find it by performing a quick search with your email subjects in the mailbox's search bar. In case the email landed in a different tab, save yourself as a contact.
➡️ To learn more, check our dedicated article Why are emails being delivered to the spam folder?.
Some email providers have send/receive cycles that can take a few seconds to 15 minutes. Others have delivery times that can cause delays of up to 24 hours such as AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, or Microsoft. To test, you can email a different provider, like Gmail, and see if it's delivered.
There can be an error when sending a test email. If there is one, an error message usually appears in the Brevo editor when trying to send the email. You can try sending the email again and check your inbox for it. If an error occurs:
- Verify that there are no personalization typos such as missing `{{` or `}}`.
- Check the attachment size, if any. Including email attachments can trigger spam filters, especially if they are large or sent frequently. This is often associated with malware or virus distribution. The maximum attachment size we allow is 4MB, and the total size of the email cannot exceed 5MB.
- Instead of attachments, consider providing links to download files from reputable sources or cloud storage.
- Ensure the embedded images option is disabled, as this can increase email size and make the email more suspicious.
- Confirm that you have enough email credits, as test emails use credits from your plan.
🤔 Have a question?
If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.
If you’re looking for help with a project using Brevo, we can match you with the right certified Brevo Agency partner.