After creating your email campaign, 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
- Make sure that 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 depending on the type of campaign you want to send.
- If you want to preview your email campaign as a customer, make sure that your lists of contacts are up to date. To learn more, check our dedicated articles on Contacts.
- If you want to send a test email, make sure that your test list is ready to be used and that your test recipients' attributes are up to date.
❗️ ImportantThe email addresses in your Test list must first be part of your contacts to be added to this list. To learn more, check our dedicated article Create and use a test list.
👁️ Preview your email campaign
Brevo makes it possible to preview your email campaign before sending it to your recipients. You will be able to preview your email campaign as a customer, to see if the personalizations you have added are working (contact attributes, block visibility...). You can also preview your campaign on different email clients to make sure it will always look the way you want, no matter which email client it is received on.
Using the Preview as a customer option will help you see exactly how a specific recipient will see your campaign when you add personalization to your email campaign. You will be able to test if your personalizations work.
To preview your campaign as a customer:
- Access the Preview & Test window. You can either:
- Click Preview & Test from the campaign creation flow.
- Click
> Preview from the Drag & Drop Editor. The Preview & Test window opens.
- Click Preview & Test from the campaign creation flow.
- Go to the Preview as customer tab.
- In the block at the right of your screen, start typing the name or email address of one of your contacts to have a preview of what this contact will receive.
Using the Preview on email clients option will help you see that your email campaign looks exactly like you want for each of your customers, no matter what email client they use.
To preview your campaign on different email clients:
- Click
- Go to the Preview on email clients tab.
- From the block at the right of your screen, click on the names of the email clients you want to preview your campaign with. You can test as many email clients as you want from 3 categories: Web-based email apps, Mobile Email Apps, and Desktop Email Apps.
All previews are available in Desktop and Mobile view, use the 🖥 and📱icons in the header of the email campaign to switch from one view to the other:
🧪 Send test emails
Send your email campaign to your test list before you send it to your customers to check that everything works as expected and that the design of your campaign looks great when clients receive it. You can send your test email directly from the campaign creation flow or the Drag & Drop Editor, or from the email campaigns list.
Here is how the test email will appear in your inbox when you receive it:
If you want to test your email on real email clients and if you want to check that everything works fine in your campaign, you can send your campaign to your test list. For example, it can be useful to include the email address of your colleagues who will be able to give you feedback on your campaign.
To send a test email to your test list:
- Access the Preview & Test window. You can either:
- Click Preview & Test from the campaign creation flow.
- Click
- Click Preview & Test from the campaign creation flow.
- Go to the Send test email tab.
- In the Send test emails to your colleagues block at the right of your screen, select from the Recipient drop-down list the test recipients you want to send your test to. You can add as many test recipients as you want and need.
- Click the bin icon to definitely remove a recipient from the test list.
- If you need to add other recipients to your test list, click + Add new test recipient.
- Click Send test.
Your test recipients will receive your email campaign in their inbox as if they were your customers.
You can quickly send a test email from your email campaigns list to see what it looks like:
- Go to Campaigns > Email.
- Search for the campaign you want to test in the list. You can search for your campaign name in the Campaign ID, Name search bar, or filter your campaigns using the different tabs.
- Click More action
> Send a test.
All the recipients from your test list will automatically receive your email campaign to review. A green box at the top of your email campaigns list will confirm the sending:
❓ 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.
🔓 Your domain isn't properly authenticated
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).
🚫 Your domain or firewall security may block your email
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.
🛬 Your email lands in spam or promotions tab
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?.
⏱️ Your email provider holds your email in queue
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.
⚠️ Your test email has some error
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 expert partner.