Testing your campaign is an important step to see how merge fields are rendering and how the email looks like in a recipient's inbox. Sometimes test emails may land in the spam folder, not arrive at all or take a longer time to deliver. Here's are the most common reasons:
When the test email arrives in spam folder
Test emails are not authenticated. Test emails are not authenticated by Outfunnel in the eyes of email providers and may trigger spam folder placement. To resolve, mark the email as "not spam".
"From" and "To" email address or domain is the same. If these two email addresses are the same, you may not receive the test email as it can get blocked or go to your spam folder. To resolve this, make sure that the From and To email addresses are different. You may also experience deliverability issues with the test email if the “From” and “To” email addresses are on the same domain. To resolve this, simply send it to a different domain.
Test email includes unrendered merge fields or spammy content. Due to this your test email might land in the spam folder. To resolve, mark the email as "not spam".
When your test email does not arrive at all
Delivery can take up to 15 minutes. While most test emails arrive within a minute it may take up to 15 minutes depending on the email provider you are using. If the test email does not arrive after 15 minutes, please see below or reach out to support.
Your company is using a DMARC policy. Check if your domain has a DMARC policy through here. If you see a green notification that starts with
v=DMARC1then DMARC is active which means that you need to set up domain authentication in order for Outfunnel to send test and real emails from your domain.
Test email gets quarantined by your firewall. Some spam firewalls are very strict with test messages as it looks like a phishing attempt or spam message. Ask your IT professional to release the test email from quarantine and whitelist the IP address the email was sent from.
When merge fields don't render in the test email
When you choose to use live data in the test email, Outfunnel will use the information from the first recipient from the target list. Some fields however don't render in test emails as they are unique to each email:
The Unsubscribe URL: {{unsubscribe_url}} does not render in test emails but it will turn into a unique unsubscribe URL when you send out the campaign. Learn more about the recipient unsubscribe experience.
The Public message URL: {{message_url}} does not render in test emails but it will turn into a unique public message URL when you send out the campaign
Dynamic sender information: dynamic From email and From name do not render in test emails. Learn more about dynamic sender.