eNews Builder’s service gives you the opportunity to send a test message to yourself and your editing team before sending it out to your entire subscriber base.  While this might seem like an unnecessary step ­– not to mention extra work – the benefits far outweigh the little time it takes to do it. 

Why Test?

Your e-newsletter is the voice of your company and a reflection of you personally.  As soon as your e-newsletter hits the inbox of your readers, they instantly receive an image of your company.  As publisher, you want to ensure that they walk away from reading your e-newsletter with the impression that your company has integrity, values high quality, and respects its readers. 

You can only do that if your e-newsletter is top notch – typos, a graphic that doesn’t work, missing links, and other miscues will chip away at that, one mistake at a time.

What to Test For     

When you send a test message, you want to look at every aspect of your newsletter.  Here are some common areas that you want to pay particular attention to.

1. Overall appearance.  When you send yourself a test message, see how it appears when it arrives in your inbox.  Does it look like you want it to?  Do the design and the settings work well for both the browser and the email client?  Are elements like tables, charts, bullets, and any other graphic components appearing the way you want them to?
   
2. Links.  In your test message, it’s a good idea to check every link, both internal and external, making sure the internal ones go to the correct article and the external ones go to the correct web addresses (URLs).  You can add these in the online HTML editor or import them in your article (like from a Word document).  These external addresses are the ones that you especially want to check – make sure the links are still active and that they do not refer to local pages on your computer or to secured pages within an Intranet. 
   
3. Content.  This is one of the most important areas to review and where a fresh set of eyes is very helpful.  If up to now, you’ve been the only one that has been reviewing your e-newsletter, it would be a good idea to have someone read the entire issue through, from one end to the other.  You, as the primary caretaker up to this point, might be too close to it to see some very basic typos, grammatical errors, or thoughts that don’t quite make sense to the outside world.  You also want to do one final check on any factual information.  If you use Microsoft Word to compose articles, use the spell checker before uploading the article.  A spell check feature is also available through the online HTML editor. 
   
4. “From” and subject lines.  Don’t forget to check to make sure your “From” lines (both the email address and the full name that will appear in the subscribers’ inbox) and subject lines have the correct information (and no typos!).
   
5. Intro message.  With eNews Builder, you have the option to include a message that will appear above the e-newsletter. This is where we ask people to add us to their address book.  (Note that if you include a special message in your test newsletter that is for your editing team, don’t forget to delete it before you send the message to your general audience.) 
   
6. Attend to both HTML and Text versions.  Don’t forget to look at the text version of your newsletter.  The version is produced automatically but may need some adjustments.  Once the adjustments have been made, you can select to use the “Previous Text” the next time you send so that you do not lose any changes. If possible, send your newsletter to different email addresses where HTML or text versions are viewable and can be checked for any nuances that you don’t see in the editing process. 

How to Test

With eNews Builder’s service, you have a variety of ways to test your e-newsletter. 

1. Send to the publisher.  This is the email address entered on the Publisher Information screen.
2. Send to email addresses that are manually entered.  Here you can send the newsletter to yourself, along with anyone else who is on your editing team. You can include “Test” with the version number in the subject line along with the actual subject line of the e-newsletter.  You can also include a message (in the Starting Text section on the Send as Email page) for the editing team regarding what you would like them to do. Just remember to change and/or delete this message afterwards, before you send to your subscriber base. 
3. Send to a test subscriber list.  If you want to verify that your personalization and dynamic content elements are set up correctly and drawing from the appropriate fields, it is a good idea to send your e-newsletter to a special test sub-list that allows real records and field values from the subscriber base to be used.  In addition, a test subscriber list, unlike the first two options, will also allow you to see how the reports will look. 

So for your next newsletter, before you hit “send,” build in a few extra minutes to send out your test message.  Even if you’re under the gub to get it out, sit back and think about the ramifications of not doing it.  When you find that inevitable little typo or a key link that doesn’t work, you’ll be glad that you did!

Editor’s note:  We’ve purposely put a typo in here, just to show you how easy one can slip by you!  Did you find it?