Profile Substitution - Test email messages using targeted profiles
This video explains how you can test your email messages using Profile Substitution. It covers the following use case:
Suppose you want to send a personalized email newsletter. Before sending the newsletter, however, a colleague wants to review it and has asked for proofs. You can use the Profile Substitution features to send a proof, as it allows you to send an exact representation of the message that the targeted profile receives.
Welcome. In this video I will explain how you can test your email messages, using the profile substitutions feature.
We want to send a personalized email newsletter, but before sending the newsletter, my colleague wants to preview it and has asked me to send him proofs. The profile substitutions feature allows me to send my colleague an exact representation of the message that the profile will receive. So the custom fields dynamic and personalized information as well as possibly additional data from the workflows, will be customized to the recipient.
First, let鈥檚 create the email.
Select the email template and click next.
I will enter a label.
For our purposes today, I will select two profiles as the audience who will receive this email.
You can see in the top navigation, that the profile substitutions tab is available. However, this feature is only active after the message has been prepared. But of course before we can prepare the message, we will have to configure it. So click on next.
Now, I will select the template.
Let鈥檚 make this email a bit more personal by adding a personalization field.
I鈥檒l take the first name.
Now, let鈥檚 add the subject line and we鈥檙e done.
You can see these are the two profiles, we鈥檙e targeting in this example.
I will go ahead and prepare the message.
With only two profiles in the target audience, the preparation is very fast and the message is ready.
Now you can see down here, we have not defined any test profiles. Since we want to send the proofs first, we need to set up a profile substitutions which are now available.
On the profiles substitutions tab you can either select specific profiles among the targeted profiles or you can import profiles from an existing audience.
For example, I will select the profiles manually.
First, I will select the first profile I would like to send a proof for, then I will add my colleague鈥檚 email address.
Next I will add a prefix to the subject line, which will only appear on the email that I am sending to my colleague as a proof.
I will do the same thing for the second profile, that I would like to send a proof for.
If you want to send a proof, to multiple substitution addresses, for the same profile, you must add this profile as many times as required. So if I were to send the proof , for example to my boss, as well as my colleague, I would have to add this profile twice. And of course configure them accordingly.
Before sending the proof, I want to preview the emails.
For this, I need to save the delivery so that the profile substitutions become available for preview before returning to the email designer.
On the preview tab, I can select to preview the email for each profile by clicking on change profile. Here I will navigate to the profile substitutions tab. You can see the two profile substitutions, that we have set up. You can select multiple profiles to preview and I will select all.
We now see the email that the recipient will receive and what it will look like in both the email format as well as mobile view.
You can see the personalization and you can also see the address this email will be sent to. Also notice the subject line since we select the two profiles, let鈥檚 scroll to the next one. You can do that by clicking on this arrow.
Again, you can see that the personalization has been applied to the profile as well as the recipient鈥檚 email address. Now I鈥檓 ready to send out the proofs. I will go back to the delivery and then click on tests.
The proofs have been sent. Now let鈥檚 see what my colleague has received in his inbox.
He has received the two proofs. You can see the applied personalization field and here we have the prefix we鈥檝e defined for the proofs. Let鈥檚 take a look at the second proof. Again, the personalization has applied to the recipient and not my colleague. You can see that the proofs have been sent according to what I configured in the profile substitutions tab.
So the main difference between sending a proof to a test profile and using the profile substitution, is that when sending to the test profile, the test profile will receive the email customized to him or herself as the recipient. Whereas the profile substitution allows the proof recipient, to receive an exact representation of the message, that the profile it will finally be sent to, will receive.
Thank you for watching. -
For more information, see the detailed product documentation.
See the product documentation to learn more about testing messages using target profiles