What are the test recipient limitations?
Acoustic Campaign has some limitations related to test list sends.
Before you send your email to your complete email list, it is best practice to send the email to a small group of recipients for review. To do so, create a test email using the Send a Test Email page in Acoustic Campaign and attach a test list to it.
Limitations
The following are proven limitations and known behaviors, separated by the type of send.
Within Acoustic Campaign, one of the sending options is Select Test Recipients. In the breakouts below, we cover the behavior of a combination of the Select Test Recipients scenarios:
- Send to individual email address with test personalization
- Send to individual email address without test personalization
- Send to contact source with test personalization, and
- Send to contact source without test personalization
If your test recipients encounter unexpected content or behavior, it could be by design. If you review this document and still have questions or concerns, contact Client Support.
Send to individual email address, no personalization
Click to View
Both Acoustic Campaign Click to View and Custom Click to View work on this test send scenario
Personalization
If the inserted personalization is a system generated field such as 'name’, it populates within the test email. If the personalization field has a default value, the content personalizes with the default value.
Opt-in/out
- If an opt-in link is provided in the template’s content, Acoustic Campaign does not allow the message to send because no opt-in form is available. The error presented is, “Mailing Contains An Opt In Link, But List Does Not Contain An Opt In Form”.
- Opt-out appears to function, but there is no way to record the action since no list is associated with the email.
Dynamic content
Default dynamic content fields display.
Forward to Friend
Forward to a Friend hyperlink is not functional for this type of test send.
Share to Social
Share to Social feature allows the test recipient to post the message.
Avoid social shares of test messages, as the content is likely to be incomplete and not designed for external consumption.
Send to individual email address, test personalization
Click to View
Neither Acoustic Campaign Click to View nor Custom Click to View work.
Opt-in/out
- If opt-in is available within the template’s content, then the “Test personalization…” list must have an opt-in form associated with it. Otherwise, Acoustic Campaign displays an error and does not allow the send to occur: “Mailing Contains An Opt In Link, But List Does Not Contain An Opt In Form”.
- The list selected for testing personalization receives opt-in entries.
- Personalization recipient does not get opted-out of the list designated as the “Test personalization…” list if the test recipient clicks through the opt-out link.
Avoid opt-in and opt-out actions on test messages, as test recipients and regular list recipients may be impacted unexpectedly.
Personalization
Personalization does not display, except in cases where the field has a default value present.
Dynamic content
Dynamic content displays based on the recipient selected from the “Test personalization…” list.
Forward to Friend
Forward to a Friend hyperlink is not functional for this type of test send.
Share to Social
Share to Social feature allows test recipient to post the message.
Avoid social shares of test messages, as the content is likely to be incomplete and not designed for external consumption.
Send to contact source, no personalization
Click to View
Both Acoustic Campaign Click to View and Custom Click to View work on this test send scenario.
Personalization
Personalization populates with available list data, otherwise no data or default value is displayed.
Dynamic content
Dynamic content populates when list data is available, otherwise default is displayed.
Forward to Friend
Forward to a Friend hyperlink is not functional for this type of test send.
Share to Social
Share to Social feature allows test recipient to post the message.
Avoid social shares of test messages, as the content is likely to be incomplete and not designed for external consumption.
Opt-in/out
- Opt-in form appears when opt-in link is clicked.
- List selected for sending receives opt-in entries.
- Opt-out link opts out recipient.
Avoid opt-in and opt-out actions on test messages, as test recipients and regular list recipients may be impacted unexpectedly.
Send to contact source, test personalization
Click to View
Acoustic Campaign Click to View does not work; nor does Custom Click to View.
Personalization
Personalization populates from the List, not selected test personalization recipient.
Dynamic content
Dynamic content displays based on the recipient selected from the “Test personalization…” list.
Forward to Friend
Forward to a Friend hyperlink is not functional for this type of test send.
Share to Social
Share to Social feature allows test recipient to post the message.
Avoid social shares of test messages, as the content is likely to be incomplete and not designed for external consumption.
Opt-in/out
- Opt-in form appears when opt-in link is clicked.
- List selected for sending receives opt-in entries.
- Opt-out link does not opt out recipient.
Avoid opt-in and opt-out actions on test messages, as test recipients and regular list recipients may be impacted unexpectedly.