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.
Transcript
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’s 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’s make this email a bit more personal by adding a personalization field.
I’ll take the first name.
Now, let’s add the subject line and we’re done.
You can see these are the two profiles, we’re 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’s 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’s 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’s email address. Now I’m 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’s 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’ve defined for the proofs. Let’s 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.
IMPORTANT
This feature allows you to send profile personal information to external email addresses. Keep in mind that executing privacy requests (GDPR & CCPA) in Campaign Standard WILL NOT execute that request externally.
See the product documentation to learn more about testing messages using target profiles
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