So, your email design is looking A+ and all your details are in order - now it's time to implement a Testing and Quality Assurance (QA) process prior to your email reaching the hallowed ground that is an invitee's inbox.

We'll focus on four main pieces of the email: Links, tracking, subject line, and copy.

Sending a Test Email

Sending a test email is so easy a caveman can do it. Within your email's design tab, click the Send Test button near the From field.

You have the option to send a test email to any email address along with any collaborators (with the simple click of a checkbox). 

You'll notice that upon receiving a test email, [TEST] will appear before your subject line. Have no fear! It won't appear in the actual send.

Links:

Real talk - there is nothing worse than a broken link, so make sure to click each and every link in your test email (buttons, images, maps, and beyond). Needless to say, this is especially important if your main call to action is to register.

Any updates you need to make to your links can be done by navigating back into your email's Design tab and into each individual element using the Link Settings option. As for text hyperlinks, simply click the text and press Command+K to open the link editor.

Tracking:

While we're on the subject of links, now's a great time to make sure any tracking links included in your email are properly functioning (clicking to their destination).

This is also an opportunity to remember to include tracking links in your emails, because this is an awesome opportunity to cook up some A/B testing — think subject lines, send times, "from" fields, etc.

Subject Line:

Too long? Too short. Now's the best time to tell just how well your subject line translates to an email inbox.

Did you happen to use personalization tags in your subject line? 

This is a great opportunity to make sure any and all personalization tags were properly entered.

It's important to note that if you've manually added an email address to send a test email to, that is not the event owner's address OR a collaborator's address, personalization tags will not populate in their test. Why? Splash doesn't have that individual's information stored! Take a look at an example of what that would look like:

Pro Tip: You can actually set a fallback value for your dynamic tag. So, let's say you are using a personalized salutation ("Hey [first_name]"), but you have a few recipients for whom you don't have a name on file. You can set a fallback value using this syntax: [first_name]|buddy

So, if the guest didn't have a name, Splash would automatically insert your fallback value of "buddy." You can read more on fallbacks near the bottom of this article. 

Copy:

Let that grammar guru of a coworker give their best once over to your email's copy. Once you hit send that email cannot be edited. This is your one shot! In other words, there's no getting milk back in the udder :)

Click to continue to Lesson 5: Choosing your email's recipients