Test campaigns are primarily used to evaluate the effectiveness of your email messages and campaign logic before you launch them to your full audience. Their core purposes include:

• Validating message and campaign logic: Test campaigns allow you to send your campaign to one or more testers or small sample groups. This helps you identify any issues—such as confusing steps, broken links, or unclear content—so you can revise and optimize your campaign before a wide release. Having multiple testers increases the likelihood of catching problems that might affect contact engagement
• Supporting decision making before full deployment: Test campaigns are an important part of campaign planning. They help ensure that the goals and steps of your campaign make sense and will resonate with your audience. Using test runs and feedback from testers provides a safety net against mistakes and helps refine the campaign for maximum performance when sent to your full audience.

Create a test campaign

There are two ways to test a campaign:

• Create a dedicated "test campaign" that is specifically designed for testing.
• Modify an existing campaign to enroll a small group of test members, and then configure send times to accommodate your testing schedule.

TIPS:

- Always assemble your testers ahead of time—multiple testers increase coverage.
- Use sample groups or create dedicated test groups for clean data.
- Validate all campaign steps (emails, links, triggers) before launching to your full audience.

Below are some sample campaign test scenarios.

Campaigns that have send intervals

• Welcome
• Call to Action
• Event Promotion
• Fundraising

Campaign setup example

1. Send the first campaign test message.
2. Wait 14 days.
3. Send the second campaign test message.
4. Wait 14 days.
5. Send the third campaign test message.
6. Wait 14 days.
7. Send the final campaign test message.

Create a test campaign

1. Create a test campaign.
2. Add test members to the campaign (this is easily done by creating a group of test members and using the "in a group" method for campaign enrollment).
3. Set the send interval between the campaign test messages to several hours.

Modify an existing campaign

1. Add test members to the campaign (this is easily done by creating a group of test members and using the "in a group" method for campaign enrollment).
2. Modify the campaign and reduce the send interval between the campaign test messages to several hours.
3. When the test is complete:

• modify the send intervals,
• modify the campaign enrollment, and
• re-deploy the campaign.

Date-based campaigns

• Birthdays and Anniversaries
• Membership and Subscription Renewal
• Date-Triggered Notices

These campaigns are more challenging because you have to create campaign Contacts with the specific dates to match the expected send actions.

Campaign setup example

1. Send the first campaign test message 90 days prior to a "target" date in a Custom Field (e.g., Expiration Date).
2. Send the second campaign test message 30 days prior to the "target" date.
3. Send the third campaign test message 10 days after the "target" date.

Create a test campaign

1. Add test members to the campaign (this is easily done by creating a group of test members and using the "in a group" method for campaign enrollment).
2. For each test Contact, modify the date in the Custom Field to generate the campaign test messages according to your desired test schedule.

Modify an existing campaign

1. Add test members to the campaign (this is easily done by creating a group of test members and using the "in a group" method for campaign enrollment).
2. For each test Contact, modify the date in the Custom Field to generate the campaign test messages according to your desired test schedule.
3. When the test is complete:

• modify the send intervals,
• modify the campaign enrollment, and
• re-deploy the campaign.

Scoring and Segmentation campaigns

• Lead Scoring
• Engagement
• Segmentation

Campaign setup example

• Award 5 points to any Contact who opens a campaign test message.
• Award 10 points to any Contact who clicks a link in a campaign test message.

Create a test campaign

1. Add test members to the campaign (this is easily done by creating a group of test members and using the "in a group" method for campaign enrollment).
2. Send the campaign test messages to the test members; have them interact with the messages in order to be awarded the associated points.

Modify an existing campaign

1. Add only test members to the campaign (best accomplished by creating a group of test members and using the “in a group” method for campaign enrollment).
2. Send the campaign test messages to the test members; have them interact with the messages in order to be awarded the associated points.
3. When the test is complete:

• modify the send intervals,
• modify the campaign enrollment, and
• re-deploy the campaign.

Gather data about your test campaign

After you've deployed your test campaign and given your testers adequate time to run through it, they should provide you with valuable feedback. 

In addition to this feedback, you can also view analytics data about your campaign using the built-in reporting features. This data can help you dig in a little deeper to potentially uncover some useful information you can use to fine-tune your campaign even more.

See Campaign Tracking Reports to learn how to access and use tracking reports to analyze your test campaign's data.

Use this data and feedback to adjust your campaign as necessary to prepare for launch to your full audience. For example:

• Do some of your messages need to be updated to have a greater impact?
• Are there too few or too many images? Do some images need to be updated in some way?
• Are the sending intervals too long or short?
• Are some of your message links broken, incorrect, or outdated?