Higher Logic recommends that you always test messages before you send them and test campaigns before you activate them.

Testing is a great way to get feedback from your colleagues and experts before publishing your messages and activating your campaigns. These tests and feedback increase the likelihood of you sending effective messages and campaigns.

To simplify getting your collateral tested, we've provided you with the ability to create your own Test Groups. Your Test Groups:

• can accommodate up to 100 testers,
• can be configured as recipients of all of your sent messages, and
• are easily managed on a single page in Admin.

Benefits

With Test Groups, rather than having to manually and repeatedly specify the individual email addresses of your testers, you add them to a Test Group and then, when you want to send a test, click a button to select that Test Group.

NOTE: This does require an up-front investment of time (to create and populate the Test Groups), but if your organization tests a lot of messages and/or campaigns, especially via specific groups of people, the initial up-front work will save time and lead to greater efficiency.

You can create as many Test Groups as you need, based on your various types of messages and campaigns.

Notes

Only one Test Group at a time can be used to test a message or campaign. If you want multiple groups to test a message or campaign, you have to perform the tests individually.

Test Groups do not receive voting, invoicing, or event-confirmation messages.

Access your Test Groups

To access and manage your Test Groups:

1. Access the Admin interface.
2. Navigate to Contacts > Test Groups.

The Test Groups page lists all of your Test Groups and is where you manage (create, edit, delete) them.

• The Recipients are the group's testers.
• All Sent Messages can be toggled ON/OFF by editing the group.

TIP: On list pages, click a column header to sort on that column; click again to reverse the sort order. Click the columns count below the list to add and remove columns in the current view.

Create a Test Group

This section steps through how to create a Test Group. When naming your Test Groups, consider:

• Test Group names can contain letters, numerals, and special characters.
• Test Group names that start with a special character will be listed first (e.g., *All-Star Group), followed by those that start with a numeral (e.g., 01_Testers), and then an alphabetized list.

1. Click the plus sign to the right of the page title.

2. In the dialog:

• • Specify a unique name for the Test Group (required).
    NOTE: If the name you specify is a duplicate, you will be prompted to change it.
  • Specify at least one email address (required), but no more than 100.
    NOTE: You can add addresses one per line or as a comma-delimited list on one row.
  • Optionally, check the All Sent Messages box to have all messages sent to this Test Group.

3. Click Save.

Edit a Test Group

1. Select a Test Group and click Edit.

2. In the dialog, you can optionally manage the properties:

• • Rename the Test Group.
    NOTE: If the name you specify is a duplicate, you will be prompted to change it.
  • Add and/or remove email addresses, but ensuring that there are no more than 100.
  • Check or uncheck the All Sent Messages box to set whether this Test Group should receive all sent messages.

3. Click Save.

Delete a Test Group

1. Select a Test Group and click Delete.

2. In the dialog, click Yes to confirm the deletion.

WARNING: This action is irreversible.

Use a Test Group

Let's look at how to use your Test Groups for messages and for campaigns.

Test Group in Messages

1. While creating or editing a message, click the Review & Send tab.

2. In the sub-menu of the page, click Get Feedback to jump down to the Get feedback on your content before publishing section.

3. Click the Send Test button.

4. Click the Test Recipients dropdown and select Choose a Test Group.

TIP: This is where having Test Groups saves time; you're not having to manually specify the individual testers' email addresses!

5. Click the next dropdown to reveal the list of Test Groups; select one.
6. Under Test Options, specify the text that you want prepended to the message subject. This can be used to alert your testers that this message is a test.
7. In the Send test replies to field, specify the email address that you want test replies sent to.
8. Click Send Mail Test to send your message to all recipients in the Test Group.

Test Group in Campaigns

NOTE: Test Groups can be used with In Progress campaigns only.

1. In the Admin interface, navigate to Campaigns.

2. On the In Progress tab, hover over the menu icon to the left of the campaign you want to test and select Edit.
3. In Campaign Designer, click the Test tab.

4. Click a Test Group in the Choose a Test Group field to add the entire list of testers, as individual email addresses, to the Add or remove any email addresses field.

TIP: You can manually add and/or remove individual email addresses in this field. Doing so applies to this test only; it does not affect the Test Group list.

4. Under Start the Test, click the Begin Test button.

Campaign test notes

When testers are added to a campaign:

• The campaign Wait steps will last only 10 minutes for them in order to expedite the testing process.
• Testers can go through the campaign multiple times in order to "test" different aspects (wait times, Yes-No replies) of the campaign.