This article...

• Details essential pre-send checks, such as reviewing the message content, testing the personalizations, and running the Virtual Inbox Test.
• Describes the review and feedback options: Send Test and Send for Review.
• Outlines scheduling options and different delivery methods.
• Explains the Auto Resend feature to automatically re-send to contacts who did not open the original message.

Before we begin...

There's more to sending a message than simply configuring a few options and selecting a group of contacts. There are numerous deliverability best practices and pre-send tasks to consider before clicking Send, such as:

• sending your message to yourself and/or your colleagues for review and testing;
• performing a virtual inbox test to check whether your message passes various email client's spam filters.

Only after performing these tasks do we recommend sending a message to your contacts. In this article, we'll walk through these pre-send tasks, as well as the process to send a message to a group of contacts.

You should also visit the Deliverability section of our knowledge base for recommended deliverability tasks and best practices, troubleshooting information, and more.

Review Message tab

This tab is where you can review and test the message before you send it.

Version previews

You can review three versions of your message: Desktop, Mobile, and Text.

• Click the dropdown at the top right to choose a version to preview.
• Be sure to check the rendering of the content and layout in the Desktop and Mobile versions.

Personalization Test

If you have inserted personalization fields in a message, Higher Logic recommends that you use the Personalization Test feature, before sending the message, to:

• test the personalization functionality and
• ensure that the fields are populating as expected, including with any default values.

This gives you the opportunity to make any corrections or changes to the text of the message and/or the personalization fields before you send it.

NOTE: This feature tests Thrive Marketing Professional personalization fields only; it does not test personalization field values that are stored in an integrated database.

If your Thrive Marketing Professional account is integrated with an external database, Thrive Marketing Professional uses the personalization cache to test the external personalization values.

See Test your Personalizations to learn more about this feature.

Virtual Inbox Test

The Virtual Inbox Test:

• allows you to see how your message will look in various email environments (desktop, web, and mobile) and email clients.
• checks whether your message passes the spam filter test, which scans your message for common spam triggers.

To learn where Virtual Inbox Test is available, how to run the test, and what to do with the results, see Virtual Inbox Test.

Get Feedback

The "feedback" section has a few options that you should take advantage of before sending the message.

TIP: It's a good idea to gather feedback from colleagues before you send the message to your contacts. Reviewers often provide crucial feedback (e.g., one of your peers is a subject matter expert on the message's topic) or catch something you missed during your own review.

Send Test

You can send the message to yourself and/or others in order to ensure delivery and to review the content and layout.

1. Click the Test Recipients dropdown to select a test group or a list of email addresses for your test.
2. Specify a message to add to your subject line in the Prepend to subject field.
3. Specify a recipient email address for replies to the test.
4. Click Send Mail Test.

Send for Review

You can send the message to others in order to gather feedback.

1. Click the first menu to select a test group or a list of email addresses for your review.
2. Enter a Due Date and Instructions for your reviewers in the corresponding fields.
3. Check the Include test message in invitation box if you'd like to send a test message along with your reviewer invitation.
4. Use the Email Comments to the Author, Send an Email to the Reviewer, and Send a Due Date Reminder to Each Reviewer to fine-tune the properties for your review message.
5. Click Send for Review to finish.

An email message will be sent to the test group or the list of email addresses that you specified in step 1, and a copy will be sent to you.

The message indicates the name of the message to be reviewed, when the review period ends, and a link to the message in the Reviewer tool.

NOTE: When the review period ends, a message is automatically sent to you which lists the reviewers' comments.

Information for your reviewers

If you're going to have others reviewing your email messages, it's a good idea to:

• Inform your reviewers of your request, especially if they are new to your account and unfamiliar with your review procedures.
• Refer your reviewers to instructions on how to use the Reviewer tool.
• Notify your reviewers that the review-request email message will be from Reviews@informz.net; this should prevent them assuming it's spam and deleting it.

Get Count

Click this option to display the number of contacts your message will be sent to.

Send Message tab

This tab is where you set your message-send preferences.

Scheduling options

There are several options for when your message will be sent.

• Send Message Now
• Schedule One-Time
• Daily or Weekly
• Monthly
• Triggered

When you select an option, the page expands to let you fine-tune your selection.

Delivery Methods

There are several options for how your message will be sent.

• Standard
• Optimized
• Distributed - the section expands to display fields in which you set:

• the time period (i.e., the duration) for the distributed delivery and
• (optionally) a blackout period as described below.

After you've set your message-send options, click Schedule Message at the bottom of the page.

Blackout period

Use this to set a time period during which messages will not be sent by the Distributed delivery method.

• Check the box and use the time dropdowns to configure the "don't-send-messages" window.

Messages will be sent based on the duration that is set in the Distribute over field, except during the specified blackout period.

Auto Resend

Use the Auto Resend feature to automatically resend a message to contacts who did not open the message when it was initially sent.

IMPORTANT: You must configure this option while creating a (original) message; it cannot be set up after a message has been sent.

Learn about the Auto Resend feature.