Previewing and sending test emails of your post

Previewing your post is an important step to make sure it looks and functions exactly as intended before sending it to your audience. In beehiiv, you can preview a post directly in the Post Builder and send a test email to see how it will appear in the inbox. Test emails make it easy to review formatting, layout, and personalization from a subscriber’s perspective before publishing.

In this article, you’ll find a few quick tips to get started, followed by step-by-step instructions for previewing your post and sending test emails.

• Test emails vs. A/B testing: Sending test emails is different from A/B Testing. A/B testing lets you test subject lines with a portion of your audience, while test emails send the full post to you or your team so you can review how it renders before publishing.
• Launch plan limits: Users on the Launch plan can send up to 4 test emails to themselves. If you’re a team member added to a publication on a paid plan, you can send test emails to team members or external email addresses for that publication.
• Unlimited test emails for paid plans: If you’re on a paid plan, you can send an unlimited number of test emails to yourself or your team until you’re satisfied with the final result.
• Recipient limits per test email: Paid plan users can send test emails to up to 10 recipients at a time.
• Simulated Subscriber option: This option sends the test email to your selected test addresses, while displaying the content as if it were sent to a specific subscriber. It’s useful for testing personalization, merge tags, or Referral Program content without emailing the subscriber directly.
• Magic links may not work in test emails: Some magic links won’t function properly in test emails. Refer to this article to learn why this happens and what to expect.
• Unsubscribe headers won’t appear in test emails: Test emails don’t include the unsubscribe header. beehiiv automatically adds a one-click unsubscribe option to all published posts to meet email security requirements.

1. Create a new post or open an existing post.
    
2. From any page in the Post Builder, click Preview in the top-right corner.
   
   
   
3. A preview of your post will open with several options along the top.
   
   
   
4. On the left, you can switch between Email, Web, Desktop, and Mobile views to see how your content appears across different formats and devices. Use the Refresh icon to reload the preview as needed.
   
   
   
5. Use the search options to adjust how the preview displays: 

• Search tiers and conditions: If you have paid subscriptions enabled or are using dynamic content, you can preview how the post appears for different tiers or conditions.
• Search for a specific subscriber: If your post includes merge tags, you can select a subscriber to preview the post exactly as they would see it.

6. Play around to see how the post will look in different scenarios. When using the Search tiers and conditions option, some tiers and dynamic content conditions can be selected together. 
   
   If you choose a combination that isn’t compatible, you’ll see a Conflicting selection warning explaining which selections don’t work together.
   
   
   
7. Use the Search for a specific subscriber option to preview the post exactly as one of your readers will see it.
   
   
   
8. To return to the Post Builder, click the X in the top-right corner of the Preview page.
   
   
   

1. From any page in the Post Builder, click the arrow next to Preview.
   
   
   
2. At the top of the dropdown, copy the Draft link to share your post with collaborators.

3. Under Send test email, you can select any of your publication team members a test email by checking the box next to their names.
   
   
   
4. To send a test email to other recipients, enter up to 10 email addresses, separated by commas.
   
   
   
5. To preview personalized content, select a subscriber from the Simulated Subscriber dropdown. Any merge tags in the email will be populated using that subscriber’s data.
   
   
   
6. Click Send test email to deliver the test email to your selected recipients.