Before sending emails to your audience, test them to make sure the content, design, links, and sending behavior work as expected.
The right way to test depends on what you need to check:
Send a test email to quickly review an individual message.
Run a live test when you need to see what a real contact will receive.
Test a full Sequence when you need to check events, automations, or Sequence steps that cause emails to be sent.
For a thorough test, you may want to use more than one method.
Send a test email
Use the Send test email option when you want to quickly review an email while you're creating it.
You can send test versions of:
Emails.
Email steps within a Sequence.
Email Notifications.
From the email editor, use the Send test email option and enter an email address you can access.
Then open the message in your inbox and review it. Check:
The email design and formatting.
Text, images, buttons, and other content.
Whether links point to the correct pages.
How the message appears in your inbox and on different devices.
This is useful when reviewing individual Emails and email steps within a Sequence.
What to expect from a test email
A test email is a preview of the message rather than a live send to a contact.
Test emails are sent from [email protected], not through the email gateway that will be used for the final message.
Variables also behave differently during a test. Instead of using information from a contact, variables such as {first_name} are replaced with TEST.
For example:
Hi {first_name}
appears as:
Hi TEST
This means the Send test email option is useful for checking the content and appearance of your message, but it doesn't show you exactly what a real contact will receive.
If you need to check your sender information, live personalization, tracking, or other behavior that depends on an actual contact, run a live test instead.
Run a live test
A live test sends the message through the normal sending process to a real contact.
Use a live test when you need to check behavior that the Send test email option can't reproduce, such as:
How variables populate with real contact information.
The sender information shown to recipients.
Whether the message is sent through the expected email gateway.
How opens and clicks are recorded.
Automations or other actions connected to the recipient's activity.
The way you run the live test depends on what you're testing.
Test an Email with a small test list
If you're preparing a one-time Email, you can send it to a small group before sending it to your intended audience.
Go to Contacts > Lists and create a test list.
Add yourself, coworkers, or other test contacts to the list.
In your Email settings, select the test list as the audience.
Send the Email.
Review the message and test its links and other behavior.
Because this is a real send, the Email uses the configured email gateway and variables can populate with the test contacts' information.
Once you're satisfied with the result, clone the Email to create a new draft for your intended audience.
Make any necessary changes, select the correct recipients, and send or schedule the cloned Email.
Test an Email Notification
Sending yourself a test version of an Email Notification lets you review the message itself. To test how the Notification works in practice, use a test contact and perform the action that should trigger it.
For example:
To test a Notification triggered by a form submission, submit the form as your test contact.
To test an appointment-related Notification, make a test booking.
To test a Notification related to a membership, perform the membership action that should trigger the email.
Use the same process you expect your contacts to follow so you can check whether the correct Notification is triggered and what the contact actually receives.
If the Notification depends on different situations or conditions, use additional test contacts as needed to test each scenario.
Test a Sequence from beginning to end
Testing individual emails in a Sequence can tell you whether each message looks correct. It doesn't tell you whether the complete automated journey behaves as expected.
To test the full Sequence, subscribe a test contact and allow the contact to move through the Sequence as a real subscriber would.
Create a test contact
Go to Contacts and create a new contact using an email address you can access.
Then manually subscribe the contact to the Sequence you want to test.
As the contact progresses, check whether:
The expected steps are triggered.
Emails arrive when expected.
Timing and delays work as intended.
Links lead to the correct destinations.
Conditions send the contact down the correct path.
Other actions in the Sequence occur as expected.
Use a new contact for each test
If you run the Sequence more than once, use a different test contact for each run. This helps keep the results separate from previous activity.
If you use Gmail or Google Workspace, you can use an address variation such as:
This lets you create separate contacts while still receiving the messages in the same inbox.
Monitor your Sequence test
Don't only check the emails that arrive in your inbox. You can also follow the test contact inside Kartra to see what is happening throughout the Sequence.
Go to Contacts and open the test contact's profile. Use the Emails, Sequences, and Log tabs to check:
Which emails were sent.
How the contact interacted with the messages.
How those interactions were recorded.
Where the contact is in the Sequence.
You can also review the Sequence analytics:
Go to Marketing > Sequences > Analytics.
Open the In detail view.
Select the Sequence you're testing.
Review the test contact's progression through the steps.
Together, your inbox, contact activity, and Sequence analytics can help you confirm that the experience works from both the recipient's and Kartra's side.
Test different paths in a Sequence
If your Sequence uses conditions or different paths, one test contact may not be enough.
Create separate test contacts that meet the different conditions you want to check.
For example, if part of your Sequence behaves differently for contacts with a VIP tag:
Create one test contact with the VIP tag.
Create another without it.
Subscribe both contacts to the Sequence.
Check that each contact follows the expected path.
Repeat this for other important conditions or paths in your Sequence.
When testing actions on pages or forms, you can also use a private or incognito browser window to reduce conflicts with cookies from previous tests. Close and reopen the private window before starting another test.
Choose the right test
What you want to check | Recommended test |
Design and formatting | Send test email |
Text, images, buttons, and links | Send test email |
How variables look with real contact information | Live test |
Sender information and email gateway | Live test |
Open and click tracking | Live test |
A one-time Email before sending to your full audience | Small test list |
Whether an event triggers the correct Email Notification | Live Notification test |
Sequence timing and progression | Full Sequence test |
Conditions and different Sequence paths | Multiple test contacts |
Start with Send test email when you want to check the message itself. If you also need to confirm what happens for a real contact, follow it with the appropriate live test.