Send Test Emails

To access the delivery test page for a given mail job from the open job details pane, select the Summary tab and click on the Edit link in the Test Status section. If you are already on the workflow page of the mail job, simply click on the Send Test Emails section.

Delivering an email job to a large number of recipients needs to be considered carefully. LISTSERV Maestro requires the user to execute a mandatory delivery test step before the mailing is authorized for sending. This crucial step gives the user an opportunity to verify that the test email reaches recipients with the intended appearance and content.

This screen executes a delivery test sending and optionally provides an interface to spam filters, which allows you to check the spam rating of your message.

Once you have filled out the page as described below, click [Send Test Messages] to save the settings and send the test messages as defined by the settings. Or click [Save & Close] to only save the settings for later, without sending any test messages at this time.

Message Spam Rating

This section is only available if a connection to at least one spam filter is configured in your system.

The email messages of a large email job will almost certainly pass through a spam filter on their way to the intended recipients. It is therefore advisable to check the spam rating that your message will get from such spam filters, to evaluate if your message may be classified as spam (which would impede the deliverability of your message).

For a message that has not yet been checked (since it was last edited), click the Check message for spam link to initiate the spam check.

For a message that has already been checked, the spam classification (classified as spam or not) will be displayed. Click View results to view the detailed results of this spam check, or click Repeat spam check to initiate a new spam check.

Note: The exact contents of the spam report and, most importantly, the performed spam tests and how they are rated, depend on the configuration of the spam filters that are being used. If the report classifies the message as spam and this decision appears to be in error, please contact the administrator to review the configuration of the spam filters.
Note also that the spam rating given by your spam filters can only be used as a general guideline when trying to evaluate if your message may be classified as spam: The actual spam filters of your recipients may be configured differently than the spam filters which are used by Maestro to determine this rating. So a message that passes your tests may still be classified as spam by a recipient's filter, or vice versa. See the help page of the Message Spam Rating page for details.

Test Messages Already Sent

This section is only present if a test delivery was already performed at an earlier time, but the results of that test delivery were not yet verified (by selecting the Verify Later choice on the test delivery result page).

In this case, you can skip the delivery of more test messages, and go directly to the result verification page for the previous test delivery.

Perform Delivery Test

Enter test recipients in the boxes provided. Be sure to enter any information in data fields that are used to test merge fields in the message. The Clear Row link will delete the data in the associated row.

Each recipient record consists of a number of columns. The actual number of columns and what their header labels are depends on the type of recipients specified. If the recipients were uploaded, then the columns found in that list will be reflected here. If send to a classic LISTSERV list was chosen, then there will be columns where the default values can be specified for the "&*TO;" and "&NAME;" text merge placeholders.

It is not necessary to fill out all test recipient rows. Only those rows where the email column field is filled in are used, the other rows are ignored. Anything entered into an email field must be a valid email address; a message will be sent to this address (using the values from the other fields in the same row). Maestro will ignore blank rows and skip to the next row with a valid email address so "in-between" rows can be left empty.

The optional test line provides a space for text to be entered that appears at the top of all test messages. Use this to more easily recognize test messages from normal messages. If the field is left blank, no text is prepended to the test messages. The test line is never prepended to messages authorized for final sending.

To further distinguish test messages, a customized subject line can be specified. The customized subject line is used solely for the test messages and not for the final sending.

If the message is a HTML message with a text alternative, then an additional option will be available: If the Send additional plain text email with alternative text option is checked, then the test email will be sent out in two versions. The first version will be the normal HTML email (including the text alternative) and the second version will be a plain text email that contains only the alternative text. Each test delivery recipient will receive these two emails, allowing them to view both the normal HTML email as well as what the alternative text would look like for a recipient where the email client strips away the HTML part and only displays the text alternative.

In addition, the following options are available by clicking the Advanced Options link:

Download delivery test recipients: Download the current test recipients.
Upload delivery test recipients: Upload a file containing the test recipients. After uploading, Maestro may ask for further details in order to parse the file. Successfully added test recipients will appear in the boxes. A message will appear at the bottom of the test recipients box reporting on the success of the upload. Any recipients that are not acceptable will be ignored.
Copy recipients and test line from another job: Use existing settings from a different job. Once added, the test recipients will appear in the boxes.
Clear all test recipients: Remove all test recipients and start over with the default number of empty recipient rows.

Special Note for Subscriber Lists

If the recipients of the job are defined by a target group based on a Subscriber List, then the Delivery Test screen can take advantage of the fact that the data types and other information about recipient profile fields are already known. The input rows for the test recipients can take this data into account and may display different input controls, depending on the profile field's type and may also validate the input according to the field's rules:

Text type fields: Appear as input fields. Validated according to the mandatory/optional setting of the field and any additional user-defined input field validation.
Number type fields: Appear as input fields. Validated according to the mandatory/optional setting of the field and any additional user-defined input field validation. Only number input is accepted.
True/False type fields (Boolean): Appear as checkboxes. No further validation.
Single Select type fields: Appear as single select pull-down lists. Validated according to the mandatory/optional setting of the field.
Multiple Select type fields: Appear as a clickable link that displays the number of currently selected entries. Click on the link to open a small pop-up window with a multiple selection box in which the selection can be specified (use CTRL or SHIFT to select multiple entries or to unselect already selected entries - use Command on Apple). Click [Close] to close the pop-up window. Validated according to the mandatory/optional setting of the field.