Preview a newsletter as a reader in a chosen audience segment

This article is held as a draft and will publish when previewing as a segment and as a specific contact are both available to customers.

When you’re previewing a newsletter or company template, the Preview as picker (next to the desktop/mobile toggle) lets you see the edition from a specific reader’s perspective.

What it does

Choose any audience segment from the picker, and the preview updates to show exactly what a reader in that segment would receive. Your newsletter’s own segments appear at the top of the list for quick access.

All subscribers shows the edition as seen by a reader who belongs to no segment — useful for checking that members-only content or location-specific blocks only appear where intended.

Any block that the chosen reader would not receive is marked with a placeholder in the preview, so you can verify segment targeting before scheduling.

Preview as one specific contact

To check personalization for one person, type their email address into the Contact’s email address box on the preview step and choose Preview. The preview then shows Previewing as that contact’s address, with:

• Tag-targeted and segment-targeted blocks shown only if that contact has the tag or belongs to the segment, including your built-in segments. Blocks they wouldn’t receive are marked with the same placeholder as above.
• Merge tags filled in with that contact’s details where your audience record has them. A merge tag the record can’t answer is left as it is, rather than guessed.

The contact has to be in your company audience, whichever kind of email you’re previewing; otherwise you’ll see a message saying no one has that address. Choose the × beside the address to stop previewing the contact and go back to the edition as you wrote it.

This works for newsletters, company templates, and the preview of an email step in an automation. It’s available for newsletters sent to your company audience through Letterhead.

Send yourself that version

While you’re previewing a contact on a newsletter, choose Send me this version to email that personalized version to your own address as a test. It goes to you, never to the contact. The test uses your newsletter as last saved, except that the subject line carries over as it appears on the Schedule step, including edits you haven’t saved yet. The preview text carries over the same way for newsletters built in the editor; for a newsletter you supplied as HTML, it stays as last saved. Company templates and automation steps don’t have this button.

When to use it

Use Preview as whenever you’re sending content tailored to different groups — subscriber tiers, geographic regions, or interest-based segments. It lets you confirm that the right readers get the right content before the newsletter goes out.

See also: Audience segments for setting up and managing segments.