Clone your campaign and run an audience list of test prospects through the campaign.
- Build and save a test list of internal team members and/or other test prospects.
Note - To observe effective test scenarios, you will want to be sure to create and include test records that match the expected attributes and activity history of your intended live audience.
- Clone the campaign that you would like to test. We recommend naming the new cloned campaign with "TEST" appearing in the name for easy identification.
- Open the new cloned campaign in the campaign builder.
- Double-click on the Start Action of the test campaign to edit the configuration settings.
- Change the Target Audience of the test campaign so that it only includes your test list from Step 1. Be sure to remove ALL previously added lists to prevent sending emails to live audiences.
- Change the Start date and time so that it corresponds with your intended test schedule.
- Choose Start Immediately if you would like the campaign to start running immediately after the Start button is clicked.
OR
- Choose Start on... if you would like the campaign to start running on a certain date and time after the Start button is clicked.
- Change the Stop date and time so that it corresponds with your intended test schedule. Note that campaigns that have been ended cannot be edited or restarted.
- Choose Run Indefinitely if you would like the campaign to run until a user manually clicks the End button.
OR
- Choose End on... if you would like the campaign to end on a certain date and time after the Start button is clicked.
- Click OK in the Start Action to retain your changes.
- Edit your Wait Actions to set shorter waiting periods (e.g. Wait 15 minutes instead of 1 week). By doing this, campaigns that would normally run over the course of days, weeks, or months will complete within minutes or hours allowing your team to complete testing in a reasonable amount of time.
- Do not change any other aspects of your campaign. By keeping all other logic and behavior of the campaign exactly as it will be for the live audience, you retain ideal test conditions for your test audience.
- Click the Start button to start the test campaign.
- Monitor the campaign statistics and behaviors to make sure that all Action options and flows behave as you would expect for all test records and scenarios.
Because your audience is made up of a list of test prospects, you and your team have direct control over how these test prospects interact with the test campaign. Be sure to exercise as many different scenarios as possible to confirm how the behavior will be when you launch your live campaign.
For example, if an Email Action is configured with options to send Email "ABC" to form fillers, and Email "XYZ" to non-form fillers, have a portion of your test prospects fill out the form and have another portion NOT fill out the form to observe their progression through the campaign.