Direct Mail offers two ways to preview your message. This help article covers the live preview, which is useful for previewing personalization features, testing responsive designs, and viewing the plain-text version of your message. If you're looking for screenshots of how your message appears in various popular email clients, please refer to our help article on Design Tests.
Open the Preview Window
- Select the message
- Click the Preview button in the toolbar
- Select Preview from the menu
The Preview window will appear.
Preview Personalized Messages
If your message is using personalization features, you can use the Preview window to see what those personalized emails will look like for each recipient.
- Follow the instructions above to open the Preview window
- In the project sidebar, click the Contacts tab
- Select a contact from your list
The Preview window will automatically update to show what your message will look like when it is sent to the selected contact.
Preview Responsive Designs
You can use the Preview window to see how your message adapts to different screen sizes.
- Follow the instructions above to open the Preview window
- Resize the Preview window by clicking and dragging any of the four corners, or
- Click Simulate Screen Size in the Preview window toolbar and select a size from the popup menu that appears
The popup menu shows the most popular screen sizes for a given region of the world (e.g. North America). This list is updated automatically based on global statistics from statcounter.com.
Preview Without Images
Some people configure their email client to not load images. In addition, some visually impaired people may use screen-reading software to read their email. In both cases, the text-only descriptions that you assign to images in your email are displayed or read instead. You can preview what your email looks like with images off:
- Follow the instructions above to open the Preview window
- Click the Images button in the toolbar to toggle images on or off
Examine Plain-Text and Source Code
Some devices (i.e. smartwatches) only display the plain-text version of an email. Some people configure their email client to prefer plain text. Direct Mail automatically creates a plain-text version of your message (or you can make a custom one). You can use the Preview window to see what it looks like:
- Follow the instructions above to open the Preview window
- Click the Plain Text button in the View control in the toolbar
For HTML message, you can preview the HTML source code:
- Follow the instructions above to open the Preview window
- Click the Source Code button in the View control in the toolbar
If you need to edit the source code, please see this help article.