Previewing Templates

After you've created a template and personalized it with user profile fields, data feeds, and Catalog data, it's a good idea to preview the template before sending it. This will help you find and fix mistakes, and give you confidence that the final rendered message will look good to all of your recipients.

# In this article

# Previewing with user data

To preview a template with user data, follow the steps outlined here:

# Step 1: Go to the Preview page

To get to the Preview page for a template:

1. Go to Content > Templates, find the overflow menu (three dots), and choose Preview with data.

   

2. Or, open a template and click Preview.

   

To preview a campaign's content with user data, open the campaign, click Edit design (email and in-app templates only), and click Preview.

# Step 2: Load a user's data

On the Preview page, you can load data for a specific user to see how it affects the template. To do this:

1. Enter a user's email address and click Load user data. That user's profile data appears, and the template preview updates to reflect it. If the preview doesn't refresh properly, click the refresh button by the previewer.

   Projects that use userId as a unique identifier can also use this field to load data for a user (userID-based projects and hybrid projects only). Read Project Types and Unique Identifiers to learn more.

2. To see how different user profile values affect the template, you can load data for different users, or you can manually edit the loaded data to reflect a particular scenario. This won't change the user's actual Iterable profile —  it's just a way to experiment.

3. To clear the loaded user data, click Clear user data.

   

# Step 3: Load data feeds

If your template uses data feeds, you can use the Preview page to load them and make sure your template uses them correctly. To do this:

1. Load the data feeds that you've associated with your template (in its Details area) by clicking Load data feeds.

2. Experiment with different data feed data by editing the returned data however you'd like. Your changes won't affect the data feed or your template.

3. If the data feeds required by your templates use aliases, they're listed with its data. For example, this data feed has alias my_alias:

   

4. To clear any loaded data feed data, click Clear data feeds.

# Previewing on devices (email templates)

When users receive an email campaign from your brand, they may view it on any number of devices, operating systems, email clients, and web browsers — and your final rendered message may look different when it's displayed each of these ways. You can use the Device Previews screen to preview how an email template will appear when it's rendered on each of these devices and catch any issues, such as how your designs look when displayed in Dark Mode versus Light Mode.

To view the device previews for a template, open the template and click Preview > Preview on Devices.

# SMS link shortening

For SMS templates that use link shortening, the Preview page shows example shortened links, but they're not the actual links that will be sent to your users. The placeholders exist to give you a better sense of what the message will ultimately look like, and of its actual character count.

# Email link previews

For email templates, the Preview page does not render tracked links. Instead, it shows the destination URLs where the user is directed when they click the link.

Tracking links may be shorter or longer than the destination URLs, depending on the length of the destination URL and whether email link shortening is enabled.

Because previews and proofs differ from live sends in ways that affect message clipping, consider sending a live test message to enough user profiles to preview the dynamic and personalized elements of your message. This will help you identify any potential clipping issues before sending the live campaign.

For details on how email link tracking and shortening work, see Email Link Shortening and Click Tracking.

# Previewing a JSON payload

When you add a JSON payload to your push or in-app templates, you may want to check that any Handlebars or snippets in the payload are configured properly. To do this, use the Raw data (JSON) preview area on the Preview page. This preview shows the data that Iterable will pass to your app.

To access the raw data preview, open your push or in-app template, click Preview, and scroll to the bottom of the page.

# Further reading

• Customizing Campaigns with Data Feeds
• Troubleshooting Message Clipping