Before your Easy Automation goes live, test it so you know exactly what your contacts will receive. Testing an Easy Automation lets you verify that emails look correct, merge fields are populated properly, and the automation triggers as expected. You can test the emails in an Easy Automation at any time — before or after publishing — without sending anything to your actual contacts.

This article covers two ways to test an Easy Automation: sending a test email to yourself to preview how emails will appear to contacts, and running yourself through the full automation by triggering it manually. This article does not cover testing Advanced Automations. For information on testing Advanced Automations, see how to test an Advanced Automation sequence.

How to Send a Test Email from an Easy Automation

The Send test button sends a copy of every email in your Easy Automation to your own email address. The test email is sent using the contact record you select as the test contact — merge fields in the email will populate using that contact's data. The test email is not sent to the selected contact. Use this method to quickly verify email content, formatting, and merge fields without triggering the full automation.

1. Open the Easy Automation. If the automation is already published, click the Edit button to open the automation editor. 
   
   
2. Click Send test in the upper right corner of the Easy Automation editor. 
   
   
3. Select a contact record from the dropdown. The test emails will be sent to your email address — not to the selected contact. The selected contact's data will be used to populate any merge fields in the emails so you can see how the email will appear to a real contact. 
   
   
4. Click Send test to send the test emails to your inbox. 
   
   

Check your inbox for the test emails. Review each email for accurate content, correct merge field values, and proper formatting before publishing or sharing your automation.

How to Run a Full Test of Your Easy Automation

To test the complete automation — including triggers, tags, wait steps, and all actions — run yourself through the automation by triggering it manually. For the example of an automation that triggers when a form is submitted, fill out the form yourself using your own contact record. After submitting the form, check your email to confirm you received the expected emails and check your contact record to confirm the tag was applied correctly. Repeat this process for each trigger and action in your automation to confirm the full sequence behaves as expected.