Test campaigns are a crucial step for quality assurance prior to campaign launch. They allow you to proactively validate the email’s layout, confirm personalization accuracy across different user segments, and check all links and media. By running tests, you ensure the campaign looks and functions exactly as intended, mitigating the risk of deploying broken content to your entire audience.

Before proceeding, make sure you have completed Step 1: Target Users and Step 2: Content in the Create Email Campaign journey.

Test and preview campaigns do not modify user-profile data. Sending a test does not update profile fields such as the unsubscribe status (moe_unsubscribe) or other reachability attributes. Only live campaigns update these fields. To validate an unsubscribe flow (or a similar profile update), run a live campaign targeting a small internal segment.

Send Test Campaigns

To send a test campaign, you can use the following components to control the locale, target users, and data used for personalization:

Locale and Variations

When your email campaign has multiple locales and variations, a Locale and variations dropdown menu appears in the Test Campaign section. You can use this Locale and variations dropdown to select the specific locales and variations you want to test, and then send the test email using the options available from the Send via dropdown. This functionality explicitly allows you to test multiple locale variations simultaneously. MoEngage sends a separate email for each unique locale and variation combination you’ve selected, based on the identifier you use for the test. For example, if you select two locales (for example, English and Spanish) and three campaign variations (e.g., A, B, and C), MoEngage sends six different test emails to each of your selected users. This bulk sending capability ensures you can review every possible version of your campaign without having to create numerous test user profiles for different locale combinations.

Send Via

You can test your email campaign by selecting the following options from the Send via dropdown:

Custom Segment: This option allows you to send personalized test emails to a maximum of 50 users from the selected custom segment. If your segment contains more than 50 users, MoEngage sends the test campaign to a random selection of 50 users.
Email ID (Registered users): This option allows you to send personalized test emails to users with existing user profiles (registered users) in MoEngage by entering their email IDs.
Email ID (Non-registered users): This option allows you to send a test email to external users (non-registered users) by entering their email IDs.
Unique ID: This option allows you to send personalized test emails to the existing users by entering their unique customer IDs. Entering the unique IDs fetches the associated user profile and sends the test to their registered email address.
Mobile Number: This option allows you to send personalized test emails to the existing users by entering their mobile numbers. Entering the mobile numbers fetches the associated user profile and sends the test to their registered email address.
If PII (Personally Identifiable Information) tokenized sending is enabled, the following identification methods for registered users are not available:
- Email ID (Registered users)
- Mobile Number

Personalize with a Random User

To use data from a default user profile for personalization, turn on the Personalize with arandom user toggle. To select a specific user, use the Personalised Preview feature of MoEngage.

MoEngage automatically turns on the Personalize with a Random User toggle when the Email ID (Non-registered users) option is selected. This is to provide sample data for the personalization fields, as non-registered users do not have a profile. You can turn this toggle off, but no personalization resolves in that case (see the table below).
For all other Send via options, MoEngage uses the actual attributes of the selected user. If you turn on the Personalize with a Random User toggle, the data from the default sample profile takes precedence and overrides the actual attributes of the selected user for personalization.
To ensure transparency, MoEngage displays the identifier of the default user whose data is being used for personalization.

What Personalization Resolves in Each Scenario

The type of personalization that resolves in a test email, and whose data MoEngage uses to resolve it, depends on the Personalize with a Random User toggle state and the Send via option you select:

Personalize With A Random User Toggle	Send Via	User Attribute Personalization	Event Attribute Personalization	Content Block, Product Set, Auxiliary Data, or Content API*	Whose Data Is Used
OFF	Email ID (Non-registered users)	❌ Not resolved	❌ Not resolved	❌ Not resolved	Not applicable
OFF	Custom Segment, Email ID (Registered users), Unique ID, or Mobile Number	✅ Resolved	❌ Not resolved	✅ Resolved	The targeted/selected user’s actual profile data
ON	Any Send via option	✅ Resolved	✅ Resolved	✅ Resolved	The default sample user’s data from Personalized Preview

* Resolves only if the content block, Product Set, auxiliary data, or Content API does not itself contain event attribute Jinja personalization.

Event attribute personalization does not resolve when testing with a targeted/selected user (toggle OFF). Turn on Personalize with a Random User if your campaign content includes event attribute personalization.

See also: Email Rendering: Behavior and Troubleshooting for why the sample data shown here can briefly differ from what a live send resolves.

Test Email

Click Test to send the test emails. After the test email is sent, click View test results to access the generated test results.

If both a locale and a variation are selected for the test campaign, MoEngage automatically prepends the subject line with a prefix in square brackets: [TEST - <Locale Name> - <Variation Name>].
For all other test campaigns, the prefix still includes the [TEST] indicator, ensuring every test email is easily identifiable, regardless of whether locale variations are selected.
You can test the campaign URLs with UTM parameters to ensure that the proper values are captured.
There is no daily limit on the number of test campaigns that can be run.

Test Results

The Test results page displays a table with granular data for each attempted email, detailing the Status of send, the specific Locale-variation combination sent, and information on any failures, including the Failure reason and recommended Corrective actions.

Failure Scenarios

The following table outlines possible email campaign failure scenarios, detailing the reason reported by the system and the corresponding technical steps required for resolution:

Failure Reason	Description	Corrective Action
MoEngage suppression or User not found	This error occurs when the added identifier is not part of the registered user profiles in the workspace.
This error can also occur when the user attributes, such as Hard Bounce, Unsubscribe, or Spam, are marked as True, or if the user is not subscribed to the chosen Subscription category. To have the test email sent to the chosen identifier, update the values of those attributes to False. To do the same, follow the steps mentioned here . If the chosen subscription category is part of the unsubscribed list, follow the steps mentioned here .	If a profile exists, make sure to have the values of Hard Bounce, Unsubscribe, or Spam as False, and to have the user subscribed to the chosen Subscription Category.
If the email is transactional, this error can occur when the user attributes, such as Hard Bounce, are marked as True.	To have the test email sent to the chosen identifier, update the values of Hard bounce attributes to False. To do the same, follow the steps mentioned here .
Added invalid/inaccessible attachments	This error occurs because the attachment links provided are not publicly accessible.	Add valid attachment links that are publicly accessible. To verify accessibility, paste the URL into an incognito browser window and confirm that the attachment successfully loads.
Added invalid template	This error occurs because the selected Custom Template is either invalid or empty.	Select an existing and non-empty Custom Template. To perform this, check the template content by accessing it from Saved Templates in Step 2: Content of your email campaign setup.
Unable to resolve personalization	This error occurs when MoEngage is unable to resolve personalization issues with the content or missing data in the user profile. Specifically, it happens if the chosen user profile lacks the necessary attribute values required for the personalization fields in the campaign.	Make sure to have values for all types of personalization used for the test email.
Added invalid HTML code	This error occurs when the content contains invalid or empty HTML.	Validate the HTML content by reviewing it with your team or by using a publicly available HTML validator tool , and correct the identified issues.
Entered email ID(s) are invalid	This error occurs because the entered From address or Reply-to email ID is invalid.	Make sure to use a valid From ID / Reply to email ID and correct any typographical errors.
SMTP connection failure	This error occurs due to incorrect credentials in your Sender Configuration.	Verify the credentials used in your Sender Configuration. If valid, try the action again.
SMTP response failure	This error occurs due to incorrect credentials in your Sender Configuration.	Verify the credentials used in your Sender Configuration. If valid, try the action again.
Duplicate email ID	This error occurs when the chosen list contains multiple user profiles sharing the same email ID.	MoEngage performs deduplication before sending. To ensure accurate testing, use profiles with unique email IDs.
Email content failed to resolve to valid HTML code.	This error occurs when both <html> and <body> tags are missing.	Make sure to wrap your content in these standard tags to ensure the email renders correctly.
This error occurs when the required <html> and </html> tags are missing.	Make sure to add <html> and </html> to the beginning and end of your code before trying again.
This error occurs when the <body> container is missing or empty.	Ensure you have opening and closing body tags wrapping your actual email content. This error is displayed only if the VIB (View in Browser) feature is enabled.

Guide

Test Email Campaign

Send Test Campaigns

Locale and Variations

Send Via

Personalize with a Random User

What Personalization Resolves in Each Scenario

Test Email

Test Results

Failure Scenarios

​Send Test Campaigns

​Locale and Variations

​Send Via

​Personalize with a Random User

​What Personalization Resolves in Each Scenario

​Test Email

​Test Results

​Failure Scenarios

Send Test Campaigns

Locale and Variations

Send Via

Personalize with a Random User

What Personalization Resolves in Each Scenario

Test Email

Test Results

Failure Scenarios