Creating a Profile Sample
Understanding profile samples
As all test e-mails must be built after the attributes of real profiles, a "profile sample" is a list of profiles who have been selected from your database.
All your test e-mails (or SMS) will be personalized and conditioned based on the characteristics of these profiles.
The members of your sample can be internal profiles created by yourself, or real profiles selected through targeting criteria. In any case, they must exist in your database, but no test e-mail will ever be sent to their real e-mail address.
Indeed, when using profile samples, these test profiles will be used only to generate the test e-mails, while you will have to specify the real recipients of these tests through an external list.
If you want to pre-select the list of real recipients who will validate the test e-mails (for example, your colleagues or clients), you may want to create a 'Testing team' instead.
During the creation process (steps 2 and 3), you can switch to the 'Testing team' mode through a menu in the top right corner of the screen.
Creating a profile sample
In order to create a Profile sample, go to the 'Testing groups' app (Catalog > Profiles > Testing groups).
Click on 'Create a testing group', select the 'Profile sample' option then click on 'Next'.
Step 1: General data
At this step, you will name your testing group and choose the database to which it is related. As a testing group is made of real profiles, it is always linked to one single database.
You can also provide a description of your testing group: this is useful as you can have several testing groups, such as one dedicated to internal content, or a specific project. The description helps remember the purpose of the group.
Step 2: Profile sample
At this stage, you will choose which profiles to include in your testing group.
By clicking on 'Add profiles', you have two options to look for specific profiles:
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either with a quick filter by first name, name, e-mail address, or any key attribute of your DB ('Find a profile'). This allows you to look for a profile in particular within your database. For instance, one of your colleagues in charge of validating your campaigns.
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either with an advanced search through the targeting app ('Explore profiles'). This allows you to look for profiles that fit specific criteria. For example, 'has a subscription' or 'belongs to a specific segment'. This is also useful to find several profiles at once.
Your testing group should be a representative sample of your database. E.g.:
If your campaigns are multilingual, your testing group should include a profile from each language option.
If you personalize your campaigns according to gender, your testing group should include a sample of men and women.
Each personalization or conditioning parameter of your campaign should also be represented.
After finding a suitable test profile, click on 'Add to profile sample'.
In the list of profiles added to your sample, you can specify the reason why you want to use it to test e-mail (for example: 'spanish speaking + man'). This useful information will be displayed when you validate your campaign.
If you want to check again why this profile was added to your sample, click on 'View' to get an overview of all the attributes of this profile. You can 'Remove' it if you feel it is no longer relevant to your tests.
Step 3: Summary
The last step summarizes the characteristics of your testing group and the list of included profiles.
Click on 'Activate' to gain access to your profile sample in your campaigns.
Using a profile sample
At the 'Check and test' step, choose your testing group in the dropdown menu. Both profile samples and testing teams are available here.
When you select a profile sample, your test profiles are only used to generate the e-mails by calculating the personalizations and conditions according to the attributes of these profiles.
Select which profiles you want to use to generate your tests (the 'Comment' column helps you remember why you chose these profiles).
Next, provide the e-mail address of your real test recipients in the 'Test email addresses' section. You can input several addresses.
When you click on 'Quick test', an e-mail will be generated based on each test profile.
It will not be sent to the test profile, but rather to all the external addresses you provided.
If you selected several test profiles, your list of external addresses will receive a copy of the message generated for each test profile.
A profile sample can be used to validate both e-mail and SMS campaigns.