Preview: check the communication before the final send

Preview gives you a clear, immediate view of how your communication will appear to recipients. 

After adding your content, you can open it at any time to review layout, text, images, and variants, both from the designer interface and from the communication home: it’s a space where you step back and observe your message, so you can calmly spot anything to refine before sending.

If your communication involves multiple channels, you can choose which one to preview: each channel has its own rendering and logic, and this overview helps you check that everything stays consistent and effective everywhere. On this page, however, we focus on email preview, which offers the most advanced tools and testing scenarios.

Devices, dark mode, and accessible images

In this interface, you can do several things, including:

• switch with one click from desktop to mobile view to instantly see how the email renders on the most common devices: this gives you a realistic view of content flow, image and text spacing, and how the layout adapts when the screen size changes. 

• simulate image-blocked rendering: useful both when the recipient’s email client does not display images and to check accessibility. This way, you can verify whether alternative text actually conveys the right message or needs improvement. Learn more on the dedicated page.

• enable dark mode and see how colors, contrast, and readability change with a dark theme: especially useful to understand what your contacts will see if their device automatically uses night mode. Learn more on the dedicated page.

• switch from HTML to plain text version, which shows how the email appears when the recipient’s client does not support HTML or when the message is viewed in simplified environments.

Personalization and contact simulation

With magnews preview, you can concretely verify how a communication is displayed to different recipients before sending, without any risk. You can check contact data, language, visibility conditions, and dynamic content, avoiding personalization errors or inconsistent messages.

The goal is simple: know what will happen before sending, work more confidently, and avoid discovering issues once the communication is already live.

Available preview modes

When you open the preview, you’ll find a panel on the right that is always available and lets you decide how to display the communication. The first time, no contact is selected.

With the selector, you can choose a specific contact in different ways to verify how data and dynamic content are populated. If you want to go further, you can enable advanced simulation and enter sample values to test specific scenarios. You can also combine both.

Selecting a contact

To precisely verify how a communication is displayed to your contacts, you can select one using the selector in different ways:

• Search in the database by clicking the selector and then the link Choose contact from database

• Click the selector and choose from the list of recent and favorite contacts

• Type a few characters to filter recent and favorite contacts and select one

• If you know the key (for example email or user code), type it and press Enter or click the search icon to run a search

In the dropdown, you can also select the anonymous contact: this option simulates a recipient with no available information, not linked to any contact in any database. You’ll always find it at the bottom of the list.
It’s useful, for example, if your communication includes an unsubscribe link section with visibility conditions that hide it from anonymous contacts and you want to verify that only subscribed contacts can actually unsubscribe.

Once a contact is selected, the preview updates immediately using real data. This allows you to verify exactly which version of the communication that person will see, reducing the risk of errors in personalized content, language, or visibility conditions.

On first access to the preview, the recent and favorite contacts list will be empty. As you select contacts for testing, magnews will automatically store them to speed up future selections, up to a maximum of 15 contacts per user. When the limit is reached, the least recently used contacts are replaced, so if you want to keep a contact available, you can mark it as favorite by clicking the bookmark icon.

Example

Imagine you designed an email with content and subject that change based on recipient characteristics. For example, you may have added images and text with visibility conditions linked to your contacts’ interests. In the preview, you can test all variants and see how the communication changes depending on the selected contact.

If you send the email to a contact with no specific interests, you’ll likely see a more generic version with limited personalization. On the other hand, a contact interested in technology will see a communication like this, with images and content aligned with that interest:

Language handling in preview

Language handling in preview applies only if the communication is multilingual.

In this case:

• By default, the main language of the communication is used
• You can manually select a different language to check variants
• If you select a contact with a language set and you prepared the email for that language, the preview automatically shows the correct version

When the language comes from the selected contact, the selector is disabled to avoid inconsistent combinations. If the contact has no language set, the selector remains available.

Advanced simulation

In addition to real contacts, you can test more complex scenarios using Advanced simulation, available in the preview panel. You can turn it on or off at any time. 

When enabled, a text area appears where you can enter values and variables to simulate specific conditions without modifying real data or creating test contacts.

You can use the simulation without selecting any contact or combine it with a selected contact. In both cases, you can freely update the values and refine your test based on the scenario you want to verify.

Advanced scenario example

In an e-commerce communication, for example, you can simulate this set of variables:

• contact.values.name = Francesca
• contact.values.iscustomer = true
• workflow.values.totalcart = 135

In this case, the preview might show an email version with a message tailored to existing customers, such as “Welcome back, Francesca! You still have items in your cart”, along with a discount code to encourage a new purchase. 

If instead you set contact.values.iscustomer = false, the same email could switch to a version designed for new contacts, with more introductory content about first-order benefits and without the cart recovery section.

Sending the preview

If you want to quickly test the design directly in your email client, you can send the personalized preview to an address using the Send preview button. 
For example, you can send yourself the preview using a specific contact’s data.

By default, a subject prefix is added to indicate that the email is a preview, but you can remove it by unchecking the option.