Preview: check the communication before the final send

The preview gives you a quick, clear sense of how your communication looks to recipients.

Once you add your content, you can open the preview at any time to review layout, copy, images, and variants. You can reach it from both the designer interface and the communication home. It’s a space where you step back, look at your communication from the outside, and spot any details you want to refine before sending.

If your communication spans multiple channels, you can choose which one to preview. Each channel has its own look and logic, and this overview helps you check that everything stays consistent and enjoyable everywhere.
On this page, though, we focus on the email preview, the one that offers the richest set of tools and testing scenarios.

Devices, dark mode and accessible images

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

• switch between desktop and mobile with one click to see how the email layout adapts on the most common devices. This quick check gives you a real sense of how the content flows, how much space images and paragraphs take, and how the structure behaves when the screen gets narrower

• simulate blocked images: helpful when the recipient’s client doesn’t display images and for checking email accessibility. This way, you see whether your alt text truly explains what it should or whether it needs some love. To learn more, visit the dedicated page

• enable dark mode and observe how colors, contrast, and readability change with a dark theme. This helps you understand what your contacts might see if their devices switch to night mode automatically. For more details, visit the dedicated page

• switch from the HTML version to the plain-text one, which shows how the email appears when the recipient’s client doesn’t support HTML or when the email is read in a very simplified context

Personalization and contact simulation

With magnews preview, you can concretely verify how a communication is displayed to different recipients before sending, safely and without risks. You can check contact data, language, visibility conditions, and dynamic content, reducing the chance of personalization errors or inconsistent messages.

The goal is simple: know in advance what happens after sending, work with more peace of mind, and avoid discovering issues once the communication is already live.

Available preview modes

When you open the preview, you can choose how to display the communication using the “View as” selector. The available modes are:

• Generic contact

• Unrecognized contact

• Selected contact

• Use case simulation

• Selected contact with use case simulation

The system keeps the selected contact even if you exit and reopen the preview. Use case simulations, instead, are not saved.

You can use each mode based on what you need to verify: from a quick check of the base content to the simulation of complex situations. This way, you can also test scenarios that, in production, depend on variable data or conditions, without changing real contact data.

Any contact and not recognized contact

Any contact represents a “standard” recipient with no specific contact data. It is useful for an initial check of the base content and is used by default the first time you access the preview. This type of preview is particularly helpful to catch common issues before sending, such as empty placeholders or content that might not be displayed correctly for all recipients.

The not recognized contact, instead, simulates an anonymous recipient for whom no information is available.

Selecting a real contact

To precisely verify how a communication is displayed to your contacts, you can select a real contact from one of your databases. You can choose the contact in three different ways:

1. By opening the dedicated window and selecting the contact from the database, filters, or search

2. By typing a contact email address or user code directly into the selector, based on the primary key of the related database

3. By opening the selector and choosing the contact from the list of recent or favorite contacts

Once selected, the preview updates immediately using the contact’s real data. This lets you verify exactly which version of the communication that person will see, reducing the risk of errors in personalized content, language, or visibility conditions. When you clear the selection, the preview switches back to how it would appear to the generic contact, that is, any contact.

The first time you access the preview, the list of recent and favorite contacts will be empty. As you select contacts for testing, magnews automatically stores them to make future selections faster, up to a maximum of 15 contacts per user. When the limit is reached, the least recently used contacts are replaced. If you want to prevent a contact from being overwritten, you can mark it as a favorite by clicking the star icon in the list.

Example

Imagine you designed an email that shows different content based on each recipient’s attributes and uses personalized subjects. For example, you might have added images and copy with visibility conditions tailored to your customers’ interests.

In the preview, you can test all your variants and see how the communication changes based on the contact you select. To get started, an "any contact" will see an email like this, with no specific personalization:

Then, a contact interested in technology would see an email like this:

while a contact interested in sports would see an email like this:

From here, you can also switch to the smartphone preview

and view it in dark mode

or with blocked images

Language management in preview for multilingual communications

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

In this scenario:

• By default, for the generic contact and the not recognized contact, the main language of the communication is used

• You can manually select a different language to check specific variants

• If you select a contact with a language already set, the preview automatically switches to that language

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

When you switch back to the generic contact, the preview always restores the default language of the communication.

Simulate a use case

In addition to real contacts, you can test complex use cases using the “Simulate use case” option, available at the bottom of the recent and favorite contacts menu. This mode lets you work flexibly and safely by simulating values and conditions without modifying real data or creating test contacts. It is especially useful when working with communications that include complex logic, advanced personalization, or multiple variants.

You can use the simulation:

• Without selecting any contact

• In combination with a selected contact

In both cases, you can reopen the editor at any time to update the entered values and refine your test. 

Example of a use case

For example, in an e-commerce email, you could simulate a contact named Carl, already a customer, with a cart worth 135 euros by using variables such as:

• contact.values.name = Carl

• contact.values.iscustomer = true

• workflow.values.totalcart = 135

In this case, the preview might show you a version of the email with a message dedicated to active customers, like “Welcome back, Carl! 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 a more introductory message about the benefits of a first order and without the cart-recovery section.

Preview reload button

Selecting a contact updates the preview automatically, immediately using their data.

The reload button helps you stay in control while working across multiple browser tabs: you can refresh the preview at any time and instantly see the effect of your changes, without repeating the simulation or losing context.

Sending the preview

If you want a quick way to test the layout directly in your email client, you can send the customized preview to an address using the button Send preview. For example, you might send yourself the preview personalized with a contact’s data.

By default, a prefix is added to the subject to show that the email arriving in your inbox is a preview. You can remove it anytime by deselecting the checkbox.