Testing ActiveCampaign emails

ActiveCampaign won't send a test until your sending domain is verified, so settle that first. A free trial adds a second limit, because trial test emails go only to the trial user's own address, and that means the Test email button can't reach an outside address until the trial is over. Whether a real campaign from a trial account can, the docs don't say.

Verifying the domain is one step; most of the report depends on the DKIM and Mailserver records that come with authenticating it.

On our side you copy an address from the home page, no signup, and send it one email within the hour. The report runs 42 checks, from the DKIM signature and 21 blocklists down to the unsubscribe headers.

Testing a campaign

Test sends are the fast option, for up to five addresses at a time. From the Email Designer, click the gear icon or the Test Email icon, or click Test and preview on the Campaign Summary page.

Which route gives you the email your contacts actually receive? ActiveCampaign's own answer is to send the actual campaign to a test list.

1. Create a list with the test address as its only contact, or with it plus the inbox test's provider inboxes if you're running that too.
2. In the campaign list, open the caret next to your campaign and click Duplicate.
3. On the Campaign Summary page, tick the test list, and make sure nothing else is ticked.
4. Send, with the inbox test's marker still in the subject if you used one, and the folder report will show where the campaign was filed at Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and other providers.

For campaigns that have already gone out there's a third route, Send a Campaign on the contact's profile. It works only for standard campaigns with "Sent" status, and the contact must be on one of the lists the original went to. Since every test needs a fresh address, the duplicate-and-send route is usually less work.

Testing automation emails

Automation emails go out without anyone pressing send, and the testing tools for them work a little differently.

Inside a Send an email action there's a Send a test option at the bottom left of the modal, again for up to five addresses, with a field for the test subject line. Bulk testing sends up to 25 emails at a time, which is handy for checking the layout of every step in a sequence.

To get the live email, add the test address as a contact and put it into the automation, which ActiveCampaign suggests doing with the bulk edit tool. Our address takes one message and closes after an hour, so what you'll see is the first email the automation sends to that contact within the hour.

What the report usually says

Out of the box, ActiveCampaign signs mail and sets the return path on its own domains, acems1.com for example, and its docs note that at the start neither of them will match your From address. So the alignment lines in the report will name a domain that isn't yours, and DMARC will fail for your From. Gmail and Outlook may add "via" or "sent on behalf of" as well. ActiveCampaign puts that down to missing DKIM.

On smaller accounts there's a second effect. For accounts under 5,000 contacts with no authenticated domain, ActiveCampaign is gradually rolling out a change that replaces the From address with a generic one at emcampaign.com, along the lines of myname.my-domain.com.1@12345.emcampaign.com. If you see that in the Headers tab, the results describe the shared domain, not yours.

Once the domain is authenticated, DKIM should pass and be aligned, and so should SPF, because the Mailserver Domain makes your subdomain the return path. If SPF is still unaligned, check the em- record. If DMARC fails, our DMARC fail page goes through the causes.

Unsubscribe headers. ActiveCampaign adds List-Unsubscribe to everything it sends, including campaigns, automation emails and 1:1 emails, and includes List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click. Both checks should pass on a real send.

Most accounts send from a shared IP pool, which by ActiveCampaign's count suits 99% of its users better, while a dedicated IP requires at least 100,000 engaged contacts and costs $750. A listing on a pool address is shared with everyone else on it, and the blocklist checker will look the IP up again whenever you like.

The records ActiveCampaign asks for

Find them under Settings > Advanced > Sending Domain. Configure Domain sets the records for you if you log in to a supported DNS provider, and Set up manually gives you the list:

• two DKIM CNAMEs, acdkim1._domainkey and acdkim2._domainkey;
• a Mailserver Domain CNAME, em- plus a number, pointing to cmd.emsend1.com. This one handles SPF and the Return-Path;
• a DMARC TXT record at _dmarc, starting v=DMARC1;p=none;.

You don't need to touch your root SPF record for ActiveCampaign once the Mailserver Domain is in place. If you add the optional include anyway (include:emsd1.com), merge it into your existing SPF record. A domain can only have one. The SPF checker shows what's published and counts the DNS lookups, which matters once several services share the record. Accounts set up before February 2023 may still have the old DKIM TXT record at dk._domainkey. ActiveCampaign moved to CNAMEs then, and its troubleshooting article expects both new records.

ActiveCampaign's docs add two requirements. The domain should be older than 30 days and point to a real website rather than a blank page, and DMARC shouldn't go to quarantine or reject until DKIM is working, or all your ActiveCampaign mail will fail DMARC. Test DKIM with selector acdkim1 in the DKIM checker.

The Custom Domain Name, a CNAME to your account's activehosted.com address, moves link tracking off the shared domain and onto yours.