Previewing an issue

The composer previews an issue three ways: email, web and plain text, on tabs under your links. Each one renders the real template, the same code a send or a published page uses, so what you are looking at is what a reader gets.

Previews open in a sandboxed frame, and Open in a new tab gives you the same thing full size, which is the better way to read a long issue.

The email preview

The email preview shows the issue as a mail client will render it, with the stylesheet folded down into the markup exactly as the send does it.

That folding is the reason this preview exists rather than a simplified mock-up. Inlining is the step that quietly breaks a layout, and catching it here costs nothing. It is also where your intro, your section headings and each comment can be read in the order a subscriber will read them, which is a different judgement from the one you make while writing them.

The web preview

The web preview shows the archive page a reader lands on when they open the issue from a link, a search result or your newsletter’s website.

It renders the site template, so the fonts, the colour and the layout are the real ones. A draft has no publication date yet, so the preview dates it today, in your newsletter’s timezone, which is the same zone the real page reads its date in.

The plain text preview

Every issue goes out as HTML and plain text together, and the plain text preview is that second part. Some readers’ mail clients prefer it, and its presence helps the message look like ordinary correspondence to a mailbox provider.

It is a real alternative rather than the HTML with the tags pulled off. Section headings are underlined, each link’s address sits under its title, a link written inside your prose keeps its destination in angle brackets after the words, sponsored items are prefixed, and the footer carries the unsubscribe link and the address of the page online. It is worth reading once, because it is the part most platforms get wrong and nobody notices until a reader writes in.

There is one email template, not a choice of them

Issue Mint has a single email template. There is no template gallery, no picker and no HTML editor.

What differs between newsletters is branding: the logo at the top, the accent colour on headings and links, and the heading and body font pairing. Branding is set once on the newsletter, and every issue picks it up. The template itself is one shape because a curated roundup is one shape, an intro followed by headings with links and comments under them, and a gallery of layouts to choose from would be a decision to make every week that changes nothing a reader values.

Nothing in a preview is tracked

Previews render with tracking switched off, and that is not cosmetic.

Links are not rewritten into redirects, so no tracking codes are created for an issue that has not been sent. The open pixel is left out, and the unsubscribe link points nowhere. Opening your own preview forty times cannot move a single figure on the issue’s report. Preview pages are also marked as not for indexing, because an unsent issue is embargoed content.

Sending yourself a test

Underneath the preview is a field that sends the issue to one address, filled with your account’s email and editable to anything else.

A test goes out the way a real issue does, through whatever sends your issues, so it is the only way to see the message arrive in a real inbox with real fonts and real image loading. Nothing reaches your subscribers, and tracking is off, so a click in a test email cannot land on the real issue’s numbers. The subject arrives prefixed with [Test], so a test can never be mistaken for the issue itself sitting in your inbox. It sends while you wait rather than queueing, and tells you whether it worked. Test sends covers what to look for in one.