Testing an Email Message with Litmus

  • Updated

The Litmus integration for Act-On gives you the ability to preview your email messages across an extensive library of clients and devices to ensure that your message looks its best regardless of where it's being opened.

Once you connect your Litmus account to Act-On, you can access Litmus previews in the Act-On Message Composer.

We are aware of possible issues with Litmus previewing emails, specifically column stacking based on available screen width, when using Apple Mail or Outlook on iOS on iPhones running on iOS 15 or earlier.
The older device previews can be misleading because they don’t represent what the average user on that device type will experience since they will have updated their iOS. In Litmus, the iPhone device previews are linked to the iOS they released with. For example, an iPhone 13 Apple Mail preview renders using iOS 15 in Litmus, however, most iPhone 13 users will have updated to iOS 18.

How It Works

Our Litmus integration includes access to all 90+ clients and devices available on the Litmus platform. However, most Litmus subscription plans are limited in the number of previews that are permitted through 3rd parties. For this reason, our connector shows only the clients and devices that have been configured in your Litmus account. If none are selected, Act-On will return a set of 10 popular clients by default.

Testing with Litmus functionality can be accessed from any version of the Message Composer in Act-On. 

You can also test directly through the Litmus service, but please set it to ignore opt-out links before doing so. See below.

Requirements

Litmus account (Basic, Plus, Pro, or Enterprise)

To use Litmus functionality within Act-On, you will first need to configure your account in the Connectors section of Act-On (go to Settings > Connectors > Other > Litmus). This is a one-time step and does not need to be repeated on subsequent logins unless your connection fails (e.g., due to a password change):
Connectors.png

Testing a Message

  • Navigate to the email you want to test in one of the following locations:
    • Content > Email Templates
    • Outbound > New Message > open new or existing
    • Outbound > Drafts
    • Outbound > Sent Messages
    • Automation > Automated Programs > open > Build > Program Messages 

New Email Composer

For emails created in the new Email Composer:

  1. In the Design tab, at the top right, click  Preview:

Testing an Email Message with Litmus 01.png

  1. At the top center, select Inbox.
  2. Click Generate previews:

Testing an Email Message with Litmus 02.png

  1. Select the email client on the right to see the preview in the main area. For example:

Testing an Email Message with Litmus 03.png

  1. To change the available Litmus previews while testing, at the bottom right, click Manage clients – this takes you to your Litmus account where you can customize your clients and devices.

Legacy Email Composer

For emails created in the Legacy Email Composer:

  1. In the Review tab, click Test with Litmus and then click Create New Preview.

Review.png

  1. View your email previews on the main screen of the Review tab:

Litmus_Results.png

  1. To change the available Litmus previews while testing, select Customize email clients – this takes you to your Litmus account where you can customize your clients and devices

Call_Litmus.png

Litmus_Clients.png

To review your most recent previews, select your preferred test from the 'Last five results' section

Testing Directly Through Litmus

You can test via Litmus by sending your Act-On test message directly to your Litmus email account.

Please note that Litmus clicks your message links when using this method, and this includes your Unsubscribe link. By default, testing with this method will opt-out of your Litmus address from receiving further emails. To ensure that this does not happen, instruct Litmus to ignore this link:

  1.  Edit the footer of the message you want to test (either by creating a new footer or by updating your footer templates via Content > Email Footers)
  2. Open the HTML view and locate your opt-out link
  3. Add the tag data-litmus-ignore="" to the HTML of the link, as in the example below:
<a href="https://marketing.yourcompany.com/acton/rif/{{Env.AccountId}}/{{Env.MsgId}}/-/{{Env.RecId}}/{{Env.SrcId}}/zout" data-litmus-ignore="">Unsubscribe</a>

Litmus will now ignore the opt-out link in this message. 

Was this article helpful?

Have more questions? Submit a request