As many of us work with the Convio system, it’s always great to pick up new tid-bits along the way on how to more effectively use the product. This past week we learned a bit more about using the emailing functionality – particularly working with conditional content within emails.

We learned that there is only one method to test and have the conditional content work accurately in sending out emails. The following methods of sending out email will NOT work correctly with conditional content:

• Sending Quick Emails: for instance they will not identify you correctly in all groups you may be a member of when you send.
• Email Campaign emails you send as tests to ad hoc email address will also NOT correctly work with conditional content.

To get conditional content to work in your testing you need to use Email Campaigns AND send test emails to a Reviewer Group.

In general when running tests of emails, the closest you can get to simulating production sends is to create and use a test in Campaigns (vs. Quick Email) and a reviewers list. Sending to the reviewers list more closely simulates the production send than sending to ad-hoc defined emails. Reportedly this has to do with using a test mail server vs. the prod mail server for the send. So next time you’re testing your campaign emails, be sure to take the time to construct a reviewers list and test-send the email there.

Occasionally too, we’ve had different experiences in how long it takes to receive test sends to various domains. In talking with Convio staff, this may have something to do with Convio having to constantly stay on top of being on major email providers “white lists” and possibly being subjected to more scrutiny on delivery.