Email Previews

When you’re ready to see what your email looks like in an actual email client, or when you’re ready to show off your work to your client, Inkcite can send previews on demand. Prior to sending, Inkcite will automatically upload your latest image assets to your CDN or other publicly accessible server. It will then send individual emails to the configured distribution list of your choice.

There are several sections in the config.yml that will need your attention before you can send preview emails. Be sure you have configured your CDN or Image Host.

Configuring Inkcite to Send Emails

Inkcite supports sending emails either through your SMTP server or Mailgun. It’s important to send emails from your own server particularly when you use Litmus for SPAM testing.

Sending via SMTP

To enable sending previews via your SMTP server, configure these fields in your project’s config.yml file:

# SMTP settings for sending email previews
smtp:
  host: 'smtp.gmail.com'
  port: 587
  domain: 'yourdomain.com'
  username: '(YOUR SMTP USERNAME HERE)'
  password: '(YOUR SMTP PASSWORD HERE)'
  from: 'Your Name <email@domain.com>'

Sending via Mailgun

To enable sending previews via Mailgun’s API, you’ll need to create a free account (if you haven’t already) and then retrieve a couple of pieces of information from your Dashboard. Enter that information into your project’s config.yml file:

mailgun:
  api-key: '(YOUR MAILGUN API KEY HERE)'
  domain: '(YOUR MAILGUN DOMAIN NAME)'
  from: 'Your Name <email@domain.com>'",

Mailgun also provides SMTP access. Use the smtp settings (above) if you’d rather send previews via SMTP.

Sending a Preview to Yourself

Once you have configured both the SMTP and image host settings, you’re ready to send a preview to yourself.

inkcite preview

With no other parameters, this will send the preview version of your email to the from email address you specified in config.yml. The email will be tagged as a Developer Preview and uniquely identified for easy identification in your inbox.

Sending an Internal Preview

When you’re ready to send a preview of your email to a wider audience (e.g. a proofreader, creative director, project leader, etc.) you can use Inkcite’s internal preview capability. First you’ll need to define a distribution list inside of your config.yml file:

recipients:
  internal:
    - 'Creative Director <creative.director@your-company.com>'
    - 'Proofreader <proofreader@your-company.com>'

Distribution lists can include one or more email addresses, each specified on a separate line.

To have Inkcite send an email to this distribution list, from a command prompt type:

inkcite preview internal

Inkcite will send a preview version of the email to each of the recipients specified in your internal distribution list. The email subject line will be tagged Internal Preview and will be uniquely identified. This is extremely useful when revisions have been made and additional previews have been sent out: “Did you see the CTA improvements I made in preview #3?”

Inkcite will always BCC your from email address, configured in either the SMTP or Mailgun section of the config file when sending internal previews.

Sending an External Preview

Inkcite was designed for agencies. It presumes (but does not require) that there is a list of clients, beyond your internal distribution list, that need to preview the work you are doing for them. Typically, you’d send a preview to your clients once your email has been approved by the internal team.

Inkcite allows you to define a separate distribution list for the specific clients:

recipients:
  client:
    - 'Awesome Client <awesome.client@domain.com>'
  internal:
    - ...

To send a preview version of your email to your clients, at a command prompt type:

inkcite preview client

Inkcite will uniquely identify these emails as Preview with a unique and separate counter from both developer and internal previews. (No need for your clients to know it took 10 internal previews to get to the perfect, responsive preview you just sent them.)

Documentation