Validate Message Content Before Launch

Before launching your campaign, validate the message to make sure the content is correct, check the links, check the parameters and make sure the coding is correct.

In the User Interface, validate the message content. Go to Roll out > Conversation Name > Campaign Name > Message > Content Staging. First, validate all link definitions by clicking each link that corresponds to a particular content type (Text, HTML, AOL).
Recheck all links in the message. If there are any capital letters in a link, query the LINK_MASTER table to ensure that the link name in the database corresponds exactly to the link name displayed in the user interface. If they are different, the links sent in the live message is unregistered and hinders the ability to track click-throughs. In this case, go to Administrative Tools > Link Overview and change the link case format to match the database.
Validate the Mail Merge tags used in the message. To ensure the validity of the tags, view the staged message and the information in the Mail Merge tag fields. If attributes are inserted into the message body using Mail Merge, be sure to insert mock data for the particular attribute value to view how the data format appears.
Select one or more group(s) and send the staged message.
After the message is staged and received, click all links to verify that they are linking to the appropriate site.
Validate the LINK_ID for each link sent in the message content. In the example below, the LINK_ID is properly registered with a unique ID of '343'. The link displayed below appears in either a text or Multi-Part Message:
```
http://ws.connectifydirect.com/kc123.14.0.343
```
To confirm that a link is properly registered in an HTML message, right-click the message content and select View Source. The LINK_ID at the end of the aliased link (and inside the anchor tags) is properly registered with a unique ID.
```
<A href="http://ws.connectifydirect.com/kc123.14.0.343">
www.brickstreetsoftware.com</A>
```
If the LINK_ID is not registered, the LINK_ID defaults to 0 and also has the destination URL for the redirected click-through, after the aliased link:
```
http://ws.connectifydirect.com/kc123.14.0.0
http://www.brickstreetsoftware.com
```
Finally, print out a hard copy of each message and compare the text and spelling to the original content.

When all of these steps are completed and approved, the message is ready for launch. Remember to complete all of these steps for each message launched in a campaign.

Validating Links

The Connect link validation process parses through your content and checks all links it finds. It then lists all the links and notifies you whether or not each is valid.

For detailed information on validating your links, please see Reviewing Message Links in this Guide.

Note: Automatic link validation is not possible for dynamic content. If you are generating dynamic content, you have to manually validate each link.

Connect cannot validate links to https:// sites. If you use these links, you must override the Undeliverable status during link validation and rollout.