You can preview your messages in both Legacy and Builder campaign types. This feature is especially useful when using placeholders or dynamic placeholders in your messaging.
By previewing your LinkedIn messages and emails before activating a campaign, you can see exactly how they will appear to recipients and verify that all leads have the required data for the placeholders used. This helps ensure your messages are personalized as intended and allows you to identify any missing information in advance.
Taking this step can help prevent message failures, reduce campaign interruptions, and maintain smooth campaign performance.
The steps to check the preview of a message differ between builder-type and legacy campaigns. This article explains how to check the preview for both campaign types.
How to preview a message in a builder-type campaign?
What is a builder-type campaign?
A builder-type campaign is a flexible, visual campaign type that allows you to create customized outreach workflows using actions, conditions, and branching logic. The campaign flow is built by selecting the actions and conditions you want to include, giving you full control and flexibility to design the outreach journey that best fits your goals.
Any campaign with a 'Steps' tab look displayed as shown below, rather than the 'Steps' tab look found in legacy campaigns, is considered a builder-type campaign:
Preview the message | builder-type campaign
To preview a message in a builder-type campaign, please follow the steps below:
Go to the 'My campaigns' page and click on the builder-type campaign, which has steps added and people in it, to open it
Go to the 'Steps' tab and click on a campaign step (action) that includes a LinkedIn message (follow-up message, connection request, open InMail, paid InMail, etc.) or email.
After you click on the step, your campaign message will appear on the right side of the screen. That's where you can see your original campaign message and check the message preview for each lead who is a part of your campaign.
In a few seconds, the preview of a message will load. Once it loads, it will appear under the 'Message preview' section
The words that appear in blue, in the message preview, are the values of the placeholders. In this example, the {first_name} placeholder was replaced with 'Toni' and the {company_name} placeholder was replaced with 'Diamond state freight'. You can check what information each lead has for specific placeholders on the 'Placeholders' page.
To view the message preview for different leads in your campaign, click the dropdown menu above the displayed message preview and select the lead whose message you want to review
Once you select a lead, the system will automatically load and display the message preview as it would appear for that specific lead (when the message is sent)
Note: the preview works the same way for an Email step. You'll see the email subject and the body, with placeholders resolved for the selected lead, and the formatting you applied kept as is. If you have an email signature set in your account settings, it isn't shown in this preview.
If you see no preview, text in red, please learn more about it and why it might happen here.
How to preview a message in a legacy campaign?
What are legacy campaigns?
To clarify what legacy campaigns are, they are the old design Expandi campaigns, which can be found/selected when creating new campaigns under the 'Legacy campaigns' section:
It'd be all campaigns in the 'Legacy campaigns' list, apart from the 'Builder' campaign.
Preview the message | legacy campaign
To check the message preview in a legacy campaign, please follow the steps below:
Go to the LinkedIn account menu, 'My campaigns' page, and open the campaign, which already has campaign steps (messages) added, as well as people (lead list) in it (is not empty)
In the campaign's 'People' tab, find the lead you'd like to check the message preview for, click on that lead, and click on the 3 dots menu above the conversation field
Click on the 'Contact messages preview' button
A preview of the messages that will be sent to the selected lead will be displayed. If your message contains placeholders, the preview will show exactly how the message will appear once those placeholders are populated with the lead's available information.
If you see 'Preview unavailable,' it means that there is a mistake in the message added in the 'Steps' tab of the campaign, or the lead has no data for the selected placeholder or dynamic placeholder. You can find information on how to edit placeholders here.
In the preview of such a message, you see the {first_name} and {company_name] placeholder replaced with the information available on the 'Placeholders' page.
For this example, the messages in the campaign 'Steps' tab look like below
Why is there no preview of a message?
In some cases, a message preview may not be available for a lead if your campaign message contains placeholders or dynamic placeholders that do not have a value assigned to that specific lead.
For example, let's say you imported leads via a CSV file and included a personalized message for each lead in a dynamic placeholder called {custom_message}. You then used {custom_message} in your campaign message.
Later, you added additional leads from a different lead list to the same campaign. Since these newly added leads were not imported through the CSV file, which contains personalized messages, they do not have a value stored for the {custom_message} dynamic placeholder.
As a result, when you try to preview the message for those leads, the preview may not be generated because the required dynamic placeholder value is missing.
In other words, the {custom_message} placeholder exists in the campaign message, but no corresponding value is available for those leads on the 'Placeholders' page. Therefore, the system cannot use that information to replace the content of the placeholder and show a preview.
In such a case, when the preview of a message is not available in a builder campaign, you'll see the placeholder that does not have a value for the lead displayed in red, with no actual placeholder information/message in the preview window. If you'd still like to have a custom message for that lead, you could go to the 'Placeholders' page, find the lead, and add/enter your custom message in the {custom_message} placeholder field. After that, the preview would be available for that lead.
A helpful best practice when using dynamic placeholders in your campaign messages is to use them with an if statement, especially if you're unsure whether all leads have a value assigned to that placeholder.
Instead of inserting the dynamic placeholder on its own (typing it in), use the method described here to ensure the message can still be generated even when the placeholder value is missing (doesn't exist for the lead). This helps prevent preview issues, message failures, and interruptions to your campaign flow.
If you have any questions or need assistance, please feel free to reach out to our customer support team!