How to Create Automatic Tests

Use GlockApps Inbox Insight to create automatic tests and monitor your message’s inbox placement daily without intervention.

After set up, our email spam checker tool will send your message to our test’s email addresses at the time interval you chose. You will see a deliverability report on your dashboard displaying where your email is placed in the inbox (every XX hours or XX days.) You can also receive alerts if your email doesn’t make it to the Inbox at any of the selected mailbox providers.

With an automatic test, you can:

• Test a message on a regular basis without any actions on your side
• Choose specific mailbox providers and spam filters to test individually
• Monitor your Deliverability rate and notice the changes over time
• Warm up your new domain or IP

We recommend you use automatic tests for transactional messages (subscription confirmations, account activations, purchase confirmations, etc.) where the content does not change often. Your customers expect transactional messages, so it is important to ensure that they are delivered to their inbox. Therefore, you will also be notified when your message is placed in the Spam folder.

How to Create an Automatic Test

Step 1. Create a Sending Account.

First, create a sending account with your SMTP setting in GlockApps.

If you have already created a sending account in GlockApps, skip this step unless you want to add a new sending account.

Go to Inbox Insight -> Sending Accounts.

Click “Add Sending Account”.

Enter your From name, From email address, your mail server information, and choose which mailbox providers to send your message to.

The “From Name” and “From Email” are your name and email address that you want to send your emails from.

“Account Name” can be any name for your account. It will be visible in GlockApps only.

“Username” is your login username for your SMTP server.

“New Password” is your password for your SMTP server.

If your SMTP user requires a blank password, type nopassword into the Password field. If you need to whitelist the GlockApps IP address, whitelist the 52.4.163.16.

Custom Headers

While sending your message to the seed list, GlockApps only keeps ‘MIME-Version’, ‘Content-Type’, ‘Reply-To’, ‘List-Id’, ‘List-Unsubscribe’, and ‘Subject’ message headers.

If you want to keep your custom message headers, for example, to tell SparkPost which dedicated IP to use for email sending, check the “Keep Custom Headers” option and specify them.

To add a custom header to the messages sent to the seed list, enter the name and the value of the custom header in the “Add Custom Headers” field. Press the TAB button on your keyboard to add a new custom header.

Select the seed email addresses that you want to test your email with.

Click “Create Sending Account” when you are done.

If the SMTP settings are correct, the sending account will be saved and will appear in the Sending Accounts list.

If you see a red label with an error message, read the error description, correct the issue, and save the account settings again.

Using Google Workspace SMTP Settings

To use your Google Workspace account for an automatic test, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Google Admin console dashboard, then go to Apps -> G Suite -> Gmail -> Advanced settings.

2. Set up the “SMTP relay service” settings as the screenshot demonstrates.

If you chose to accept messages only from the specified IP addresses, input the GlockApps IP address 52.4.163.16.

You can read more about the Google Workspace SMTP Relay configuration here

3. Click “Save”.

In your sending account in GlockApps, use the following Google Workspace SMTP settings:

• SMTP Server: smtp-relay.gmail.com
• Port: 587 with START TLS
• From Email: your email address set up with Google Workspace
• Username: your full email address set up with Google Workspace
• Password: password for your Google Workspace email account or an App password

IMPORTANT! If your regular password doesn’t pass, turn the 2-Step Password Verification in your Google Workspace account to On, create an App password and use the App Password as the SMTP password in GlockApps.

Step 2. Create an Automatic Test

Go to “Automatic Tests” in the left-hand menu and click “Create Automatic Test”.

Select a sending account and click Next.

Сopy the proxy email address and send the message to it.

Important! Only send the message to the proxy address one time. Do not add the proxy address to your mailing list or BCC field.

GlockApps will automatically re-send your message to the seed email addresses and create an automatic test for that message.

Click “Next”.

During the 3rd step, you can enter the automatic test’s settings and activate it.

Choose how often you’d like your test to run: 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 3 days, 5 days, or 7 days. The available time intervals depend on your subscription plan.

Important! Every run of an automatic test consumes one test credit. Thus, the 3-hour interval will make 8 tests and consume 8 credits per 24 hours. Please choose the testing interval wisely in order to not run out of test credits before your subscription renewal takes place. When there are no test credits on the balance, the automatic tests will be de-activated by the system.

Enter the email address where your alerts should be sent.

Choose how many minutes the system should wait before sending you an alert.

Select mailbox providers to test your message with.

The alert will be sent if the message isn’t delivered to the Inbox at chosen mailbox providers.

Click “Save and Activate”.

GlockApps will automatically re-send your message to the seed email addresses at your chosen interval, log in each email account and check whether your message arrived in the Inbox, the spam folder, or is missing entirely and was most likely blocked.

To view the last report, click on the message subject under Automatic Tests.

How to View an Automatic Test’s History

At the top of the report, there is a diagram of the report’s 30-day history. The diagram shows your Deliverability rate over time.

The picture below demonstrates how our Inbox rate has been changing during the month of January. The automatic test ran every 24 hours during the month. Our Inbox rate increased by 9% from 84.21% to 93.22%.

To view your detailed report from any specific date, scroll your mouse over the top of the history diagram, and click a date you’d like to examine.

How to Edit, Deactivate or Delete an Automatic Test

Go to “Automatic Tests” in your account and click on the button at the right side.

Select an action from the options menu.

To re-activate an inactive automatic test, click “Edit,” and then click “Save and Activate”.

ISPs update their filtering algorithm on a regular basis. When a mailbox provider receives an email, it stores information about the sender and the outgoing mail servers they used to send large volumes of emails. They track how the recipients engage with the emails received and over time, each sender develops a reputation, good or otherwise. 

Automatic tests from GlockApps allow you to see your current sender reputation and know if any ISPs or popular filters are flagging your email as spam. You’ll be notified via email if there is a problem with your email’s deliverability.