Litmus Proof
Litmus Proof simplifies and streamlines the review and approval process for Enterprise plan users. The feature enables teams to share, give clear feedback, gain visibility and version control, and collaborate directly on an email in a single location, reducing review cycles and production time.
NOTE: Litmus Proof is available for Enterprise plans.
User roles and permissions for Proof
| Create | Share | View | Approve | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Account Holder | Yes | Yes | Yes, all available | Yes |
| Admin | Yes | Yes | Yes, all available | Yes |
| Full | Yes | Yes | Yes, all available | Yes |
| Proof reviewer |
Only with other account users |
Yes, shared with you | Yes | |
| Reviewer | Only with other account users |
Yes, shared with you | Yes |
Create a Proof
Start with your email in Litmus. You can create it in Builder, send it to your custom Litmus email address, or paste your code into a Litmus project. You'll find your email in your project's Proof tab.
You can also start from the Collaborate menu
- Choose the Create a new Proof button
- Enter a title and then use Next: Bring in your email
- You can send in a draft to your custom Litmus email address, upload an image, or select an email from your ESP.
- Select View more ways to create an email to paste an HTML or text version of your email, or to import from OneDrive, Google, or Dropbox.
Many teams review and approve email designs before creating the HTML version of the email. Proof can be used to streamline this process with the image upload feature (JPG, GIF or PNG currently supported).
Inspect your email
After your email has been added to Proof, give it a quick review before inviting comments from your team. By default, you'll be looking at the Desktop view of your email.
It's important to remember that this is not a render of your email in a specific email client, this is a real HTML view of your email rendered by your desktop web browser. For client rendering, use the Builder or Previews & QA tabs.
Next, you can check the mobile and plain text views of your email. There are tabs across the top of the screen for switching between these modes. To the right, there is a dropdown menu where you can apply Visual Impairment Filters as well.
Sharing Proofs with stakeholders and reviewers
Sharing a Proof enables you to get feedback from others. Proofs can be shared by using the Share button. There are two methods of sharing a Proof with others: inviting users and creating a share link.
Invite users
When you invite users, Litmus sends an email invitation and unique link directly to those you want to provide feedback. Users and Groups on the account are shown in the selection dialog box.
Check off which users and groups you wish to invite and optionally Add a note. When the Send email button is selected, all the members of your team you selected will receive a link to your Proof project and any note that you included.
NOTE: Links in the email invitations are unique to each user and should not be shared. Unique invitation links expire after 90 days. However, users can still access any Proof shared with them by logging in to Litmus. If you need to generate a new unique link, just re-invite the user to the Proof.
If you need to share with someone who is not on your Litmus account, you can add them as a Proof Reviewer. Type in their email address and choose Add to invite them. Newly invited users become Proof Reviewers on the account and are granted access to the Proofs you share with them. They will appear in the user list when sharing any subsequent Proofs.
Enterprise accounts can add an unlimited number of Reviewer or Proof Reviewer members to their accounts so that you can easily get feedback on Proofs from clients and other stakeholders.
NOTE: Proof Reviewers do not have access to any other areas of Litmus.
Create a Share Link
Create a public sharing link in order to easily share an email Proof in other collaboration or project management tools like Slack, Asana, Jira or Trello. The public sharing link allows anyone with the link to view the Proof so share it only with people you trust. Use the switch to turn on the public link and copy and paste the link where you want to share it. If you are concerned about making your Proof public, use the Invite Users tab to share a unique invitation link directly with each user you invite.
Public links remain public for 90 days or until the public switch is turned off in the Create a share link dialog box. New users who comment or approve via the public sharing link are added to your account as Proof Reviewers and only have permission to view the Proofs you have shared with them.
NOTE: By default, anyone can comment or approve a Proof from a public share link by entering their email address. For additional security, you can require that users create and enter a password to comment or approve a Proof via public sharing links.
Creating groups
Maintain full control over the review and approval process with Groups. Create Groups so you can easily add entire internal teams or clients to Proof for review. The Groups feature is located in the Users & Groups area of your Settings.
Using Groups
If you regularly request feedback from the marketing department at your company, create a Group with all members of that department in it and then invite that group to each Proof when you’re ready for feedback. Groups can be created by Account Holders or Admins from the Users and Groups section of the Litmus Settings.
Make comments
Discussions on the email happen in comments that are placed either at specific points in the email or on any selected text in the email. To create a comment, select anywhere on the email and a blue dot will appear with a menu attached to add comments.
Select Add comment and a comment box will open in the sidebar on the right-hand side of your browser. Type your comment and choose Post. Your comment will be attached to the selection point so everyone knows exactly what you were indicating.
If you would like to mention a teammate or client who is on your Litmus team, either use the Add others to this conversation link below the comment, or add an @ character. A drop-down list of users and groups will appear. Choosing of them will insert that user or group’s name into your comment. Any users or groups mentioned in a comment will receive a notification email immediately when the comment is posted.
If you would like to focus a comment on a specific piece of copy in your draft email, select that text in the email and then Add comment. The text will be copied into the comment for context.
Resolving Comments
Once a comment has been addressed, users can select Resolved. When a comment is resolved, it will be removed from the sidebar. However, comments can be filtered with the dropdown to show All, Unresolved, or Resolved. Any resolved comments will show the person and the date/time responsible for resolving it, providing a full record for all feedback.
Proof allows you to check the destination of a link in your email. Choose a link and you’ll also see a Visit link menu option that will open the link in a new browser window or tab. It's a quick way to check links but the link check in Previews 7 QA automatically checks for you and ensures that they are being tracked, more conveniently and thoroughly.
Create new versions of your Proof project
After reviewing comments from your team, it’s likely that you will want to make some edits to your draft email. Once they are made, the next step is to push the changes from the Builder tab, or email or paste HTML to create the new version.
Update from Builder
- Navigate to the Builder tab
- Make edits to your email
- Press Update Proof & Previews tabs in the upper right corner
NOTE: The Update Proof & Previews function creates BOTH a Proof and a Previews & QA checklist and runs one set of email previews. To avoid running previews, use the New Version button and paste in your HTML.
Use the New Version button
- From your Proof project, choose the New Version button
- Use the options displayed to either send in, paste your HTML or import from a file storage service.
- In a few seconds, your Proof project will be updated with the new draft email.
NOTE: When emailing in a new draft email version, the destination email address displayed is not exactly the same as the static address used when you want to start a new email in Litmus. The one displayed here includes a unique identifier to ensure that the new draft gets attached to the correct Litmus email. Always copy the email address every time from this screen.
View previous versions
View and manage multiple versions of email campaigns for a complete system of record. Once you have multiple versions of a draft email in your Proof project, it may be useful to be able to browse back through old versions. To access this functionality, switch to the Versions tab in the right-hand sidebar of your Proof project and you will see a list of all versions that have been uploaded.
Next to each version is a View link that will load that prior version of your email.
Manage approvals
Litmus Proof allows users the option to approve the Proof, indicating that the email meets their expectations. To begin tracking approvals, you first need to share your Proof. Either invite users or groups to your email or create a public link for sharing. Once shared, your reviewers will see the Approval button when they review. Details on the entire approval process is available in this Proof approvals documentation.
Download a timeline
Proof timeline lets you view and download all comments and previous versions of your Proof. The Proof timeline view can be accessed in the Version link for your project. Find out more in our Proof timeline view document!