You’ve mapped out the perfect customer journey. Segments are sharp. Content’s loaded. Automation’s set. If you haven’t factored in testing from day one, you’re flying blind.
In this week’s video chat, Double H Marketing’s Head of Growth, Trent Hall, sat down with CTO Pascal to talk about testing marketing automation in Salesforce. This is the real stuff, not the checkbox kind.
Here’s a wrap up of what we learned.
Testing is a foundation of email journeys
“Build it, then test it” sounds logical. It’s also a fast track to broken journeys and missed opportunities. Testing has to be part of your design process from the start.
Why? Because you’re sending discounts, triggering CRM updates, and nudging people into offers. If the logic’s off, the outcomes are off. And that costs you real results.
Afraid to hit ‘start journey’? That’s a confidence problem
If you’ve ever hesitated before going live, you’re not alone. That last-minute anxiety, the worry something’s off, the urge to triple-check every path is a red flag.
Not a red flag that your instincts are wrong. A red flag that your testing process isn’t strong enough.
This fear usually comes down to a lack of visibility. You’re unsure what will happen when contacts start flowing through. That means your testing wasn’t deep or structured enough. When you test thoroughly across logic, data, timing and content, you earn confidence. You don’t guess. You know.
Simpler journeys = smarter testing
Every decision split you add doubles your testing surface area. One journey with 12 splits? That’s a spider web of pain.
Pascal’s advice: break big journeys into smaller, simpler flows. “It’s much easier to test three journeys with four splits than one with 24,” he says. Treat your journeys like software with clear inputs, clear outputs, and test cases baked in.
Watch your data logic — especially one-to-many relationships
Here’s a classic one: looking for customers who have a transaction older than six months, instead of those who haven’t transacted in the last six.
If someone bought something last week and two years ago, they’re still active, but your dodgy logic might pull them into a re-engagement flow. Multiply that by thousands of contacts and you’ve got a data mess.
Bottom line: test for edge cases. Look at how your logic behaves with different combinations of records, not just the neat ones.
Time zones, daylight savings, and ‘next 30 days’ traps
Time-based logic breaks more journeys than it should. Daylight savings? UTC mismatches? “Next 30 days” interpreted as “past 30 days”? It happens.
Pascal’s tip: standardise on UTC where possible, especially if you’re spanning multiple regions. And always test time logic with real, messy dates. Think leap years. Think future dates. Think weird customer behaviours.
Keep a standard set of personas for testing
Don’t test on the fly. Create a controlled set of test personas that mimic real scenarios. For example, VIP customers, inactive users, high spenders, subscription churners.
“Every time you tweak the journey, run the full test set again,” Pascal says. One change can break something else. A stable baseline makes regression testing faster and smarter.
Use real-world test groups
There’s nothing like running yourself (or your team) through the journey as a fake customer. You see what real people see, such as email rendering, CRM updates, personalisation, tracking.
Trent’s method? “Ask your team to be guinea pigs. Push them through and watch what happens.” It also builds empathy and cross-team understanding. It’s handy when you’re troubleshooting live.
Final word
The tools keep changing but the principles don’t.
Keep it simple. Build with testing in mind. Use real data. And never trust a journey until you’ve stress-tested it from every angle.
If you’re stuck untangling a Salesforce automation or want help designing smarter, testable journeys — we’re here.
