# Sending your first test message
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**Valid postal route required**
Make sure you've added a [postal route](https://docs.emaildelivery.com/docs/velocity-mta-basics/create-a-postal-route) to your customer account for the [MTA delivery policy](https://docs.emaildelivery.com/docs/velocity-mta-basics/creating-an-mta-delivery-policy) you've created.
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**Login as a customer via impersonation**
The fastest way to access the frontend email marketing platform to send a test message is by using the impersonate a customer account feature.
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You can use the default customer account that comes with every installation, called Acme Co, for the purpose of this exercise.
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Click Customers from the backend site navigation and select Customer Accounts, check the box next to the customer you want to impersonate, click the Actions button, and then choose Login as Customer.
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**Email marketing platform frontend**
This will open a new tab to the frontend email marketing platform, you'll start out in the broadcast draft's folder. Click Create Broadcast to send our first message.
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**Make sure the Sender Email Address matches the domain with the TXT records you created for authentication in your DNS.**
The domain and/or subdomain must match exactly or your messages may be rejected for authentication failures, or worse, fail authentication silently while still being delivered.
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The Sender Email Address is the [Return-Path](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_address#Terminology) email address.
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**The Reply-To and From Email will automatically use the Sender Email Address email, there's no need to edit or change the defaults.**
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For this example, choose WYSIWYG as your editor.
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Click the Send Test Email button.
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**Send test messages to a Gmail address**
We recommend testing with Gmail for speed and delivery reliability.
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**Use caution when sending test messages to Yahoo, Verizon, and AOL addresses.**
Yahoo and AOL addresses may be subject to long delays before a message is successfully delivered due to the gray listing tactics employed by their mail system.
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**Don't send test messages to Microsoft domains.**
Microsoft domains like outlook.com and hotmail.com are known troublemakers who may silently discard your messages despite a successful delivery; this is known as "blackholing."
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**Don't send test messages to your work email unless it's Google Workspace.**
Corporate email providers such as Zoho and other small mailbox providers will be more likely to "quarantine" emails from unknown senders somewhere you can't even find them.
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**Make sure you have the correct postal route selected for the** [**MTA Delivery Policy**](https://docs.emaildelivery.com/docs/velocity-mta-basics/creating-an-mta-delivery-policy) **which matches your email address configured on the first page.**
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**View the Test Log to verify your message went through ok and you didn't get an error message back like this:**
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The Test Log is only a convenience, it's also vital you go directly to the source and monitor [velocity.log](https://docs.emaildelivery.com/docs/velocity-mta-basics/velocity.log-is-vital-to-your-success).
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