Send the same kind of email without rebuilding it

Six to start from

You do not begin at a blank box. Every site is given six plain, neutral templates as soon as the site exists, so they are already there the first time you open the Templates tab:

• Announce something. One thing you want people to know, and one link to go and see it.
• A short newsletter. Three short sections of news, in the order you want them read.
• An event or workshop. An invitation with the date, the place and a booking link.
• Show new work. A piece of new work, one picture, and where to see the rest.
• Open a course or class. Places on a course or class, with the start date, the price and the enrol link.
• A time-limited offer. One offer, what it is, when it ends, and the link to take it.

They are written in a quiet, plain design, and Bernard paints your own colours and typeface family over that plain design every time one is drawn - so a starter you have never touched already looks like your site, and so does one you saved a year ago. Make my emails look like my site says where those colours come from and how to change them. From the moment they appear they belong to your site like anything else you have saved: use one unchanged, edit it, rename it, or archive it. Once you have archived or rewritten one, Bernard does not hand it back.

See what each one looks like

Your customers has a Templates tab of its own. Every template on it is drawn as the email it makes, so you can tell one from another by looking rather than by reading its name.

The wall of cards

The templates sit side by side as cards, three across on a wide screen, two on a tablet and one on a phone. Each card shows the top of the email at a phone’s width, so every design is the same size and you can compare several without scrolling. Under the picture is the template’s name, the subject line it sends, one line saying what it is for, whether it is active or archived, and the revision number.

Two things you can do straight from a card: Use this one to start a campaign from it, and Edit to change it. Both open the window over the page, so the form is in front of you and the wall of cards stays where you left it.

Above the cards is the way to make a new one. Design one with Bernard hands the job to Bernard, who asks two or three questions and writes the email himself. Write the HTML yourself beside it opens the same editor it always did, for anyone who would rather build it. Under both, one line names the accent colour and the typeface family Bernard is matching from your site, with a link to change them.

Open one to read it properly

Choose a card’s picture and the template opens large, in a window over the page. There you can:

• switch between Phone and Desktop width, which are the two shapes your readers will see it in;
• read the whole email, scrolling inside the window;
• open What this template asks you to fill in to see every changeable part and the sample word used for it;
• open Plain-text version to read the version sent to mail apps that show no design;
• choose Use this one or Edit without closing it first. Edit puts the editor in the window in place of the picture, with its own Close that brings the picture back.

Close it with the Close button, the Escape key, or by choosing the page behind it. While you are editing, only the Close buttons will do it: the Escape key and a click on the page behind are both one slip away, and neither should be able to throw away words you have not saved. While a template is open, the address in your browser names it, so you can copy that address and come back to the same template later or send it to somebody who shares the site.

Three things the drawing is not

• The words are samples. A template leaves named spaces for the parts that change, and the preview fills them with stand-in words so the shape reads properly. Open a template and What this template asks you to fill in names every one of them and the sample it used. You choose the real words when you start a campaign.
• The links do nothing. The preview is a sealed frame that runs nothing and fetches nothing from anywhere else. Nothing is loaded while you look, so pictures held on other websites are left out of the drawing even though they arrive in the real email.
• It is the layout, not the inbox. Every mail app draws email a little differently. Use Preview and test my email campaign before I send it to send yourself a real one before a real send.

A template you have archived is put away, not deleted. Show archived brings the shelf back into view.

Choose the changeable parts

Each campaign value has a name and a type: text, date or link. It can have an example, a default, or be required. A monthly note might keep the whole design while changing the headline, event date and booking link.

Recipient details are separate. Bernard can fill a first name or full name for each person, use a safe greeting when a name is absent, and add the machine-generated unsubscribe route. You do not enter or store that route in the template.

Preview before saving

When you create or change a template with Bernard, he fills it with example values and renders the real subject and body. The quote names the revision and digest, so your approval applies to the exact example you read.

You can also use Your customers → Templates → Write the HTML yourself. Enter the design and declared values, then choose Preview template. The direct editor will not enable Save template until that preview succeeds. There is a line at the top of it offering to hand the job back to Bernard, because nobody should have to close a form to find out they never needed it.

The message itself uses the same simple editor as a campaign, so there is no HTML to learn; see Send an email campaign to my audience for what it can do. Underneath it is the plain-text version, which is what people reading email as plain words with no formatting will see. Bernard writes that one for you and keeps it in step with the message above, so a price you change in one is never left wrong in the other. Tick Write the plain-text version separately if you want to word it yourself, and it stops following.

Saving a template never sends an email.

Make a campaign from it

In Your customers → Templates, every active template has Use this one beside it. Choose it, fill in the parts that change, then choose Create the draft. The draft opens ready to read and edit, in the same window. You can ask Bernard for the same thing in the Workshop if you would rather describe it in a sentence.

Bernard refuses a missing required value and checks that links and dates are used in the right places. The new campaign receives its own saved snapshot of that template revision. If somebody edited the template in another window while you were filling the form, Bernard says so rather than quietly using the newer wording.

The draft starts addressed to everyone who has said yes. Change the audience in the draft itself before you send.

Later template changes cannot rewrite the campaign. You can edit the new draft if this occasion needs something different, but that draft then has its own version and digest. Use Preview and test my email campaign before I send it to inspect it, followed by Send an email campaign to my audience for the separate audience approval.

Archive without destroying history

Archive a template when you no longer want it offered for new campaigns. Existing drafts, schedules and sent mail keep their snapshot. Restore the template if you need it again; it returns as the same saved item with its revision history intact.

For the complete campaign path around templates, audiences and results, see How do email campaigns work?.