Templates

A template is a reusable layout. Build one for your monthly newsletter, one for a sale announcement, and every campaign after that starts from a finished-looking email instead of a blank page.

Starting from a layout

Start from a layout shows you a set of finished emails — a weekend sale, new arrivals, an event invitation, aftercare advice — each one already wearing your logo, your colours and your typeface. That's not a mock-up: every card on that page is rendered by the same code that sends your email, so what you see is what your customers get.

Pick one and it becomes a template of your own. Change the words, swap the photos, and send it. The layout you copied is never linked to your version afterwards — we can improve the layouts here without touching an email you've already made yours.

We add layouts over time, so it's worth a look before you start something from scratch. If you'd rather begin with nothing, Blank template is still there.

Templates and campaigns are kept separate on purpose. Starting a campaign from a template copies the content in; from that point the two are unrelated. Editing a template later never changes a campaign already built from it, and sending a campaign never changes the template it came from.

The block editor

Templates and campaigns are built the same way, so everything in this section applies to both.

The editor fills the screen. Your email is in the middle, at the width it really is in an inbox, and the panel on the left has the blocks you can add. Click a block in the list to add it to the bottom of the email; click a block in the email to select it, and the same panel becomes its settings.

A selected block gets a small row of controls: move up, move down, duplicate, and delete. You can also drag a block to a new spot, including into or out of a column.

The header and footer aren't editable here. They come from the Branding page and are identical on every email you send, which is what keeps your unsubscribe link and mailing address where the law requires them.

The blocks

Heading — a title, in Large or Normal, aligned left, centre or right.
Text — a paragraph, with alignment and a text size. Line breaks are kept as you type them.
Photo — upload an image from your computer or iPad. Set its width, and a short description shown to anyone whose email program blocks images.
Button — a labelled link in your accent colour. This is what people click.
Two columns — a left and a right side, each holding its own blocks. This is how you get a photo beside text.
Divider — a horizontal rule.
Space — vertical breathing room, with an adjustable height.

A photo inside a column has no width setting: it fills its side of the column, which is what keeps the two sides lined up.

Two columns on a phone

Columns sit side by side on a computer and stack — left first, then right — on a phone. You don't set this up; it's how the block is built. Most of the people opening your email are on a phone, so check the Mobile view before you save.

Formatting inside text

Headings, text and buttons take a small amount of formatting, typed inline:

You type	You get
`busy weekend`	busy weekend
`this Saturday`	this Saturday
`[our spring hours](https://example.com/hours)`	a link reading "our spring hours"

Anything else you type is shown exactly as typed, so an asterisk in a plant name is safe.

Writing to each person by name

Select a text or heading block and you'll see a row of chips under the writing box labelled Add something personal. Click one and it drops into your sentence wherever the cursor is. Each chip becomes that person's own details when the email goes out.

Chip	Becomes	If we don't know it
First name	Sam	there
Last name	Whitfield	left out
Full name	Sam Whitfield	there
Your business name	your shop's name from the Branding page	—
When they last shopped	May 12	a while ago

When they last shopped is the one no other email service can offer you, because it reads your actual till. "We haven't seen you since {{last_visit}}" is a real sentence you can now write.

You can type the chips by hand as {{first_name}} if you prefer, but clicking is safer: a misspelled tag isn't a tag, and it goes out to everyone as literal {{frist_name}}.

Write for the blanks

Some customers have no first name on file. Rather than sending "Hi ," those people see there, so Hi {{first_name}}, reads as "Hi there," for them. To choose your own wording, put it after a |:

Hi {{first_name|neighbour}},

Last name is the exception: it's simply left out, because no word stands in for a surname without reading like a mistake. Hi {{first_name}} {{last_name}}, becomes "Hi Sam," for someone with no surname on file — the gap and the spare space close up on their own.

Hover any chip to see what it becomes when we don't know, and write a sentence that works either way.

Colour

Headings, text and buttons each have a Colour setting. Click the swatch to pick one.

Beside it is a Default button, greyed out until you've chosen a colour. Pressing it doesn't set the colour back to black — it removes your choice entirely, so that block goes back to following your email's own colours. That matters: a button with no colour of its own uses your accent colour from the Branding page, so if you change your accent later, every button that never had a colour set changes with it. A button you coloured by hand stays as you left it.

Saving a piece to reuse

If you have a run of blocks you rebuild every time — a "This week's specials" masthead, a footer with your opening hours, a standing offer — save it once as a section and drop it into any email afterwards.

Click the first block you want to keep.
Shift-click the last one. Everything between them highlights.
At the bottom of the settings panel, click Save these N blocks as a section and give it a name.

It then appears in the left panel under Your sections. Click it to add a copy to whatever you're working on.

The word copy matters: adding a section drops a copy into that email. Editing the section later — or deleting it — never reaches back into emails you've already built, including ones you've sent. That's deliberate, and it's why deleting a section is safe.

Help with the words

Select a text or heading block and you'll see Writing help in the settings panel, with four buttons:

Write it for me — describe what you want to say in a sentence and it drafts the paragraph.
Say it better — rewrites what's there.
Make it shorter — cuts it down to about half.
Warmer — same facts, friendlier.

It only ever changes the block you have selected. It can't choose who gets your email, schedule anything, or send.

It costs credits, and it tells you before and after. The label shows a ceiling ("up to 0.10 credits") before you press anything, and the real figure ("Used 0.01 credits") once the words come back — the real figure is usually a small fraction of the ceiling. If you're out of credits the buttons say so rather than quietly disappearing.

It won't invent anything. It's told never to add a price, date, discount or claim you didn't give it, and to leave your merge tags exactly where they are. Read what comes back anyway — it's your name on the email.

Don't like it? Press undo. A suggestion behaves exactly like something you typed, so ⌘Z puts your own words straight back.

Checking your work

Desktop and Mobile at the top switch the width you're editing at. Preview shows the finished email, rendered by the same code that sends the real thing — not an approximation of it.

Seeing it in a real inbox is still a separate step, and a required one before any campaign goes out. See Sending yourself a test.

Saving

Templates have a Save button, and nothing is stored until you press it. This is the opposite of a campaign draft, which saves continuously as you type.

If you try to leave with unsaved changes, your browser asks whether you're sure. Exit at the top left takes you back to the template list.

Making a template from a campaign

You don't have to start in this tab. If a campaign you've already built has the layout you want to reuse, open it and use Save as template. It appears here, ready for next time.

Duplicating and archiving

Duplicate copies a template under a new name — the quickest way to make a seasonal variant without risking the original.

Archive removes a template from the "Start from" list on new campaigns. Campaigns already built from it are untouched, and so is anything you've already sent.

Templates for one store

If you have more than one store, a template can be marked as belonging to one of them instead of all of them. This is a label for keeping things organised when each location writes its own: the store shows as a column on this page, and store templates are listed after the shared ones. Every template is still available to start any campaign from.

At the bottom of the Templates list are two templates you didn't create:

Welcome — someone signed up in the store. Sent the moment a member of staff adds someone to your email list.
Confirm your email — signed up on our website. Sent when someone enters their address on your website. Nothing else reaches them until they click confirm.

These send on their own, so they don't appear in the "Start from" list when you build a campaign, and they can't be archived or duplicated. Everything else about them works like any other template: open one, edit the wording, add a photo or a button, and save.

They are worth ten minutes of your time. Someone who has just signed up is the most interested reader you will ever have, and these are the only emails guaranteed to reach them.

What you write, and what we add

You write the top of the email — the greeting, your welcome, an offer if you want one. Below it, shown greyed out on the canvas and marked "always sent below your words", is the part we add:

Email	What we add below your words
Welcome	Who added them, and how to come straight back off the list.
Confirm your email	The request to confirm, and the confirm button.

You can see it while you write, but you can't select or change it. On the welcome email it's your proof they agreed to hear from you; on the confirmation it's the only way they can say yes. Both also get your logo, your colours, and the footer with your address and unsubscribe link.

The footer on these two reads differently from a campaign's. A campaign says "you're receiving this promotional email because you're a customer" — which isn't true of someone who has just been added, and is the opposite of the truth on a message that's still asking permission. So these say what actually happened instead.

If you delete everything you wrote, the email still sends and still makes sense; it just won't have anything of yours in it.

One thing to keep out of the confirmation email

Don't put an offer in Confirm your email. At the moment it sends, the person hasn't agreed to hear from you yet — that's the whole reason they're being asked. A discount code in a message they never asked for is the one thing this email shouldn't be. Save it for the welcome email, which goes out after they've said yes.