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E-mail Templates

A template is one message: its subject, its body, and whatever it merges in.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Layout & Pages:

  • E-mail Templates — the templates
  • E-mail Designs — the wrapper they use

Architect Panel → Integration & Connections:

  • E-mail Accounts — the accounts mail is sent and received through

What a template holds

  • A name and a subject.
  • The body, with merge fields.
  • A design to wrap it.
  • Attachments.
  • A tracking switch.
  • Optionally a calendar invitation.

Content, not layout

The discipline that makes templates maintainable. Header, footer and styling belong to the design; a template carrying its own has opted out and will not follow the next rebrand.

When you find yourself adding layout, the design is missing something — fix it there.

Templates can be built with the page builder

Where a message needs more than plain content — a structured layout, a richer arrangement — a template can be a page builder document rather than hand-written markup. That suits marketing-style messages and keeps the authoring visual.

For ordinary transactional mail, simple content in a good design is usually better and far more robust across mail clients.

Open tracking is per template

A switch on each template rather than a global setting, which is the right granularity — tracking a marketing message is a different proposition from tracking a password reset.

What it records is worth knowing: not merely that a message was opened, but the identity of who opened it, with the time, address and browser. That is personal data about a named individual, not anonymous statistics.

So switch it on deliberately

Leave it off for transactional mail, where it adds nothing you will act on and collects behavioural data about people receiving something they asked for. Turn it on where you will genuinely use the result — and cover it in your privacy information.

Open tracking is also unreliable, since many clients block or pre-load images. Treat it as directional at best.

Subjects do most of the work

A subject is what decides whether a message is opened. Be specific and factual — "Your appointment on 14 March" rather than "Important information" — and keep it short enough to survive truncation on a phone.

Name templates so they can be found

You will accumulate dozens. "Appointment reminder — 24 hours" is findable; "Email 7" is not, and somebody will eventually edit the wrong one.

Review them occasionally

Templates outlive the processes that send them. A periodic look for ones nothing sends any more, and ones whose wording has drifted out of date, keeps the set honest.

Worked example

An organisation runs about forty templates, all using one design and holding only content. Tracking is on for two campaign templates and off for everything transactional. Names describe the message and its trigger, so the annual review found six templates nothing had sent in a year.

Recommendations

  • Keep templates to content.
  • Leave tracking off for transactional mail.
  • Write specific subjects, short enough for a phone.
  • Name them for the message and its trigger.