Overview
Contents
Create beautiful messages in a drag-and-drop editor for a wide variety of email sends: newsletters, product announcements, promotions, welcome series, or order confirmations.
In Sailthru, Templates are the blueprints for all messages, and Email Composer is the easiest way to build them and to craft the content that will be sent to your recipients. Its drag-and-drop interface enables you to produce a well-designed message with a number of built-in features:
- No knowledge of HTML is required, but custom HTML is supported
- Design messages for desktop or mobile environments.
- Open-tracking is automatically turned on; no need to embed a Sailthru beacon
- Add special links with the click of a button, including links to user-specific unsubscribe pages and to web views of email content.
If this is your first time building templates for Sailthru, or you’re building a new type of template for the first time, be sure to discuss your plans with your Customer Success Manager. Your CSM can ensure you are using Sailthru’s best practices for template design and email strategy.
HTML 3.0
Email Composer now uses tables to create the HTML for your email template. This should not cause an issue with rendering existing templates, unless they contain a lot of custom code.
We recommend creating a copy of any existing template that needs to be edited. This will preserve an original version of the template in the unlikely event that it does not render properly in tables.
How it Works: An Overview
Within the Sailthru interface, email templates created with Email Composer are labeled as Visual Templates. They can be selected and used by our system in the Campaign workflow, Lifecycle Optimizer, and the API.
Email Composer provides drag-and-drop formatted rows and content blocks for you to build your template from scratch. You can also use a formatted template available in the Idea Gallery. To build a new template: create a new Visual Template, configure the template settings, and then add rows and content blocks.
Create a New Template
- Select Templates from the Messaging menu in Sailthru.
- Hover over the New Template bar to open the template menu. Select Visual Template from the list to open Email Composer.
- Select the default template name, delete it, and enter a unique name for your template.
Configure Template Settings
For more information on individual template settings, see Template Settings.
- Set a Subject Line and Preview Text:
- Click “Not Set” under Subject Line and Preview Text to open the editor.
- Enter your preferred Subject Line and Preview Text.
- Click Apply to add them to your template.
- Set a From name and email address:
- Click “Not Set” under From to open the editor.
- Enter your preferred From name, From email, and Reply-to email.
- Click Apply to add them to your template.
- Click the gear icon next to the From options. This opens the Template Settings editor.
- In the first tab, select your General settings.
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- Optional: If your account has Teams enabled, you can restrict this template to certain teams.
- To add a team, click the gray bar and select a team. Repeat to add more teams.
- The template is visible and usable by all employees in your Sailthru account if you don’t select teams.
- Optional: If your account has Teams enabled, you can restrict this template to certain teams.
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- In the second tab, select your Content and Personalization settings.
- In the third tab, add advanced Zephyr configurations to filter or sort the data feeds used in the template
- In the first tab, select your General settings.
Add Rows and Content Blocks
For more information on template structures and content blocks, see Template Structures and Blocks.
- Drag rows onto the composer screen to create your template structure.
- Drag content blocks into the rows to add content to your template.
Send a Template
Your template will be referred to by the Template Name you set throughout the Sailthru platform.
- For a one-time send, create a Campaign and select your newly created template.
- To send as-needed, based on user status or behavior, use one of the following methods:
- Select the template in a Lifecycle Optimizer flow.
- Have a developer use the Sailthru API (from your server) or JavaScript functions (from the user’s browser) to send the template in response to certain actions.