Welcome to our composer for email. Design emails with our drag-and-drop editor, our beautifully designed templates, or your own HTML. If you're not sure where to start, take a look at the elements you'll need for your email. Browse our responsive and easy-to-use templates to get some inspiration. There's no need to stress over your email campaigns: let's get started talking through how to create the best email.
Create an email
- In Email campaigns, click New email.
- Provide a name for your email.
- Browse for your folder location.
- Click Create.
- Choose from one of three options to build your email from scratch by using the drag-and-drop editor. Start with campaign-ready designs by using templates. Or use your custom code by using the HTML editor.
Try out the HTML editor
If you already have the HTML for your email, a super easy way to build it is to add that HTML directly into the editor. You can tweak the HTML in the editor if you need to. One thing that's so great about our HTML editor is the instant preview. As you update your HTML, you see those updates in real-time - even images and colors.
You can also download the HTML for any email you create in the composer, regardless of how you created it.
If you've added an HTML block to an email, make sure your HTML and styles are scoped to target only the elements in the HTML block. Similarly, if you're building your entire email with the HTML editor, make sure your code is targeting only the elements within your email.
Our HTML editor includes syntax highlighting, line numbers, and a dark mode option.
Work with templates
If you're not sure how to begin, browse our templates to get some inspiration. We've re-designed our templates to make them responsive and easy to use. You can use these templates in tandem with our drag-and-drop editor to build out a competitive email campaign. Just make sure to change the Lorem Ipsum text.
Discover the drag-and-drop editor
Any email you create with the drag-and-drop editor begins with defining a section. A section can contain a single, double, or 3-column layout. Adding a section is as easy as hovering in the drag-and-drop preview and clicking on the layout you'd like for that section.
From the Design tab, you'll find content blocks that you can add to sections of your email. A content block determines what can be included in your sections. Content blocks range from a simple text block or an image block to a more complex image group block or link bar. Drag and drop these content blocks over to your email and you'll soon discover the possibilities are endless. After you drop a block, it's time to add the specific content you need.
Customize your text to match your brand's style and color palette. Upload images or browse your new content library. After you've added an image, enhance it with text overlays, filters, and more. Our built-in image editor is another chance for you to add a creative touch to your email.
Save yourself time by saving content you know you'll need to use later - like footers, headers, author bios, and addresses. Hover over the content you want to save and click Save block to make the content available for reuse across your team.
Add email details
Your email must have a unique email name. Add a contact source to select the contacts you want to receive the email. Every email must include a From name, From address, and Reply-to address. By default, these fields are populated with the information stored in the user profile of the email creator, but they can be edited for each email.
An organization administrator can change the settings for individual users.
- Go to Settings > User accounts.
- For each user, provide values for the email address defaults.
Users can change their own settings.
- Go to Settings > User profile.
- Provide values for the email address defaults.
Subject line
Enter a subject line for your email. Use well-constructed subject lines. Try personalization or emojis, and test variations of subject lines with A/B testing.
Preheader
The short summary text that follows the subject line when viewing an email from the inbox. We recommend not using the following special characters: [, {, }, /, (, ), ^, $, +, *, ? as these can cause open tracking issues if used.
Plain text body
Choose on or off. It's considered a best practice to create both an HTML and a plain text version of your emails. It makes your emails more user-friendly and makes your emails accessible to as many contacts as possible. A plain text email contains only text—no images, stylized fonts, or hyperlinks.
Click-to-view link
Add click-to-view link, choose on or off. We recommend using our default or creating one of your own.
Share with CRM
Select Share with CRM to limit the templates that you allow for selection within Salesforce. When an email template is marked as a CRM template, the creator can enable a CRM block, that is, an area in the email body where the sender can add text at the send time that could be inserted into the body of the template.
In Acoustic Campaign, place %%SP_CRM_BLOCK%% in the spot where the custom text should appear in the body of your email. The GetemailTemplates response indicates whether the template contains %%SP_CRM_BLOCK%% based on the ALLOW_CRM_BLOCK element. If true, you could allow specifying text in your application's user interface and pass it to the Scheduleemail operation.
Link tracking levels
Link tracking options in your emails include Aggregate, Unique, Opens only, and No tracking.
- To track everything down to the unique email address (including opens, clicks, forwards, and subscribes), select Unique.
- To collect grand totals on the tracking metrics, select Aggregate.
- To track only the opened mailings, select Opens Only.
- To track only information on bounces, select No Tracking.
Tags
Email tagging helps you quickly search for specific messages. For example, you can tag a group of audiences and emails as “Easter campaign.”
Note: There is a limit of 700 tags (4,000 characters) per organisation.
Use global styles
Choose the background color for your email body. Set the content area width, background color, and padding. For headlines and text, decide the font, weight, size, and color for your content areas. Determine fonts, colors, the link color, and the underlined link color.
Pro tip: Arial is the default font across global styles and text blocks.
Design with content blocks
Pro tip: You can use the inline text editor available with the text block, image + text block, and promotion block to make edits to your content.
Add anchor tags
An anchor is a link in your email that allows recipients to jump to another location in the email. To create an anchor in an email, complete the following steps:
- Go to the content block where you'd like to have an anchor tag.
- Toggle on the Anchor tag.
- Name the anchor tag.
- Composer adds an anchor placeholder in your email links.
- To create your anchor link, go to the content block where you want to create the anchor.
- Highlight the text and use the inline help editor to insert the anchor link.
- Or add a New link by selecting the anchor link type.
Note: Anchor link functionality can vary in different email clients.
Preview your email
Preview your email as it will appear in the inbox, on mobile, on desktop email clients, or by using an integration with Litmus.
Manage links
The link manager is a place to review your links. Verify the link name and the link type. Link types include URL, email, unsubscribe, and click-to-view (custom). If the link type is a URL include the URL, target new tab, same tab, parent window, or topmost window, if it's tracked, and if you want to turn on or off conversions. For email link types include the email address and the subject line. For an unsubscribe include the unsubscribe behavior. For a custom click-to-view, set if you want to provide the HTML version, text version, or another URL.
Test your email
Send a test email to yourself or others. Enter up to 10 email addresses separated by commas. Or personalize the email using a specific contact by entering an email address from your contact source. Include a message or instructions to accompany your test email.
Save as a template
When you save as a template a copy of this email will be added to your available templates for future use. Enter the template name and provide a description.
Download HTML
Download the HTML of your email to your computer. You can edit the HTML outside of the Campaign. Or save the HTML for historical purposes.
Review and send
Now that you've designed your email, and tested it, get ready to send. Resolve any errors that you might have and proceed to send.