Email builder

The email builder is where you design the content of a marketing email. You build the email from blocks, such as headings, text, images, and buttons, arranged in rows of one or more columns. Your brand theme sets the fonts and colors, so most emails need little styling. To get going quickly, start from a starter template or copy an email you’ve sent before, then change the wording and images. If your organization uses Nova, you can describe the email or the change you want, and Nova makes it for you. See Email campaigns with Nova. For creating, checking, and sending a campaign, see Marketing emails.

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The builder layout

• Top bar — the campaign name (click to rename), undo and redo, the save status, the Help menu, and the Review & Schedule button.
• Tabs — Details, Design, Audience (or Trigger), Review, and History. Click a tab to open its panel, and click it again to close it.
• Canvas — the email itself. Click any block or row on the canvas to select it.

The Design tab has three sections: Selecting something on the canvas opens Edit. When you deselect it, the panel goes back to the section you had open.

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Templates

A template replaces the whole design with a ready-made starting point. To use one, open Details and choose from Template:

• Blank — an empty email.
• A starter template — a ready-made email in your brand colors, font, and logo.
• An earlier email — the design of a marketing email you’ve made before. Type to search for older ones.

Starter templates use your campaign’s event name where it’s linked to an event, or [Event name] for you to replace. If the subject line and preview text are empty, the template fills them in too. If you’ve already edited the design, choosing a template asks you to confirm before it replaces your design.

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Adding content

Open Design → Elements. Under Content, add a block in one of three ways:

• Click a block. A hint shows where it will go, such as after the selected block.
• Drag a block onto the canvas.
• Press / on the canvas and search for the block.

The blocks are: Under Rows, add a row with a column layout: 1, 2, 3, or 4 equal columns, or an uneven split such as 1/3 + 2/3. New rows go after the selected row. Use the buttons on a selected block or row to duplicate, move, or delete it, or to add and remove columns.

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Editing content

Click text on the canvas to edit it directly. The format bar above the text has bold, italic, underline, text color, links, and Merge tags for adding personal details such as the participant’s first name. See Email personalization. With a block or row selected, Design → Edit shows its settings, such as alignment, font size, colors, padding, borders, and width. A row can be hidden on mobile or on desktop.

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Mobile settings

Switch the canvas to Mobile to set a block’s font size, alignment, and padding for phones only. Leave a mobile setting blank to use the desktop setting. An image can also be set to fill its column on mobile.

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Images

Select an Image block and click Add image to open your image library. Choose an image and click Use image, or double-click it. To use an image hosted elsewhere, enter its Image URL instead. Add Alt text to describe the image for people using screen readers, and for inboxes that don’t load images. You can also link the image, align it, and set its width in pixels or as a percentage of its column.

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Cropping an image

Cropping doesn’t change the image in your library. You can reopen the crop and see the whole image at any time. You can only crop images from your library. For an image hosted elsewhere, add it to your library with Replace image first. Images that change for each participant, such as QR codes, can’t be cropped.

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Image library

The image library holds every image you’ve uploaded. Click Upload to add an image. If a folder is open, the image goes into that folder. The sidebar lists All images, Recently added (the last 30 days), Not in a folder, and your folders. Use the toolbar to search by name, sort, and switch between grid and list views. Search covers images, not folders. Click an image to see its details, such as its size and dimensions, and to rename it. Renaming only changes how the image shows in the library. A Large badge marks an image over 1 MB. Large files mainly slow down loading on mobile, so consider uploading a smaller version.

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Folders

To add a folder, click + next to Folders in the sidebar and name it. To add a folder inside another, open it and click New folder here, or choose New folder inside from its menu. Folders can go up to five levels deep. To rename, move, or delete a folder, open its menu in the sidebar. To move images:

• Drag an image onto a folder, or onto Not in a folder. Tick several images to move them together.
• Tick images and use Move to… in the bar that appears.
• Open an image and change its Folder.

To move a folder, drag it onto another folder, or onto Folders to move it to the top level. Everything in it moves too. You can also use Move to… in its menu.

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Deleting images and folders

Deleting a folder also deletes everything in it, including the folders and images inside. To keep an image, move it out of the folder first. You can’t undo deleting an image or a folder. Emails already sent keep working.

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Links

Select a button, image, or text and click Add link. Search your links or paste a web address. The link picker lists:

• Marketing links — tracked links you’ve created.
• Events in this email and Other events — your event pages.

To track a new link, click Create a marketing link. Choose the event and where the link goes — Event page, Ticket selection, Category selection, or Custom URL — then click Create and add. See Marketing links. The Links check in Review warns you about buttons that don’t link anywhere and links that won’t open for participants.

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Brand

Open Design → Brand and choose your Brand theme. The email is restyled straight away with your theme’s font, text and heading colors, button and link colors, and background. The email keeps those styles until you change them. Click Use brand theme to apply the theme again after you’ve changed styles in the email or edited the theme. To add or change a theme, see Branding. Below the theme, you can set email-wide styles: content width, background colors, font, text and heading colors, link colors, and button colors. Every marketing email ends with a Let’s Do This footer that includes the unsubscribe link. You can change the footer’s link color, but you can’t remove or reword it.

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Previewing

The toolbar above the canvas switches between:

• Desktop and Mobile — how the email looks on each screen size.
• Light and Dark mode in Outlook — how Outlook shows the email in dark mode. Other inboxes, such as the Gmail apps and Apple Mail, keep the email light. This setting only changes the preview.

To see the email as a particular participant would, with their details filled in, open Audience and use See what email looks like for. This works for scheduled emails once you’ve chosen an audience.

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Languages

Send the email in more than one language, and each participant gets the version that matches their language. Everyone else gets the default version, English. To stop sending a language, remove it from Languages. People who would have got it get the default version instead.

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Saving and version history

The builder saves your changes automatically. The top bar shows Saving… while changes save and Auto-saved when they’re done. If you try to leave while changes are still saving, you’re asked to confirm. Use undo and redo in the top bar to step back through recent changes. The History tab lists earlier versions of the design. Changes made close together are grouped into one version. Click Restore to go back to a version. You can undo a restore straight away.

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Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? in the builder to see every shortcut. The most useful are: Single-key shortcuts don’t work while you’re typing in a field.

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Emails made with the old builders

Marketing emails made with the Basic or Advanced builder open in the email builder. They’re converted the first time you change something, so opening an email and leaving without changes keeps it as it was. A few Advanced builder blocks, such as video, menus, forms, and carousels, can’t be converted. If an email has any, you’re told which ones before it opens. Those blocks show as unsupported on the canvas and aren’t sent. Replace them with supported blocks, or remove them.