How to Create an Email Template

To create an email template, you’re going to quickly go on over to the Settings tab and head on up to the Email option and select that. Once you’re in the email settings, you’re going to click on the Email Templates, and from here, you’re going to go Create New.

Once you create new, you’re going to click on that button, you’re going to put a title in. This title is for your reference only, so whatever you want to refer this email as, that’s what you’re going to name it, so it’s your reference. No one sees this except for you within the CRM system. You’re also going to place that email into a category, so if you already have categories that you want to put it in, you can definitely do that. You also have the option of adding a new category, so when you click this option, you just name that new category and save it and then select it again from the dropdown here, so let’s just go by our campaign on this one.

The subject of course is the subject of the email. This is what’s going out and showing up in somebody’s inbox, subject of inbox there. Now, on the right-hand side, you’re going to notice some short codes, so we’ve got lead data short code, agent data short code, an element data short code, activity short code, and short codes to do with website registration. What short codes do is it automatically replaces specific data based on the short code that you’ve used. So, to see this in work, let’s just start building out this template.

If we were to type “good” and then a space, you can actually use the element data short code of morning, afternoon, evening. You’re going to click on it, hold it, and drag it over. What this will do is it will replace depending on the time of day, so if you’re sending this in the morning, it will say, “Good morning.” If you’re sending it in the evening, it’ll say “Good evening.”

Now, of course, you would want to personalize this, so we’re going to add a space and we’re going to go to the lead data short code. Again, click, hold, and drag it over, and then when this email goes out, it’s actually going to say, for example, “Good afternoon, Crystal,” when this goes out. So, the short codes are great when you’re wanting to send mass emails, or even just for a quick send, you already have something that you want to shoot off to someone, you might want to tweak it. But for the most part, the bulk of the content is there.

Now in your email, you will be able to include various things such as images, for example. So, if you wanted to upload an image, this image would be from your computer, so it would be saved on there. You click on the image, go Open, that’s going to automatically pull that image into your email template. You can definitely resize this image simply by clicking on it and pulling the corners down to make it smaller. You also have option of linking this image. So, you’re going to see this blue highlight. You’re then going to click on the Insert Link option. And for example, if we wanted this one to go to Facebook when somebody clicks on the picture, we can do. I personally like to change the target to new window. That way, when somebody clicks, it doesn’t take over their current screen, it opens up a new tab for them, and then go Okay. Now we’ve got a title and a picture in here.

Now, additional short code in here, so again, this is the lead data shortcut, so this has to do everything with the lead. So, if I was to drag and drop phone over here, it would actually include the lead’s phone number that we have on their profile. So, if you’re doing, “Hey, I tried calling you at phone,” it would then replace with that number. So, that’s your lead data short codes.

You then have your agent data short codes, so any time you’re doing an email, a hundred percent drag and drop your email signature, then your email signature will be pulled into the emails as they go out. And if you are part of a team, it’s going to pull the signature of the person that’s actually sending that email. So, those are your agent short codes. You can also do your first, your last name, if you just want to throw those simple ones in there.

You will also have activity short codes. These activity short code is going to pull data based on the website that lead registered on, and their overall activity so far. So for example, I could say, “I noticed that you’ve been looking on listings, been looking at listings,” and then you can say, “most viewed city.” This would then pull the city that that lead … the dominant city that they’ve been looking at listings in. So, typically this is how their search is created. You can really build this out to seem like it’s actually really catered to them, but it’s all just short code.

Now, one thing to mention, 100%, these short codes have to be exactly as shown. You cannot have lowercase letters where you see capital letters, and you cannot have spaces in there. I had a space like this, for example, this email would go out saying “most viewed city” with the brackets. So it’s always best to drag and drop to avoid any kind of error with those short codes.

Now, some of you may want to get creative with your emails and things like that, so let’s just say we have listings. You can also hyperlink text in here as well. So again, you would just highlight the text you want to link over. You then link it and then you put the URL, same target idea, and then the text itself would also be linked elsewhere. You can definitely put bulleted lists in here, numbered lists.

If you like to get creative and maybe you wanted to create a banner type thing with some font in there, you can do that through a table. So in that case, we would have, essentially, one cell. We can change the height of this cell if we want to. In here, you can also change the property, so then if we go into the Cell Properties, go into Advanced, we can actually fill that background color. So if we wanted that to stand out a little bit, we can definitely do so. We can fill that and go Okay, and now we’ve actually got a band of color in here. You can move your cursor inside the band. We want that text maybe in here to be a white text, and there you go. So, you can get creative in here.

Now, when you are doing anything within the editor, you can do a full screen. You can do a preview on that so you can actually see what this is going to look like when you send it out to somebody. It does not transform those short codes for you, but more or less the display. So, as it proportions, everything’s appearing as it should be. And of course, for anyone that is a little bit more technical, you do have the option of using the source code as well. The source code will allow you to put scripting in to pull up various aspects and things like that.

Once you’ve done creating your template, you can add attachments in here as well, so if it’s outlining something and you’ve attached some sort of a document, you can attach to your templates as well, but ultimately you’re going to want to save this. Now, once you save it, it will show up at the top of your categories list, and once you’re in the Email Template section, it does show up at the top because it was the most recently edited in that case. Now you will, for some of you, see existing email templates in here. Should you ever wish to go in to any of these, you have the ability to do that. You can go in, you can edit existing emails that are already in there, so you can use them to your advantage.