What are Templates?
If you wish to send out automated emails or bulk messages to your members, such as new membership notifications, wish them a Happy Birthday or other generic messages via email channels and in-App messaging, you can save time by creating a template.
They are also used along with automated-actions to create lifecycle emails.
How do I Navigate to make a New Template? ⚙️
1. Go to Settings > Communications & Flow > Templates
2. Click 'Add Template' button on the right. This will bring up the side panel.
3. Set the name of your template. It's useful to name it the same as the automated-action you will be setting it up against for quick identification. If it is a manual email template, not linked to an automated action, it can be worth prefixing the template name with 'manual - ' so you can quickly sort your templates.
4. Select the template type you want from the dropdown.
In most cases selecting 'Message' will be fine this just means it can be used for mutiple types, email, InApp or SMS. If you need to be more specific then you can select one of the more defined options.
Email - To create an email
InApp - To create a message in sheepApp on the Members Account
Message - [Generic) Any type of message to be used for email, InApp or SMS
PDF - To create a PDF document via an export
SMS - To create a text message to send to a mobile number.
For our example, we will select 'message' which will be the case most of the time.
In this example, we will create a simple new membership template, with information regarding a contact's new membership.
5. Set the default subject for your new email template. You can use dynamic fields in the subject line the same as you can in the body of the template. It can be useful to pull in the membership plan name for example or any other relevant field so the recipient can quickly identify what the message is about.
Welcome! Here are you new membership details for your {{member.membership_type.display_value}} plan6. Add the template text. The template text field uses a text editor allowing you to format your email alongside the ability to add dynamic fields that pull information from the CRM and populate the email on a per contact basis.
Here is a simple example of the content you could start with for a new membership email.
Hi {{first_name or member.member.display_value}},
Welcome and thank you for becoming a member. Below are the details of your new membership.
Membership details
- Membership number: {{member.membership_number}}
- Membership plan: {{member.membership_type.display_value}}
- Start date: {{member.start_date|datetimeformat('{:%-d %b %Y}')}}
- End date: {{member.end_date|datetimeformat('{:%-d %b %Y}')}}
Where are full Template Tips and Tricks? ✨
For a comprehensive article on the dynamic fields you can use from within your template as well as markdown styling tips and tricks.
See here for more information on Email Tips and Tricks.
7. Activate your template by hitting the active toggle in the top right, if the template is not active it cannot be selected when sending emails to contacts or when creating automated-actions.
🎉 That's it! In this example you have learnt how to add and set up a simple template for a new membership this can now be used to send out an automated-action for the new membership trigger. Or you can send it out manually to contacts on a case by case basis.
What are Default Templates? 🧱
For a head start when creating your email templates be sure to take a look at our default email template article which gives you the basic building blocks to create your communication from. We have included examples of the most frequently used and most common types of email templates.
See here for more information on Default Email Templates.
📖 Further reading - Automated-actions
If you want to set up an automated action to send your templates out automatically when an event happens in the CRM then please see our guide for setting up automated-actions below.
See here for more information on Automated-Actions.