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Email Builder

Email template builder is a tool designed to help users create, design, and manage email layouts and content without needing extensive HTML or coding knowledge.

Some general key features include:

  1. Drag and Drop Interface: Easily add elements like text blocks, images, buttons, and social media links. Also, customize layout and styling with no coding required.

  2. Responsive Design: Templates automatically adjust for different screen sizes (mobile, tablet, desktop).

  3. Personalization Options: Use merge tags or dynamic content (like names, donation amounts, or locations) for personalized emails.

  4. Template Saving and Reuse: Save these email templates to reuse or edit in future campaigns for newsletters, event invites, etc.

Designing and Sending Emails with Engage's Email Builder​

Similar to a general email template builder, Engage CRM also provides an email builder feature that allows you to design and send drafted emails in bulk to a list of different subscribers via an email sending platform, mainly SendGrid. An email draft can be designed with the help of reusable blocks in Umbraco, speeding up the email creation process and increasing donor outreach.

To create an email template:

1. Login into Engage and navigate to Umbraco (Engage Forms). Select Email Builder and create an email builder subscription folder based on location.

select email builder

2. Then select the email builder composition folder e.g. "Emails", folder based on year e.g. "2024" and lastly, folder defining the categories of types of emails.

3. Click Create and select v1 Email to start designing the email template. All designed emails come up with a name, status, created date and created by.

select the v1 email option

4. Starting the email template design, under Options section:

  • Select the list of subscribers to send an email to. These lists are the ones created on SenGrid.
  • Choose the unsubscribe group (groups which are unsubscribed and not receiving emails) as "Fundraising".
  • Input a sample email (must be one of the subscribers in the selected list) only for the purpose of previewing the email before sending.

options section

Under Email section:

  • Input the subject of the email.
  • Add multiple predesigned blocks according to your preferred template design. Click Add Content and choose the block you want to add. Each block includes text, images, links and buttons and is reusable, meaning can be used multiple times.

email option

5. After blocks are added, click Save and publish to save the draft. To preview how the email would look like before sending, choose Save and preview and the designed email opens in a new tab.

open designed email

6. When your email design is ready, select Email Platform from the top right corner and click Push to Email Platform. This pushes the email to SendGrid, saves it as a draft and you can send the email to the required recipients.

push to email platform

tip

You can also view statistics related to all the email templates:

  1. Requested: Number of emails the system has attempted to send.
  2. Delivered: Number of emails that successfully reached recipients' inboxes
  3. Opens: Number of times recipients opened the email.
  4. Clicks: Number of times recipients clicked a link inside the email.
  5. Spam Reports: Number of recipients who marked the email as spam or junk.
  6. Unsubscribes: Number of users who opted out from receiving further emails.
  7. Bounces: Emails that could not be delivered.
  8. Dropped: Emails that the system decided not to send at all, usually due to a known issue.
  9. Invalid Emails: Email addresses that are incorrectly formatted or do not exist.

statistics of emails