Using Templates in Campaigns

Templates become truly useful when you use them as the starting point for every email you send. This page explains how to bring a template into a campaign, how to customise the loaded design, how automations send templates directly, and how to promote a finished campaign design back into your template library.

Using a template in a campaign

Your templates are offered in the campaign builder itself:

1. Go to Campaigns, click New Campaign, and fill in the Details and Audience steps.
2. On the Email step, the Visual view opens on a picker. Under Your templates — above the built-in starters — choose the template.
3. A template built in the visual editor loads as editable blocks. One that is HTML only (pasted or hand-written) opens in the HTML view instead, because the visual editor cannot take bare HTML apart; edit it there or in Write.
4. Use Preview to check it, then continue to Review.

Customising after insertion

A template is a starting point, not a locked frame. Once its HTML is in the campaign, edit it in the Edit view (a rich-text editor with bold, italic, lists, alignment, links and images) or directly in the HTML view. You are expected to update the content to suit the specific campaign — the template simply provides the branded structure.

Typical customisations after loading a template:

• Replace the hero image with a campaign-specific graphic or product photo.
• Update the headline and body copy to reflect the current campaign message.
• Change the call-to-action button label and URL.
• Add or remove sections — for example, a second image for a multi-product promotion.
• Adjust colours for a special campaign theme (seasonal, event-specific).
• Insert merge tags where personalisation is needed; the Merge tags buttons under the editor add them at the cursor.

None of the changes you make within the campaign feed back into the original template. This means your master template remains clean and unchanged no matter how many campaigns customise it.

Using a template in an automation

Automations use templates directly. In a Send Email step, choose Use Template and pick the template from the dropdown; the step sends the template's HTML with its default subject, filling in merge tags for each contact. Alternatively choose Write custom email to give the step its own subject and HTML.

Saving campaign content as a new template

Sometimes you build something great inside a campaign and want to reuse it for future sends. Promote the campaign's design into a template with Save as template:

1. In the campaign wizard, on the Email step, click Save as template in the editor's toolbar. On a campaign's own page — a draft, a scheduled one or one already sent — the same button sits next to Duplicate.
2. Give it a name (the campaign name is offered) and confirm. The template lands under Templates in the Custom category, with the campaign's subject line as its default subject; a link to it appears right there.

An email built in the visual editor is saved with its blocks, so the template reopens in the visual editor and can be edited block by block. An email written or pasted as HTML is saved as HTML only and opens in the HTML view. Either way the template is a snapshot of the design at that moment: later changes to the campaign do not update the template, and changes to the template do not affect the campaign.

You now have a full picture of how templates and campaigns work together in SendBeam. To learn about automating email sends based on subscriber events, continue to the Automations section.