The convenience of using email templates.


For those of us who didn’t go to design school or simply don’t have the time to be creating emails from scratch, there’s nothing more convenient than using pre-made email templates (and you’ll be happy to know that pbSmart™ Connections has a multitude of pre-made email templates to choose from).

The added bonus is that you don’t need to have HTML knowledge in order to build complex HTML email creatives. All of our templates are coded to work with all email clients and provide maximum flexibility.

How to use email templates, pre-made at pbSmart Connections

Before you start building your email campaign, you need to make sure you’ve imported your subscriber (contact) list into your account. Once this is done, you can start creating your email.
  • Go to the ‘Emails’ tab and click ‘Create.’
  • Go through the step-by-step email creation process.
  • After you’ve named your email and selected a few settings, you can then choose one of our pre-made templates.
  • The template categories are arranged in folders on the left-hand side. Just select the category that best fits your needs.
  • Once you’ve opened up the category, you can select from all of the available templates.

How to customize your email template

pbSmart Connections’s templates all use modular design so you can create and modify the template’s sections and layouts. Although most of the design is hard coded, you can customize email templates in certain areas (such as a preheader) if needed.
  • Hover over the section of the template that you want to edit, then click ‘Edit’.
  • You can also delete the section entirely (click on ‘Delete) or move the section up or down (click on the up or down arrows).
  • To upload your own logo or images, click on ‘Edit’ then select the picture icon to Insert/Edit Image.
Before saving your Creative, be sure to create a text version for your customers who cannot or choose not to view HTML emails. To create a text backup, click on the ‘Text Version’ tab, and then click ‘Extract Text Version.’ The system automatically extracts all copy included in the HTML version of your creative. Modify as you would like, then click ‘Save’ to save your email design into your pbSmart Connections account.

Once your creative is ready to go, pbSmart Connections will walk you through defining your recipient list (email target) and sending or scheduling your email delivery.

What types of email templates are available?

There are a number of different types of HTML email template designs available that you can use for pretty much any type of email marketing campaign.

Some of the email template designs include:

Basic Templates - Basic templates are a great option for email marketers who have little content and need to quickly create a HTML email creative. Basic templates provide an editable header (to insert a logo) and simple content sections to accommodate single, or just a few, images. Many of these templates are industry specific.

Newsletter Templates - Newsletter templates provide a format that can support lots of content in all different sizes, shapes and colors. Newsletter templates can accommodate as many, or as few, articles as you need.

Social Media Templates – Social media templates can be used to promote your business in the social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn), helping you build your network and promote your social channels for interacting with your customers.

All templates are updated on a regular basis to reflect current standards for HTML coding and rendering.

For more information on making your emails more unique, watch our video on designing email using templates.