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Starting a template

Starting points, and saving a template

A new email starts from a starting point, an example, or a template you saved, and everything about it is yours to change from that moment on. Press Create template to choose. A template no campaign owns is one you keep aside to start other emails from.

Some starting points name the email you came here to write and some name a shape to fill however you like:

• Welcome — a greeting, one image and a button, for the first email somebody gets from you.
• Sale — a large headline for your offer, a line under it and one button. There is no discount in it. You add the discount block yourself, in the moment you have a discount to choose, so a new email is never sitting there waiting on one.
• New arrivals — a heading over four products from your store. The products are picked as the email goes out, so there is nothing for you to choose now and the email is never out of date.
• Newsletter — a masthead, an image, two short pieces and a button.
• A letter — a greeting and a paragraph under it, lined up on the left.
• Centered with a button — a large heading, one sentence and a button, all centered.
• Text only — words and links only, shown in each reader's own text size. It is a format rather than a layout: see Text-only emails below.
• Blank — one section with a single line of text in it, and nothing else.

Every part of one can be changed, including the words, and none of them is “for” anything in a way that binds you — Sale is a good shape for a launch too. Each one already carries the unsubscribe link and your store address, so nothing is missing that would stop the email going out.

A new template can start in your brand. Enable New templates use your brand settings in Settings → Store and every starting point except Blank and Text only begins with your store logo at the top and your primary color on its buttons. In a dark inbox, buttons use a lighter shade of your primary color so their words stay readable — unless your primary color is too light for white words, in which case the buttons keep it. The logo keeps a white strip behind it in dark inboxes. It also carries your logo for dark backgrounds if you have chosen one, which is used where an inbox shows your dark colors (Gmail always shows your store logo, on the white strip). Imported templates keep their own look. The switch is off until you enable it. Your brand is copied in when you make the template, so changing your logo or colors later never changes a template you already have. See Your brand on the Your brand, social links and phone number help page.

Welcome and Newsletter start with an image in them — the one your store's library came with — for you to swap for your own. If that image is not in your library, they start without it rather than with an empty frame.

Text-only emails

A text-only email is your words and links and nothing else — no images, buttons or colors — and each reader sees it in the text size and typeface their own mail app is set to, like an email a person writes. Bold and italic are there; underlining is not. Preview text is up to you, and a text-only email can give away a discount: its code is words wherever you put Discount code.

Start one from Text only, or switch any email in Settings → Format. The switch lists what it will remove before it changes anything, and keeps the email as it was in its version history. Saved text-only templates carry a quiet Text only tag here and in every picker. See the Text-only emails page.

Choosing one

Create template opens a screen with three cards beside its title — Starting points, Examples and Your templates. Each card shows a few of what is behind it, how many there are and one line about them; press one to open it, and its list starts with anything more worth knowing. Under the cards is that list down the left, and the one you pick drawn on the right, full size and exactly as it will arrive. Each card opens on the first in its list, so there is always an email to look at; come back to a card and it shows the one you last picked there.

Your templates are the ones you have saved, most recently edited first, with See all templates for the rest. They are drawn on the right the same way, so you can look at what you already have before you decide. Edit opens the one you are looking at in the editor. To build on one of your own rather than start again, Clone it from the Templates index — that is what makes the copy.

Desktop and Mobile above the drawing switch between the two views, at the same widths the editor uses, so an email that reads well here reads the same way once you are editing it.

The field at the top of the list narrows whichever tab is open by name.

At the foot of the list is Or import a template file, for an email written somewhere else. The chapter Importing and converting a design says what happens next.

Then you name it, in the box beside the chosen email's title, and press Create template. An example arrives named after itself, and you can change the name before you create it.

Examples to build from

The Examples tab holds finished designs — a sale, a launch, a welcome, a thank-you, a birthday and more — with our own images and our own text in them, to start from when a blank page is the hard part. Each one shows its image in the list and is drawn full size on the right when you choose it.

Creating one makes your own copy. It is named after the example — change the name if you like; a second copy of the same example is numbered, such as Black Friday Blackout 2 — and it opens in the editor as an ordinary template of yours. The examples themselves never appear among your templates, and changing your copy never changes the example. Its images are copied into your images and media, where you can replace, describe or delete them like any other.

The email reminds you what is still ours. While it uses our images or our text, its Checks list says one of these:

• This email still uses example images and example text — check both before sending.
• This email still uses example images — check them before sending.
• This email still uses example text — check it before sending.

It is only a reminder and it never stops a send: you can still send a test, schedule and send the email. It goes away by itself as you replace the images — including one used as a background — and retype the words.

Products in the preview. An example with products in it shows your own products when your store has some. When your store has none yet, the preview shows made-up sample products instead, and says so above the email; they are never sent.

The footer of every example carries the unsubscribe link and your store address, which every marketing email needs. There is no phone number in it; add your own if you want one.

Saving a template to start from

A template that no campaign owns is one you keep aside to start from. You make one with Save as a new template from any version of a template or of an automation's email. A campaign's email becomes a template once the campaign has sent, from its report. Campaigns and automations can both start from a saved template, too.

From a sent campaign, press Save as a new template — on the campaign's report, beside the email that went out. A campaign that is only scheduled does not offer it yet: it appears once the first email has gone out. It saves that email exactly as it was sent, under the campaign's name and the date and time; change the name if you like before you save. If you already have a template with that name, choose another. The campaign and the template it started from are not changed.

Saving as a new template makes a copy. There is no live link back: editing the new template later does not touch the campaign or automation it came from, and editing that campaign or automation does not touch the template. If you want a piece that stays in step across many emails, that is what the Library is for.

The index

The Templates index is a grid of cards, each showing an image of the email as you last left it. Search by name, and use a card's ⋮ menu to rename, clone or archive it.

Each card shows you an image of the email rather than only its name. That is the whole point of the screen: with a dozen templates, you find the one you want by recognizing it.

Search by name. Type more than one word and every one of them has to match, wherever each of them falls and in any order — searching Valentine final finds a template called Valentine's Day 2026 — final call, and so does final Valentine. Searching for a % finds a %; nothing you type is treated as a wildcard.

The image is of the template as you last left it — your working copy, not an older saved version. Edit a template and its card catches up on its own.

It can be a few minutes behind, and the card says so. Drawing the image is work we do in the background, so a template you have just changed shows Updating in the corner of its image until we have redrawn it. Until then you are looking at the last image we drew, which is usually a few minutes old at worst. Keep editing and it keeps up: we redraw a template at most once every five minutes, so a morning of small changes does not become a morning of redrawing.

A card with a plain gray panel instead of an image has no image yet. That is not a mistake and there is nothing to fix. It happens for a template you have only just made, and for every template you made before this screen learned to draw images — those get one within a few minutes. It also happens if your store has no mailing address saved in Settings: every marketing email has to carry one, so until it is there we cannot draw your email at all — and we could not send it either, which is the more important half.

"Last used in …" names the most recent campaign you sent that was started from this template. If a template does not show that line, it means we have no record of one — which is not the same as never having been used. We only started keeping that record on the 4th of September 2026, so a template you have sent with a dozen times may quietly show nothing.

Paging. Under the templates you choose how many to show at a time — 25, 50 or 100 per page — and step through with Previous and Next. The line beside them says where you are: Page 3 of 5, with a box to jump straight to a page. The page is part of the address, so opening a template and coming back puts you back where you were, and the size you choose is remembered the next time. The archived view is counted on its own, so of 5 there means five pages of archived templates. Searching, or switching between your templates and the archive, takes you back to the first page.

Rename, Clone, Archive

Every card's ⋮ menu offers these three, and sometimes a fourth.

Rename changes the name and nothing else.

Clone makes a copy and takes you straight to it, because a copy is a thing you have made in order to change it. The copy is called "Copy of …" and you can rename it right there. It copies what you see — your current working copy, not an older saved version — so nothing you have done to the original goes missing. It is a completely separate template from the moment it exists: editing one never touches the other.

Archive puts a template away. It comes off this screen, its name is freed up for another template to use, and nothing that has already been sent is affected. Switch Show to Archived to see what you have put away and to bring one back.

Delete vs Archive

Delete appears only on a template nothing has ever used — no campaign started from it, no automation, nothing imported behind it. That template is something you wrote and nobody has seen, so there is nothing to keep a record of, and we delete it outright: the template and every version of it go, and they do not come back. The moment anything has used it the item is not there at all, because nothing you could do would make it deletable again — archive it instead, which takes it off this screen and leaves everything you have already sent exactly as it was.

Your working copy, and versions

Everything you do here saves itself as you work, so a closed tab loses nothing. Save a version keeps a numbered snapshot that never changes again; you can restore it later, or save it as a new template.

A version is a snapshot of the template exactly as it is right now, kept under a name so you can come back to it later. Save a version takes that snapshot and gives it a number; you can name it as well. A saved version never changes again — that is the whole point of one — so you can always go back and start from it.

A campaign's email has no Save a version. A version of it is kept each time you review the campaign before sending, and that version is the one that goes out. The earlier versions are still listed, and you can restore one. To keep a campaign's email as a new template, wait until it has sent and use Save as a new template on its report.

A campaign's email can change its template while the campaign is a draft. Change template, beside Versions at the top of the editor, opens the same list the campaign builder shows — your own templates first, then the starting points. Choose one and press Use this template, and you are asked once more before anything changes. The question tells you the name your current design is kept under in Versions — Before “Spring sale”, or Before a new blank email for the blank one — so you can always go back to it. Only the design changes: the subject, preview text and From name stay as they were, and the template you chose is not touched, because the campaign gets a copy. Once the campaign is scheduled, sending or sent, its email is fixed and the button is not there.

Restore puts a version back into what you are working on. What was on screen is replaced, Undo puts it straight back, and the version itself does not change. Save as a new template takes a version and makes a separate template out of it.

Creating an email saves version 1, which is the email as it arrived from its starting point. The first version you save yourself is therefore version 2.

A version can be saved with problems in it. An email you are halfway through is still your work, and the product keeps it. What it will not do is let that email go out — see What stops an email from going out, in the chapter Before an email goes out.