Help · Content

Text-only emails

A text-only email is your words and your links, and nothing else. No images, no buttons, no colors, no boxes. It looks like an email a person sat down and wrote, because that is what it is.

Why use one

• It reads as personal. A note from you, not a flyer.
• It is small and quick to load. There is nothing in it to wait for.
• It suits plain notices — a shipping note, a thank-you, a change to your policies — as well as marketing.

Text-only emails are small and simple, which mail providers tend to handle well. They are not a way around anything, though: how your emails are received still depends far more on your sending reputation — the people on your list having said yes, and wanting to hear from you — than on how an email is laid out.

Each reader sees their own text size

You do not choose a typeface or a text size for a text-only email, and that is the point of it. Many people set their mail app to the size they can read comfortably, and a text-only email respects that: each reader sees your words in the size and typeface their own mail app is set to. Different mail apps may show a different typeface, and a few older desktop mail programs show their own default one.

Long lines are left alone, too. On a wide screen your words run the width of the reading pane, the way an email a person writes does.

What you can put in it

• Paragraphs. Press Enter for a new line inside a paragraph, or add another paragraph with Add a block.
• Links on any words — a product, a collection, a page, your store, or any web address. Select the words and press Link. See the Where a link goes page.
• Bold and italic. Select the words and press B or I. Underlining is not offered, because underlined words that are not a link look like a link that does not work.
• Personal details, like a first name with a word to use when you do not know it. Insert puts one in.
• Show this only when … on any paragraph, so only the people it fits see it. See the Show a block to some people page.
• Preview text, if you want it — see below.
• A discount code — see below.

Preview text

Preview text is up to you. It is the line most inboxes show after the subject, and it never appears in the email itself, so it is a place for one more phrase that is not in the email and is not the subject. Add it under Settings, the same as for any email.

Leave it empty and the inbox shows the first words of the email instead, the way it does for an email a person writes. Either way, your first sentence is worth getting right.

A discount code

A text-only email can give away a discount. Open Settings and, under Discount, choose the discount — and, for a discount that gives away its own code, which code — and how long each person has to use it.

Then put the code in your words: in a paragraph, press Insert and choose Discount code, for example Your code is followed by the code. There is no box around it in a text-only email; the code appears as words, in the reader's own text, exactly where you put it. Each person gets their code the same way as in any other email.

If you choose a discount and never put Discount code in your words, the email cannot be sent: everyone would be given a code that nobody could see. Remove the discount takes it away again.

Automations cannot give away a discount code yet, so a discount belongs in a text-only email you send as a campaign.

What is not in it, and why

Images, buttons, product blocks, dividers, colors and the page background are not part of a text-only email. A discount is, but it is never a box: its code is words, where you put it.

Links and opens

Linked words are counted like any link in any email, and opens are counted too, with the same caveat as every email: some mail apps open every email they receive on their reader's behalf, so an open is a hint rather than a fact.

The unsubscribe link and your store's address are still required and still checked, exactly as in any other email. The Text only starting point writes them into its last sentence for you.

Dark mode

A reader whose mail app is set to dark mode sees the email in their mail app's own dark colors. There is nothing for you to set, and nothing can end up dark on dark, because the email names no colors of its own.

Starting a text-only email

Text only is one of the starting points on the New template screen, and in a campaign's email step. It starts with a greeting, one line for you to replace, and the closing sentence with the unsubscribe link and your address.

Save it as a template and it is listed under Your templates with a quiet Text only tag, ready for the next time — so you can keep a few text-only emails prepared for whoever on your team writes the next one.

Switching an existing email to text only

Open the email, press Settings, and under Format choose Text only. Before anything changes you see a list of what will change:

• Every section and column becomes one run of paragraphs, in reading order.
• Images, product blocks, dividers, spacers, HTML blocks, social links and Library elements are removed, with a count of each.
• If a Library element held your unsubscribe link or your store's address, those stay, written as a sentence where the element was.
• The discount you chose stays. Where its block was, a paragraph says what the block said — its heading, then the code, as words. (A second discount is removed: a text-only email gives away one. So is a discount block where no discount was ever chosen.)
• A button becomes its own words, linked to the same place.
• A heading becomes an ordinary paragraph.
• Underlining is taken off. Bold and italic stay.
• The preview text stays.

Your earlier version is kept. Switching saves the email as it was into its version history first, under the name Before switching to text only, so you can bring the design back from there at any time. See Your working copy, and versions on the Email templates page.

Switching back to Designed keeps every word and link. The paragraphs come back in the typeface, size and color they had, and you can add images, buttons and everything else again.

Send yourself a test

The preview in the editor draws a text-only email in a typical inbox's default text, and says so above it. It is a good guide, not the real thing: the only way to see a text-only email exactly as your inbox shows it is to send yourself a test, from Preview. Try it on your mobile and on your desktop, in light and dark mode.