REACH provides an Email Template Editor that gives you the ability to customize the design of the emails that are automatically sent by REACH to your supporters. 

Review your Email Templates#

To review the System Templates already included: 

• Go to Settings > Email Templates 
• You’ll see a list of already included System Templates.
  • Note: If this is your first time viewing your email templates, you may need to click the red Re-Generate Email Templates button for the templates to appear

To edit or preview these templates, click on the blue down arrow next to the template. 

• Clicking Send Preview will email a preview of the email template to the email address of the admin requesting the preview. 
• Clicking Edit will open the email template editor.
  • Note: View the next section for more details on how to use the email template editor.

NOTE: REACH released an updated email template editor in June 2022. If you are using an older template, you can click on Use New System Template to upgrade to the new editor from within your email templates. Important note: Any previous updates to the email template will be lost once you update and click on Save. 

Building Custom Email Templates#

Using the Email Template Editor (see NOTE above), you can build a custom email template from scratch using our drag and drop email editor or import an HTML template from an external email editor. 

Note: While our drag and drop email editor is intended to be user-friendly and does not require coding, a basic knowledge of HTML is sometimes necessary.

• To Edit your template, click the blue button and select Edit 
• To Create a new custom template (available when using the REACH Essentials, Pro and Pro Plus plans), click on + New Template.

• Use the Content area to add columns, buttons, dividers, headings, html, images and text.
  • When editing the content, you will see a toolbar with standardized options to change your font, font size, bold, italicize, underline, strikethrough, etc. 
  • In the editor toolbar, click on Merge Tags to pull various Account, Campaign or Supporter liquid tags into your templates. Next to Account, Campaign and Supporter is a list of the available liquid tags you can use. For more information, view our Liquid Objects article. 
  • When editing Content, you’ll also see additional options to the right:
    • Text section: Choose your text color, alignment, and line height. 
    • Links section: Choose Inherit Body Styles
    • General section: Choose your Container Padding
    • Responsive Design section: Choose to Hide on Desktop
• Use the Blocks area to add various size blocks in your template
• Use the Body area to:
  • General section: Modify your text color, background color, content width, content alignment, font family.
  • Email Setting section: Include a Preheader text (a short summary text that follows the subject line when viewing an email from the inbox)
  • Links section: Choose the color of your links and whether or not your links are underlined.
• Use the Upload area to add images or select files to upload.
• At the bottom of the editor, you will see the options to Undo, Redo, Preview, view as a Desktop and view as Mobile. 

To pull in a template from another email editor, click on the green </> Import HTML Template button. Paste the HTML source into the Import HTML Template box that pops up and click Import. 

Once finished editing or creating, be sure to click on Save Changes.

Reminder: You can click SendPreview next to the template to email a preview of the template to the admin requesting the preview. 

Additional Notes#

As with any email editor, please keep in mind the following potential formatting issues:

• Videos should not be sent via email. All email platforms have a size limit when it comes to sending and receiving videos; therefore, if the videos surpasses the limit, your intended receipient will not receive your email. Instead, we always recommend you use a platform like YouTube or Vimeo and link to the video. You can also include an image of the video and link the image to the video’s URL>
• While you can add formatting to an HTML email, not all email clients will display as intended. Different email clients – i.e. Apple Mail, Google Mail, Outlook, etc – use different engines to render HTML emails. Not all email readers have the same capabilities as a web browser.
• Some email clients will strip CSS from an email. Other email clients may add their own styles on top of yours. There is a chance that someone receiving your email will not be able to view the HTML email and will only see the text.
• Some email clients will show images by default. Some will not and the user must choose to display images. When sending out a bulk email in REACH, this will affect how REACH tracks if someone opened the email.