A new way to quickly build rock-solid templates for your clients
Our passion at Campaign Monitor has always been about making a designer's job easier. This happens in a variety of ways, from our research and advocacy right through to the features we add to our software. While these efforts have come in handy for a lot of you, the truth is, building a great looking and rock-solid email is still incredibly hard. Limited CSS support combined with such a broad range of email clients means that designing an email campaign for a client can actually be an order of magnitude harder than building them a simple web site.
We think that sucks. So we did something about it.
Today, we're excited to unveil a new and super-fast way to roll out simple, beautiful and most importantly, reliable email templates for you and your clients. Here's a quick video tour to show you some of the key features.
Music by Voltaire Twins, Animalia (if you dig it, you can grab a free copy for a limited time).
Choose a layout
Whenever you add a new template to your account, you'll now have the option to import your own custom template (like we've always supported), or use our new template builder. If you go for the template builder option, we'll present you with four simple template layouts to choose from.
Pick a color scheme
After choosing a layout, you'll be able to customize your design and see a live preview as you do it. To give you a head start, we've provided a range of simple color schemes so you can match the template with your (or your client's) brand.
Customize with your own colours and images
You can easily tweak the color of any element in your email, customize the footer, add social sharing links and even upload your own header image to suit.
Save and it's ready to use
When you'e done building, save the template and it will be available for you and your client's to use in our new editor. You can also jump back in and make further design tweaks whenever you like.
In a few quick minutes you'll end up with a great looking email design that will display reliably in every email client out there.
Not available for your clients
It's important to mention that the new template builder will only be available to admin account holders, and won't be available to any of your clients. We built this tool for designers who want a quick way to build a basic template for their clients. It's a nice compliment to the total flexibility of building your own templates, but will never be a replacement for it.
We also see this feature as a perfect way for getting clients who don't have big template design budgets up and running quickly. In a few minutes you can grant them client access, build them some simple templates and they'll be ready to start sending.
Export for further tweaking
We also consider the template builder an awesome starting point for more complex email designs. We've worked hard and poured everything we know about email coding into these templates to make them as bulletproof as possible.
Because of this, you can create a basic design in minutes, then export the design as a fully-coded template with all our know-how built right in. Open it in your favourite editor and customize away before importing as a new and improved template.
Mobile optimized
No matter how you customize these designs, the saved template will be heavily optimized for mobile email clients without any extra work. Columns are resized, text-sizes are tweaked and image dimensions changed so the email looks great on every device. We've got plans to make it easier for you to see how the template will look on a mobile device in an upcoming update, but feel free to test it out and see for yourself.
Update: Our mobile preview feature was just released. You can read all the details here.
Our motivation
With the template builder out the door, there's an important point we wanted to make loud and clear. We keep track of every single feature request we get at Campaign Monitor and we literally have thousands of these ideas that heavily influence the direction we take. The ability for a designer to quickly build a reliable template has been at the top of this list for a long, long time now.
We're lucky to have tens of thousands of incredible designers as customers, and we know that a lot of you are comfortable diving into nested tables and inline CSS. At the same time, there are also many thousands of you that know the web well, but have been lucky enough to never see a table tag in your life. That's who we built this for, and we hope you love it.
19th October
This looks intense, and is gonna be a huge help for our clients!
19th October
Just stumbled into this as I was importing a new template… wow.
20th October
Awesome new feature - will be using this very shortly!
20th October
Looks gorgeous, congrats :)
20th October
Creating templates that work in most email clients is an absolute nightmare. This is going to save so much time, and save me from having to do one of my least favourite job.
20th October
wow guys this looks pretty cool!
template builder will come in handy for sure!
appreciate how you’ve left this for designers and not the clients
at least in short term
imagine it would be good to have the option of offering this to *certain* clients perhaps down the track when got my head around it, so can document perhaps and support…
as you say allows for minimal start up costs!
like the new preview template function too
the auto thumbnail makes them all look the same..but now quick press of the button and can preview the template to make sure they are using the right one
yewww go CM!
P.S now can you please quickly bash out a fully integrated SMS service :)
nah seriously, take your time but yes +1 for SMS abilities !!
20th October
My client asked me specifically for this feature - TODAY!
He wants a flexible way to tell his story, but keeping the style consistent.
Thank you Campaign Monitor!
20th October
This is a great new feature. I have been using your software for sometime, but I’m not a designer so rely on using my little knowledge to amend our already existing templates. If I ever needed something simple, quick and different, this would be plenty to help me get something together. Great work.
20th October
You guys are amazing! Insanely awesome addition to a fantastic tool!
20th October
this is incredible ... thank you.
20th October
Oh, be still my beating heart!!!
20th October
sweeeeeeeeet
20th October
This is fantastic!!! Thanks guys - you’re doing amazing work.
20th October
everything is easier now. thank you! best regards fron Berlin.
20th October
Even when building bespoke templates this looks like it could come in very handy as a first port of call to get a working framework together quickly. If you could add editing container & column widths it would cut out a lot of leg work. Great job though.
I love the colour theme name Organic panic.
20th October
Go CM !!!
21st October
Superb! Will be having a closer look later today.
Many thanks,
Jon
21st October
This looks a great tool and will be so useful for clients who want to get started on a small budget. Thanks CM you stay ahead because you never say still!
21st October
great feature
REQUEST: multiple languages (including Dutch)
21st October
Love it!
Wish we could left align, center align, right align any small images in the body or sidebar columns though. (Similar to the header logo functionality.)
eg: If I have a tiny button graphic in a full width image area I’d like to be able to center it.
21st October
Yeehaw! Can’t wait to speed up our eBlast dev process. The export functionality will be the bomb.
21st October
Fantastic! You just saved me a tonne of hours. Excellent service as usual.
21st October
Wow.
And to think I was going to write off today as ‘just another day’.
Sounds great, cant wait to give it a try.
21st October
Really awesome :) Is there an easy way to translate the text strings in the top and bottom of the page too, or do I need to export/change/import to do that?
21st October
This is not only a useful tool but allows us designers to learn how to build better templates after exporting.
Thanks guys!
21st October
This is not only a useful tool but allows us designers to learn how to build better templates after creating and exporting them.
Thanks guys!
21st October
Finally !!
Thanx guys… great job!
21st October
Amazing improvement! You are over the top… nice work :)
21st October
Looks very cool. Can’t wait to try it!
21st October
Hmm can’t use an already prefabbed design for an auto-responder? Have to create a new one from scratch?
21st October
I noticed that the default width is now 640px . Understand that there are some clever mobile width option sin there as well but have always built to 600px as max width.
Have I missed something about the width setting in the new template tool.
I also noticed that default 2 column has sidebar on left. I can export and swicth over but wonder if we could could have default to the right hand side for sidebar ?
21st October
This could well be THE most significant development in Campaign Monitor history. Looking forward to getting to grips with it. Incredible work.
21st October
Thanks for the amazing words everyone, great to hear how useful you’re finding this.
@Jason, we tend to hover between 600-650px for our template designs, and 640px felt right for the desktop versions, which we automatically halve for mobile.
Thank for the sidebar suggestion too, that’s definitely something we’ll consider for a future update.
21st October
So what is stopping our clients creating their own account and templates? Seems like a copy of MailChimp not Email Marketing software for Designers…
21st October
Hey Brian, thanks for the comment. Like I mentioned above, that’s not what we built this feature for, which is why it isn’t not even available to clients in the first place. Of course, nothing is stopping a client from signing up directly, just like nothing is stopping them from signing up to any other provider.
The difference is in the value you can add these clients on top of a template, such as web site integration, content strategy, campaign specific graphics, and of course, much more customized templates than the basic building blocks we’re providing here.
21st October
Love it! You guys rock!
21st October
woohoo will save me alot of time. thankyou guys! :)
22nd October
Awesome news - for quick announcements this really hits the spot. Nice work CM
22nd October
Can’t wait to take it for a test drive!
22nd October
This is a great update, you guys really know how to push on to the next level! Look forward to exploring this in more detail in the next few weeks.
22nd October
Thanks for making our job easier :) or less depressing…
I have just created my first designed based on the editor and found that there is a massive margin/padding between the headlines and content. Why? Or is there a setting I have missed where we can configure this behavior?
22nd October
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! This is huge.
22nd October
I Love it but…
I would like to place
Web version, Update preferences, Unsubscribe, Forward, Edit your subscription, Unsubscribe instantly in Dutch. Is this possible?
22nd October
Very cool CM. I can always count on you guys for my business and my clients.
22nd October
Super Cool, and handy…. easier to make a buck too! well done.
23rd October
I’m loving it already :-D
Thanks guys!
24th October
Just tested this out, and is fantastic. Thanks so much for all your hard work guys. It’s very much appreciated.
25th October
I also stumbled upon the new template design feature. This will help me do things so much quicker, and easier and also learn to code better. Thank you for continuing to develop this excellent system!
25th October
Set up a really nice personal demo account today using this new feature in about 15 minutes…. great stuff guys!
I noticed some fellow Dutchmen asking for Dutch texts. Since we’re a small country, I’ll be more modest but it would be nice if default English texts could just be adapted/translated within the template builder (instead of dowloading the template and adapting it offline). That would help out the rest of the world also :-)
26th October
What can I say!
I held off commenting until I’d tried it out. We had planned to have our template redesigned, but on playing around with the template builder, we think we’ll just do it ourselves. Congratulations, and thanks for all the mobile tweaking.
I’ll +1 the language option, although we can’t expect you to implement localisation in such a product. But if you could in any way make the text strings editable, then I’m sure we could all just plug in our own local versions.
Please please please do *not* go the way of so many hip young companies and cloudscource the translation. It just doesn’t work, and will only damage your brand.
Thank you!!!
27th October
You folks really design beautiful interfaces. You should consider designing the rest of the applications on the internet =)
28th October
Looks like a great way to push out templates.
P.S. I love seeing a new feature and someone commenting “give me this too, while you’re at it!” So funny.
28th October
do you have a table of what email clients you support with these layouts? I know how you guys love to come up with compatibility tables ;D
28th October
Awesome! Cant wait to try it out.
This comes just in time because we are expanding our newsletter business these days. Thank you very much!
28th October
This is why I LOVE using Campaign monitor!! Fantastic work guys.
28th October
I cannot believe that I am going to say this, but I cannot wait for our next eblast to try this out! Such a chore to design, this should make my job a whole lot easier! Thanks!
28th October
You guys are ridiculously awesome! I am amazed at how you keep pushing the envelope for email campaign management. Keep up the great work! Signed, your happy customer.
28th October
Nicely done. Exporting Pre-made builder templates to edit and reimpose as accustom template is a trick I’ve used for years with a certain hairy competitor of yours. Love that you are offering this now, and, since it will dramatically reduce much of my set up time, this makes Campaign Monitor an even more important fav tool of mine. Thanks for your continued improvements.
28th October
When can i have a video that is white label friendly?
28th October
This is superb, great idea!
What’s the tune on the vid, sounds like Mew???
28th October
I think this may have single-handedly helped me take the Email Marketing side of my web design business from one client to ... well, all of my clients! Campaign Monitor rocks, and always has. You know what your customers want and you deliver a great product. Thank you!
28th October
Fantastic! Can’t wait to give it a try after I wrap up some “real” work and allow myself some “playing” time.
I thought PNG’s (the header image) were deprecated in emails though?! Have you found otherwise?
Thanks.
28th October
Great work. When the template is saved you have the ability to go in and alter the template once you have saved it. Is this feature going to become available for existing templates we have uploaded. Or in other words is there a way to code templates that will allow us to make changes to the css using the template builder.
28th October
Very nice!
Hey what song is that? Reminds me of the soundtrack of the new Drive movie…
28th October
Thanks for yet another way to make CM simpler to use. I was about to build a new template for a client, so I’ll give the template builder a try.
I’m glad to read that the template builder won’t be visible to my clients. I can just hear them asking why they should pay me to design their template!
28th October
I noticed the demo template created used an image as the header section, and without it the template would not indicate “what” the title is. What is the backup in case the image doesn’t show (many email clients block images by default)?
Thanks and great job on an easy to use template creator!
28th October
Wow, what an amazing response to wake up to. Thanks for all the very kind words everyone. We’ve got more plans for the template builder and every bit of feedback counts, so please keep it coming.
The backing music for the video is by Australia’s Voltaire Twins and the track is called Animalia (if you like it, you can grab a free copy here for a limited time).
28th October
I have to agree with @jason about the width and add this. Having the width an editable feature would be best. Being able to not switch the sidebar but rather define the widths of the two columns.
28th October
Golden.
28th October
I’ve just tried this out and it looks brilliant.
I have a client who would just LOVE to be able to use this functionality. Could you please please consider making this (or a variation of it) available for clients - not just account holders?
28th October
Oh I can not wait to try this out!
28th October
Amazing! Just had a 30 second play with it and basically rebuilt a template that would normally take at least half an hour.
Looks fantastic. Can’t wait to use it properly. Thank you!
In my 30 seconds of playing, I did have a quick thought… It would be amazing to be able to store our own colour schemes. (Forgive me if I missed this feature)
28th October
I just built one for a client as a test and it was insanely simple and easy to use. That was so easy I think I’ll build my own using this tool as well. You guys are amazing. Thanks very much!
28th October
REQUEST: Adding background images….
28th October
Hi,
I use CM for 3 years now. I love it ...
I have a request:
I would like to place Â
Web version, Update preferences, Unsubscribe, Forward, Edit your subscription, Unsubscribe instantly in French ... Is this possible?
28th October
Looks great.
28th October
Impressive! The great plus for me is the automatic mobile version.
28th October
I love the template builder. Thanks for all your hard work. It helps tackle one of the biggest barriers to selling the service to small business, namely the setup cost. Just a thought, or possibly a feature request: I notice that when a header image is selected instead of a text header it’s not possible to add alt text to the header image for when recipients have image display turned off. I’d love to add the company name as alt text for a company logo in the header. I don’t think I’ve overlooked the option somewhere, have I? Thanks again.
28th October
Goddam you guys are great! Keep the hits coming!
28th October
Wow…
28th October
looks amazing!
28th October
Another extremely beautiful, well thought-out interface from you guys. Will definitely be using this for new templates in future, if for a decent starting point to export and tinker with. Thanks for making my job that little bit easier guys! :)
28th October
On 34 seconds the template layout inexplicably changes from 2 column to 1 column!
29th October
You just kept our business well done looks great - Now please can we have share and translate feature on the webmail version to compete with mail chimp?
29th October
Ummm yeah well thats the most awesome thing I’ve seen all week ... time saving awesomeness-ness at its best. Thanks for putting in the hard yards for us CM !!
29th October
I can’t get past the first five seconds of the video :(
But the concept sounds good.
30th October
This is amazing, thank you so much for doing this! It will be a huge time saver for me! I was already a big fan but was drifting off due to too much time spent trying to create templates- it was not viable for my business. But now I’m back and super excited with this new tool to help me make it easy. Thanks again!
BTW I am looking to find out how wide the header should be? My header image was not the right size to fit the space given so need specs on that.
31st October
Very nice, I can’t wait to try this!
31st October
Great job guys!!!
I will send you feedback as soon as I try these mobile designs up.
Thanks!
1st November
do not forget that there are european and non english customer (translation, date, time, etc.)
thank you in advance
will it be possible to edit one of your available template?
2nd November
Feature request:
Ability to turn sidebars off for left and right sidebar template, ability to make left sidebar a right sidebar.
2nd November
Thanks again for all the amazing comments and feedback guys, we couldn’t have asked for a better response. We hear you loud and clear on the multilingual thing and plan on addressing this in a future release so it’s useful for everyone, no matter what language they speak.
The ability to switch the sidebar from left to right is also a great idea, and one we’re looking at supporting too. @LB, just to clarify, the simple template option doesn’t have a sidebar at all, which might be what you’re looking for there. You can switch to this layout from the builder at any time.
2nd November
unreal. this is really really really longawaited from someone and when it comes to simply communicating, this is the dogs bollocks. No fancy schmancy for those of us who don’t have the dollars to spend on fancy design.
3rd November
Wonderful work!!!
Qusetion - how can I insert link in the footer:eamil, website etc…
Can this only be done after downloading the template and tweaking it?
4th November
Yes Dan, you would need to export the template and update it yourself to add more to the footer.
6th November
Thank you . Thank you. Thank you. Great development.
8th November
+1 on the language option here to. Just a simple “translation” form would be sufficient. Thanks! Awesome stuff :)
8th November
@Øyvind Østmo and others here - if you have 2 minutes, please help us translate the templates into your language by filling in this form.
We’re certainly looking at localizing our templates and are appealing to our customers to provide the most appropriate translations. Stay tuned to this blog as we’ll let everyone know when the new language options are ready.
8th November
I Love this approach. It will definitely make my approach attractive and simple.
9th November
Love it!
10th November
Caution: Unfortunately, it breaks in the new version of yahoo mail. You have to manually add a paragraph padding style to the source code in each paragraph to make them separate. Also, yahoo is getting confused and displaying half mobile layout, half regular layout.
18th November
Hello and Congrats for this development.
I was really excited about this feature but i don’t understand how my clients will benefit from it since the this option is not available for them in the Campaign Monitor Backoffice, it is only available for me as an Admin.
Tks
Bye
18th November
Hi Pedro, as Dave mentioned in the blog post, we’ve made the template editor available to designers only, so that designers can quickly and easily create templates for their clients. It isn’t meant to be a replacement for a designer like yourself.
Hopefully you can benefit from being able to create templates for clients in a fraction of the time. Your clients will benefit from faster turnarounds and potentially, a bespoke template for a cheaper than bespoke price :)
30th November
Does this have the ability to add additional HTML?
30th November
@Edward Guillen - In this case, you can either export the final template and tweak the HTML code, or for smaller tweaks, you can edit the Source in the template editor. Hope this helps!
1st December
Hi, Is it possible to have text and an image in the header? Most clients want their logo image and their name in text. Otherwise…. awesome design tool! Thanks.
1st December
@Ellen - At present, you will need to export the template and tweak the HTML code to do this. Sorry about that, but we’ll look at how we can add more editable regions to the templates in the future :)
13th December
cool..this is cool
18th December
This saves my day. I got a job designing email templates and we all know, it’s not so easy. Especially with mobile support. “Design it like 1999” - yeah, damn. But this template builder seems to solve it…
23rd December
This is seriously awesome. Good job guys!
14th January
My links don’t preview correctly?