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A new way to quickly build rock-solid templates for your clients

October 20, 2011

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.

Posted in: New Features & Updates

111 Comments

Lee
October 20, 2011 9:41am

This looks intense, and is gonna be a huge help for our clients!
Gavin Botica
October 20, 2011 10:54am

Just stumbled into this as I was importing a new template… wow.
Phil Gutteridge
October 20, 2011 11:35am

Awesome new feature - will be using this very shortly!
Benjamin
October 20, 2011 12:29pm

Looks gorgeous, congrats :)
Michael
October 20, 2011 1:57pm

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.
Skimbo
October 20, 2011 2:57pm

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 !!
Ross
October 20, 2011 4:56pm

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!
Jon Pearce
October 20, 2011 5:43pm

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.
Finge
October 21, 2011 1:01am

You guys are amazing! Insanely awesome addition to a fantastic tool!
rae
October 21, 2011 1:07am

this is incredible ... thank you.
polo
October 21, 2011 4:23am

Oh, be still my beating heart!!!
ib
October 21, 2011 4:33am

sweeeeeeeeet
James
October 21, 2011 9:35am

This is fantastic!!! Thanks guys - you’re doing amazing work.
Philippe Causse
October 21, 2011 9:36am

everything is easier now. thank you! best regards fron Berlin.
Rhys
October 21, 2011 10:34am

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.
Chris Guillou
October 21, 2011 10:55am

Go CM !!!
Jon M
October 21, 2011 11:10am

Superb! Will be having a closer look later today.

Many thanks,

Jon
Ellen
October 21, 2011 11:59am

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!
Vincent
October 21, 2011 1:17pm

great feature

REQUEST: multiple languages (including Dutch)
Jay
October 21, 2011 2:59pm

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.
Andi
October 21, 2011 4:18pm

Yeehaw! Can’t wait to speed up our eBlast dev process. The export functionality will be the bomb.
Dan
October 21, 2011 5:12pm

Fantastic! You just saved me a tonne of hours. Excellent service as usual.
Tim Kirtley
October 21, 2011 5:29pm

Wow.
And to think I was going to write off today as ‘just another day’.

Sounds great, cant wait to give it a try.
Torkil Johnsen
October 21, 2011 6:00pm

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?
Paul Mycroft
October 21, 2011 6:29pm

This is not only a useful tool but allows us designers to learn how to build better templates after exporting.

Thanks guys!
Paul Mycroft
October 21, 2011 6:29pm

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!
Michael
October 21, 2011 7:21pm

Finally !!

Thanx guys… great job!
Alejandra
October 21, 2011 7:46pm

Amazing improvement! You are over the top… nice work :)
Danielle LeComte
October 21, 2011 8:53pm

Looks very cool. Can’t wait to try it!
Jay
October 22, 2011 1:21am

Hmm can’t use an already prefabbed design for an auto-responder? Have to create a new one from scratch?
Jason
October 22, 2011 1:39am

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 ?
Damien
October 22, 2011 2:06am

This could well be THE most significant development in Campaign Monitor history. Looking forward to getting to grips with it. Incredible work.
David Greiner
October 22, 2011 2:13am

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.
Brian Weston
October 22, 2011 5:48am

So what is stopping our clients creating their own account and templates? Seems like a copy of MailChimp not Email Marketing software for Designers…
David Greiner
October 22, 2011 5:53am

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.
Patrick Templeman Twells
October 22, 2011 7:07am

Love it! You guys rock!
Satya
October 22, 2011 7:48am

woohoo will save me alot of time. thankyou guys! :)
Gerald Glover
October 22, 2011 12:28pm

Awesome news - for quick announcements this really hits the spot. Nice work CM
Vance
October 22, 2011 3:50pm

Can’t wait to take it for a test drive!
Mark
October 22, 2011 4:33pm

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.
Emil
October 22, 2011 4:40pm

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?
Katie Bush
October 22, 2011 5:05pm

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! This is huge.
Michael
October 22, 2011 5:39pm

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?
Jacques
October 22, 2011 6:48pm

Very cool CM. I can always count on you guys for my business and my clients.
Justin
October 22, 2011 8:50pm

Super Cool, and handy…. easier to make a buck too! well done.
Eivind F S
October 23, 2011 1:58pm

I’m loving it already :-D

Thanks guys!
John Ainsworth
October 24, 2011 1:20pm

Just tested this out, and is fantastic. Thanks so much for all your hard work guys. It’s very much appreciated.
sharon
October 25, 2011 12:19pm

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!
Chr1s
October 25, 2011 10:41pm

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 :-)
Jonathan
October 26, 2011 6:15pm

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!!!

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