/
New from scratch

New from scratch

Dec 01, 2021

If you decide to create your email from scratch using our WYSIWYG HTML editor, you can control all aspects of your message, from graphical layout to more technical aspects.

  • Fill in the Subject field. You can also customize it using dynamic fields.

  • Fill in the Admin Notes field with your comments: this text won't be visible to your recipients.

  • Fill in the Preheader field: it's a text (max 100 characters) that follows your email subject in an inbox, useful for increasing your open rates. Click here to learn more.

  • Add Tags to categorize your messages, for example, "Winter campaigns" or "Product launch", so you can retrieve all mailings with certain tags with a simple search.

  • Customize message Header and Footer clicking on the respective buttons at the top of the page

  • Create message content with the Editor

  • When you're done, save your message by clicking on the Save button



For a complete guide on email marketing best practices, read our Email Marketing Resources, which include:

  • How to create a relevant email message

  • How to avoid common mistakes in email marketing

  • Understanding email authentication methods (SenderID, SPF, DKIM, DMARC)

Using the HTML Editor

The built-in HTML editor allows you to:

  • Create an email without having to code in HTML with Design view (view screenshot).

  • Build your email in HTML language with Code view.

As an alternative, you can work in another application, such as Adobe Dreamweaver or similar, and then copy & paste the HTML code directly in the Code view of the HTML editor.

The built-in editor has numerous useful features, including:

Using the Image Manager & Image Properties

Image Manager

Image Properties

The Image Manager allows you to upload images, which are saved locally in the system. Once an image is uploaded it will show up on the Browse Files tab. To insert the image into your email, select the image and click on Insert.

Once an image is placed in your email, right-click on the image and click on Image Properties. This tool is very useful to configure the image settings, such as adding an Image Alt text (i.e. the text shown when an image is not shown), including a description, and constraining the image to its original width-height ratio, so that once you resize the image the proportions are not distorted.

Intermediate-Advanced

Instead of locally saving your images into the system, you can choose to insert images from the web. This can be done by going into the HTML code and inserting an image tag.

Here's a basic example:

<img src="insert URL of image" alt="insert text which will be shown if image is blocked">

Inserting Dynamic Fields

How to insert a dynamic field into a message

To personalize an email message with recipient-specific information, you can use dynamic fields (also referred to as dynamic tags or merge tags). Dynamic fields retrieve any information (personal info, preferences, e-commerce data) stored in recipient fields.

For example, if your recipient list contains the first names of your recipients in a recipient field called "first name", you could insert the [firstname] dynamic field as "Dear [firstname]" in the first line of the email and each recipient will receive a message that opens with a personalized salutation, such as "Dear John".

To add a Dynamic field to your message:

  • In the Email Editor, click on the Dynamic fields button (view screenshot) to view a list of Dynamic fields that you can insert into the message.

  • If a Recipient field is not listed, it means that it has not been set as Dynamic. You can change this setting under Recipient fields.

  • Select which dynamic field to add in the current section of your email message. The corresponding tag will be added to the HTML code.

To edit the default value of the dynamic fields, click on Dyn. fields.

  • You can set a default value at the message level. For example, if you don't know the first name of your recipients, the [firstname] dynamic tag will show as blank. To avoid this, click on Dyn. fields and under first name type the corresponding value, such as "friend".

  • You can also set a default value at the account level when managing recipient fields.

Dynamic fields containing a URL

Please note that if the field contains a URL, the URL should not contain the beginning HTTP:// or HTTPS://, which should instead be in the HTML code. In other words, the correct syntax for inserting a dynamic URL into a message is:

<a href="http://[mydynamicfield]">My link</a>

or for a secure URL:

<a href="https://[mydynamicfield]">My link</a>

If you instead use this syntax:

<a href="[mydynamicfield]">My link</a>

... the system will treat it as a relative link and will automatically add the URL to your MailUp console to the URL.

Profile Updates

To build and update the recipient's information within your List, you can use the Profile Updates feature. This feature allows you to create a custom form that your recipients can fill out and update or add their info to your List.