How to create an email template for your email campaigns

Now that we know how to find the email campaigns (see post http://bvcommerce.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-edit-your-emails.html) we can create an email template for any emails, newsletters, etc.

Here, we're going to take the simple route. A lot of clients do not have the ability to put together custom code. So, what I'm suggesting here is to use Microsoft Word. It's not the best solution, but for almost everyone out there it is a quick solution.

We'll take this in 2 steps, namely:

• Creating your email
• Adding an email template

Creating your email

1. Open Microsoft Word
2. Create your email in your new word document. Don't use graphics for now.
3. Click File Save As Web Page
4. A new window will pop up.
5. Name your new file.
6. In the box below the file name is the Save As box. Choose "Web Page (*.htm, *.html)
7. Click on the Save button.
8. If you receive a message that says something to the order of, "This will remove Microsoft Word tags" click ok.
9. Now, you have created an HTML page. This is how you can send your email.
10. Ok, to get the code, click on View HTML Source. This may open up a new window.
11. Copy all of the code in the window. We will use this to copy into our email.

How to create an email template

1. Log into the administrator account.
2. Click on Content Email Templates
3. Click the "New" button
4. Type in a Name (how you will refer to the template), From (your email address), and Subject (What this email is about)
5. Copy all of the code from our Word document into the top box titled "HTML Body"
6. Click the Save button.

That's it. Now, this only creates a simple email template. But, you're well on your way. If you want to add images, I would suggest some type of HTML tool such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Otherwise, you will have to learn a little code.