Campaign design, templates and your own HTML
Change the colors and width of a campaign, build a reusable look template with your logo and fonts, send a designed HTML email, and edit the footer and the plain-text version.
A campaign can look three ways: the standard Zanfia look with your colors, your own look template wrapped around the text you write, or a complete HTML email you bring from another tool. This article covers each option, plus the footer and the plain-text version every campaign carries.
The Design panel
In the campaign editor, step Content, the right-hand panel has a Design section. Changes are visible on the sheet immediately and are saved with the campaign.
| Setting | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Template | The look of the email: Standard (Zanfia) or one of your look templates. |
| Page background | The color around the content. |
| Content background | The color of the sheet the text sits on. |
| Link color | The color of links in the text. |
| Button background / Button text | The default colors of buttons. A color set on a specific button wins. |
| Line height | The spacing between lines of the body text. |
| Width | The content width, 400 to 800 px. Reset to default (560 px) brings back the standard width. |
When a look template is selected, the panel says The look comes from the template. The button with the eye icon, Live preview, opens the email next to the editor as recipients will see it.
Content blocks
The editor toolbar inserts four email blocks: Section, Button, Spacer and Countdown. A countdown is an image that counts down in the inbox to an Offer deadline or an Event. Gmail and Apple Mail animate it; other mail apps show the time as of opening. A countdown cannot hide a button after the time passes, so close the offer on the page the button leads to.
History opens Version history: earlier versions of the email text, kept each time the text changes substantially. Restore replaces the current text and keeps the replaced text in the history too.
Look templates
A look template is the frame of your emails: logo, colors, fonts. You build it once and pick it in a campaign, while the content is still written in the normal editor.
Open Campaign look
Go to Marketing → Email templates and switch the view to Campaign look
(/marketing/email-templates/looks). The link Manage look templates in the campaign's
Design panel leads to the same place. Click New look template.
Design the frame
The editor shows the HTML of the frame and a preview with sample content in your look. Put the content slot in the place where the campaign text should appear, exactly once. Under Default colors set the colors of Links, Button background and Button text. Give the template a name and save.
Use it
In a campaign, choose the template in Design → Template. Use for new campaigns marks one template as Default, so every new campaign starts with it.
The content slot is the token {{content}}, typed exactly like this, without spaces.
Deleting a look template does not break campaigns: those that used it go out in the standard Zanfia look.
Your own HTML
Choose Your own HTML on the template page (or the link I have a finished HTML e-mail from another tool) when the whole email is already designed. The editor becomes a code editor with a preview that shows exactly what will be sent, switchable between Desktop and Mobile. Upload .html loads a file; the limit is 150,000 characters.
Personalization works in HTML too, for example {{firstName}}, and {{unsubscribeUrl}} can be used as a link target. The editor lists problems it finds:
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| The email is larger than 102 KB | Gmail cuts it off behind "View entire message". Shorten the code. |
| Scripts, forms, iframes or event handlers removed | Nothing; mail apps block them anyway, so they are removed before sending. |
| Images without alt text | Add alt text. Many inboxes hide images until the reader allows them. |
| CSS that Gmail and Outlook ignore (flex, grid, position) | Use tables for layout. |
| Images embedded as data: URIs | Upload them to the media library and link them instead. |
| No visible unsubscribe link or sender address | Nothing; the standard footer is added at the bottom automatically. |
Footer and plain text
Every campaign ends with a footer: the address the email was sent to, the unsubscribe link and your postal address. Click the footer preview under the sheet to change two things that apply to all campaigns of your workspace: the Sender address (email footer) and the Unsubscribe link text (email footer). The postal address is required before any campaign can be sent.
Every email also carries a Plain-text version for inboxes that do not show HTML. By default it is derived from the content. In the Plain-text version card of the Send step, Show displays it and Edit manually lets you rewrite it; the footer is still added automatically. Back to the automatic version drops your manual text.
Good to know
Look templates and designed HTML emails are part of email campaigns (Growth and above). Workflow emails can use the same look templates: see Emails sent by workflows.
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