Write templates

A template is the message with the per-recipient parts left as fields. They are filled when the batch renders, which is why the Send page shows you real messages to real addresses rather than a preview with placeholders in it.

Three things are attached to every message whatever the template says. None of them is optional, and none is yours to remove.

Every message carries a link in the footer and the two headers RFC 8058 defines for one-click unsubscribe: List-Unsubscribe, with the address of this endpoint, and List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click. Gmail and Yahoo have required one-click unsubscribe from bulk senders since 2024.

The link and the header both point here, and both work without a session: a mailbox provider posts to it unattended when someone presses the unsubscribe control beside your name, and the recipient themselves arrives from the link.

A signature in the URL stands in for the session, so the endpoint can be public without letting anyone unsubscribe anyone.

An unsubscribe is permanent and applies to the address across every future search, not just the campaign that prompted it. There is no way to re-add someone from the dashboard, which is the correct behaviour rather than a missing feature.

A template can carry a second subject line. When it does, each address gets one of the two by a stable hash of the address (the same person always sees the same one), and which they got is recorded, so Emails sent can compare them.

A template says who it is for. Use the button beside Publish in the editor: tick the industries it should go to, your written searches and imports included, Every other industry for everyone no other template covers, or Follow-up email. It is required: Publish asks for it, and so does leaving the editor, because a first email without industries is never sent. Each industry belongs to one template, so ticking one another template has moves it here, and the picker says so before you tick.

Publishing a first email writes a fresh preview by itself, so the Send page already shows the emails it will now send, each lead's matched to its industry. Nothing is sent until you press Send or a schedule runs.

This is the only place industries are chosen. A send schedule picks which templates it sends, and the Send page can narrow a send to one template, but neither picks industries: each template goes to the industries set on it, so the email a dentist gets has one answer everywhere. A lead whose industry has no template is left out and waits, and Which emails on the Send page says how many are waiting for one. Drafts are never matched, so a half-written email cannot go out on a schedule; publish a template to use it.

To send one email to everyone, set it for Every other industry. A follow-up is never matched: mark it as Follow-up email, and the Send page's Follow up tab lists it first and picks it for you. A schedule set up before templates had industries keeps the template it was saved with, and its form offers Use each industry's template to switch it. The Templates list shows what each template is for.

Put {{suggestion}} in a template for a line or two written for each lead from its own website, naming one thing you could do for that business. It is the one part of an email no other field can fill: {{company}} and {{city}} say who the email is for, the suggestion says why it is for them.

Suggestions are written after every lead search, for each new lead's website: its homepage and up to two pages that say what the business does are read, together with what you sell, and the result is kept for that website. A later search that finds the same business again uses the one already written, so nothing is paid for twice. To write them for leads already in the queue, press Write them for queued leads in Settings → Suggestions, and follow it on Find new leads.

A lead whose template asks for a suggestion and has none is skipped, never sent a blank or a stand-in, and the preview says why beside it: no automation suggestion yet, or automation suggestions are off. Skipped leads are not spent; they wait for the next batch. A website that says too little to suggest anything is marked as tried and not asked again, so its leads only go out under a template without {{suggestion}}.

A suggestion is refused before it is kept if it holds a link or a domain, a question, an exclamation, a template field or HTML, or runs past 280 characters. It still goes to a stranger with no one reading it first, so read the preview on the Send page before you send: that is where each lead's line is shown in place.

The globe in the editor's left rail reads your own website for what a template can use: your name, the line that says what you do, your logo and pictures, your colours, and your email, phone, address and profiles. Nothing changes until you pick it.

Your name can become the From name. A picture can go in as the header or at the caret in Body. A colour can paint the text, the email, the page behind it or the border. Details go in at the caret as plain text.

Pictures are copied into the template, not linked, so they keep working if your site changes, and they have the same limits as an upload: PNG, JPEG or GIF, 2 MB at most. SVG, WebP and AVIF are listed but cannot be used, because mail clients do not show them. Only the page you name is read, with up to two of its stylesheets for the colours, and only at public web addresses.

Insert, in the Body toolbar, adds the few blocks a cold email can use beyond text and a picture. Click a block in the email to change it, or to remove it.

They are kept plain on purpose: a heavily designed email reads as marketing, and inboxes file it with the newsletters.

Type / in the body for a menu of everything that can go there: headings, lists, a quote, the blocks above and every variable. Keep typing to narrow it, so /but finds Button and /city finds {{city}}. Enter puts it down; Escape closes the menu.

Undo works on the whole template. Inside a field or the body, ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows) undoes your typing there; anywhere else it undoes the last change to the template, such as a colour or the picture. The Undo and Redo buttons beside Saved do the same, in steps. The keyboard button in the left rail lists every shortcut.