Email templates and merge fields

The emails of your conversations and of your automations are written in the same editor. This page covers how an email starts, what you can put in it, and how to check it before it goes out.

Start from a template

When an email has to be chosen, a gallery opens. At the top there is a search field ("Search an email template") and tabs: All, the emails your publication already used ("Previously used", offered by automation steps), one tab for each purpose, and My templates. Cards sit side by side with the email drawn small, its name and what it is for. The first card is Blank email.

A template that needs something your publication doesn't have says it on its card: Needs a book club, Needs paid members, Needs an event, Needs a coverage or Needs imported readers.

Picking a card saves the email as a draft at once, with the template's wording. Nothing is lost if you close the window.

Languages

Peakub's templates are written in English and in French. If your publication has variants in those languages, an email started from a template is written in each of them too. A reader gets the variant of their language when it is published, and the main email otherwise. The email editor's language window lists any language that has no email written yet, for example "Not written yet: readers in English get the French email." See Variants.

My templates

Keep an email you like and start new ones from it:

1. In the email editor, choose Save as my template.
2. Give it a name. It is offered with the subject.
3. A toast says "Saved to My templates".

The email itself doesn't change. The template keeps a copy of it, with its language variants. Open the My templates tab of the gallery to start a new email as a copy of one. The small menu on each card has Rename and Delete; deleting a template leaves the emails already made from it as they are.

Purposes

Each email has one to three Purposes: Welcome, Thank you, Nudge, Win back, Reminder, Announcement or Other. The first is its main one. An email needs at least one, and can't have more than three. A card shows up in the tab of each of its purposes, and an automation step puts the emails that fit its trigger first.

Merge fields

A merge field is a piece of the reader's details put in your email. Peakub writes them as pills, with their names in your language:

You add them from the bar above the body, and they also work in the Subject and in the Preview text (the line shown after the subject in the inbox). In the subject and preview, the digest fields are left out because they only fit in the body.

The editor shows the email inside a frame that looks like what readers get: your publication's card on top, your text, and the footer with the line to stop receiving these emails. The frame is there to show you the likeness. The email that is really sent is drawn when it goes out.

Check it before you send

Three checks run as you write the subject:

• A subject in capitals reads like shouting and may land in spam.
• Several exclamation marks may send the email to spam.
• Phones show about the first characters of a subject: a long one may be cut.

Words that often trigger spam filters are also pointed out.

Next to Send you have two more buttons:

• Preview opens the email as a chosen subscriber will get it, in their language, with their details in the merge fields. It uses the font of the email that is sent. Nothing is sent.
• Send me a test sends the email to your own address, marked as a test, with your details. You can send five tests an hour. If sending is switched off in the place where you work, a message says that no test was sent.

An email needs a subject and a body before it can be sent.