Create, Edit, Delete and Activate/Deactivate a Template

Templates are reusable layouts of pre-arranged blocks that help you set up newsletters quickly and keep every edition consistent. You manage them from the Templates area of the Emails page. For the full picture of what you can do with newsletters, see Working in Emails.

Create a template

1. Open Emails and go to Templates.
2. Click Create new template. On the company Templates page, choose Drag and drop builder. If a gallery of starter templates opens, choose Create from Blank (or start from a starter instead, as described below).
3. Drag blocks from the panel into your layout, then click any block to open its settings and adjust it.
4. When the layout is ready, click Preview and schedule to set the default Audience, Title, and Preview text for editions made from this template.
5. Click Activate Template to make it available for use.

You can send yourself a test email before activating to check how the template renders. Keep in mind that email clients ultimately decide how much preview text they display.

If your account has more than one email service provider connected, you can choose which provider a template sends through when you create it. Templates on single-provider accounts use that provider automatically.

Start from a starter template

Instead of building a layout block by block, you can start from one of Letterhead’s starter templates: ready-made drag and drop layouts for common kinds of newsletter, such as a weekly roundup, a breaking news alert, an event invite, a new podcast or video episode, a job board or a gift guide.

1. Open Emails and go to Templates.
2. Click Create new template and choose Drag and drop builder. On a channel’s Templates page, click Create new template.
3. Browse the starters, or type in the search box to find one by name. Click a starter to preview it, and use the desktop and mobile buttons above the preview to check both views.
4. Click Use this template. On the company Templates page, if your account has more than one email service provider connected, choose the one the template sends through first.

Your new template opens in the editor, laid out exactly as the starter was designed. From there you can change it like any other template. It’s created where you started: a company template from the company Templates page, or a template for that channel from a channel’s Templates page.

A few things to know:

• Replace the sample content before you activate. Every starter comes with placeholder text to show off its layout, and most come with sample images too.
• Your brand isn’t applied for you. A starter keeps the fonts and colors it was designed with. To restyle it with your brand kit in one step, use Preview a brand kit and Apply to template on the editor’s Styles tab before you activate it — see Apply a brand kit to a newsletter or template you’ve already built. Applying a kit leaves the logo as it was, so add your own logo yourself.
• You can still start from nothing. Choose Create from Blank, the first card in the list, for an empty drag and drop template. On the company Templates page, Switch to HTML editor at the bottom of the list takes you to the HTML editor instead.

Start a template from a newsletter you already send

If you already send a newsletter, you can use it as the starting point for a template instead of building the layout block by block.

1. Save a copy of the newsletter as an email file. In Gmail, open the newsletter, choose More (⋮), then Download message. This saves a .eml file.
2. Open Emails and go to Templates.
3. Click Create new template and choose From an existing newsletter.
4. Drop the file into the window, or click the upload area and choose the file.
5. Click Create template. If your account has more than one email service provider connected, choose the one the template sends through first. For a newsletter sent with Letterhead, you’ll see a summary of the blocks the template will have before you create it. For one sent from another platform, you’ll see a note that AI will lay it out instead, and the dialog tells you its content goes to our AI providers.

Your template is built in the background. You can wait in the window, which closes when the template is ready; click Start another to begin on a different newsletter straight away; or close the window and carry on with something else. While it’s being built, it’s listed under From an existing newsletter in the Create new template menu. When it’s ready, a message lets you know and the template appears in your list. You can build up to five templates at a time.

Letterhead lays the newsletter out as drag and drop blocks (headings, text, images, buttons, dividers, story blocks and two-column rows) and applies its fonts, colors and buttons to the template. Open it from your list to edit it like any other. If the layout can’t be worked out, a message tells you so and the template is added to your list empty: you can build it by hand, try again with the same file, or delete it.

A few things to know:

• Story blocks keep the layout, not the stories. Each edition you make from the template fills them in.
• Some parts are left out on purpose. Ads from other ad services, the “view in browser” line and the footer aren’t copied, because your template has its own view-in-browser line and footer. For a newsletter sent with Letterhead, the summary lists anything that was left out.
• A newsletter sent with Letterhead is read in your browser. It’s never uploaded. One sent from another platform is laid out by AI, which can take a few minutes.
• Replace the sample content before you activate. Images still point to where the original newsletter keeps them, and the text is the copy from the issue you uploaded.
• A newsletter you received directly works best. Forwarding an email can change how it looks, so some styles may not come through.

Tag a template

You can tag company templates to organize your library. Open a template’s configuration screen to add tags — pick from your company’s existing tags or create a new one on the spot. Tags appear in both grid and list views of the template library, and you can filter the library down to templates carrying the tags you choose. The filter stays in place through a reload or a shared link.

Filter and save views of your templates list

Both company and newsletter templates can be filtered by tags, and company templates can also be filtered by status and owner. Once you’ve narrowed the list to the templates you care about, you can save that combination as a named view. Your saved views appear in a dropdown next to Filters, so you can return to one — or to the full list — in one click instead of setting the same filters again on every visit. From the same dropdown you can set a view as your default, rename it, or delete it. Saved views are kept in the browser you saved them in.

Edit a template

Deactivate the template first, make your changes, then reactivate it with Preview and schedule → Activate Template. Editing while a template is live risks an in-progress version going out, so deactivating first is the safe path. Changes affect future sends only — newsletters already scheduled from the template are not affected.

Best practice: duplicate a template before major changes so you keep the original. Letterhead shows when a template was last updated and which team member made the change.

Clone a template

When you clone a company template, a dialog appears with a name already filled in. Edit the name before confirming and the clone is created with your custom name — no renaming afterward.

Activate or deactivate a template

• Activate makes the template available in newsletter creation and automation setup.
• Deactivate hides the template from new sends without affecting newsletters already scheduled from it.

If a deactivated template is used by an active automation, Letterhead warns you; confirming deactivates the associated automation too, so nothing keeps sending from an outdated template. There’s no version history yet — deactivating also works as a way to archive a template you may want later.

Delete a template

Find the template in your templates gallery and delete it. Letterhead shows a confirmation dialog warning that the action can’t be undone and will turn off any connected automations — but there’s no separate step to unlink it first. Deletion goes through immediately, even if an active automation is currently using the template. (A newsletter you’ve already scheduled from the template is its own independent copy by that point, so deleting the template afterward doesn’t