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.
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.

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Letterhead warns you; confirming deactivates the associated automation too, so nothing keeps sending from an outdated template.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. If the template is in use by scheduled newsletters or active automations, you’ll be prompted to unlink it first.

You can also ask Penpal, Letterhead’s assistant, to do it — open it from the speech-bubble button in the top bar, and ask which templates you have, then tell it which one to delete. That’s often quicker when you’re already in a conversation, with three things worth knowing:

• You won’t get the unlink prompt. Deleting through Penpal goes ahead rather than stopping to ask first. If an automation was using that template, Letterhead switches that automation off, stops any welcome emails running from it, and emails your team to say so.
• Check the name before you confirm. If your wording could match more than one template, Penpal will ask which you mean — worth answering carefully, because deleting a template isn’t something you can undo yourself.
• You’ll need company-level access. If your account is limited to particular channels, Penpal will tell you it can’t remove the template rather than doing it.

Asking Penpal to delete a template is still rolling out, so you may not see it on your account yet.

FAQs

Can I edit a template used in an automation? Yes — deactivate, edit, reactivate. Changes affect future sends only.

Can I share templates across automations or segments? Yes. Templates aren’t locked to a specific automation or segment.

Next steps

Ready to send? See How do I create and schedule a newsletter from a template?