What Are Templates?¶

Templates¶

Templates are a means for a church to brand its emails by including items such as your church’s name, address, phone number, website URL, and a logo. We also encourage you to always include the {unsubscribe} link in the templates themselves, so each emailer does not have to remember to include it. You may also want to include the {track} and {tracklinks} codes directly in the templates.

Each ministry or special event can have it own template, especially if each has its own logo.

Email templates can be created or modified only by the system Admin or a user with EmailTemplates role. This person should have a working knowledge of HTML. While templates can be created only by certain users, the purpose is for every user that sends emails to have access to the templates he needs.

Each database will have some templates to provide a starting point for creating your own templates.

Copying Templates¶

To copy a template, open the template (by clicking on its name). Below the body of the template, click on the Clone button, change the template name if desired (by default it will be named with the orginal template name followed by ” Copy”) and save the new copy by clicking the Save Template button.

Starter Templates¶

These are the templates that are included in every database.

Empty Template

This does not contain anything. You may choose to modify a copy of this one by inserting a footer with your church’s basic information and an {unsubscribe} link. That will insure that every email that is sent by your users contains that information.

Basic Template

Below is the basic template.

Notice that this has the reason the person is receiving the email, the unsubscribe link (we recommend including that in all emails to more than just a few people) and the track code in addition to the church information. Remember that the track code only works when there is an image.

Also, you see the Template is assigned a Name, but you could also assign a Title (Subject).

The default Role is Everyone. Obviously, for your church’s basic template, you certainly want everyone to be able to use it.

Basic Newsletter Template

This is designed for you to use for your church’s newsletters. This one is formatted like a newsletter, with columns and placeholders for images. You can insert your logo and save the template for use with all of the newsletters that are sent for your church through TouchPoint. Or, you may want to save several newsletter templates - one for each ministry.

Here is the starter newsletter template.

Technical Knowledge about Templates¶

The person creating your templates should be familiar with HTML and CSS Styles. It is beyond the scope of our job to teach you how to do this, but there are tons of free materials online. Plus you can examine our templates to get some idea of how it is done.

Actually, email templates can be harder than a basic web page, because you have to consider how your recipients are going to be viewing the newsletter. Many will be using Outlook which is not a browser, but it does a fairly good job of displaying a Web page type of email, if you stick to the basics and use tables to lay things out.

Notes on Templates Created with the Original Editor¶

We currently offer two email editors. One editor is accessed by clicking Use Mobile Responsive when creating a template. If that setting is not clicked, the template is created using the other editor, which is referred to below as the original editor. The editor used for an individual email is determined by which editor was used to create the template used for that email.

Basically, the magic for TouchPoint’s email templates created with the original editor is a div tag with the bvedit attribute. That allows the division/section to be editable so users can insert their own content. If you enter the exact text Click here to edit content in the editable body of the email of your template, when the sender clicks inside the body, that text will disappear, leaving a blank slate for him to enter his content.

Getting Started¶

Go to Administration > Communications > Email Templates and select the Email Templates tab. This is where you can choose to either edit an existing template or to create a New Email Template. This is also where you can assign the user role to a template to restrict who can use it. The Saved Drafts tab is where you may access drafts that have been saved.

The Basic Newsletter Template has the role ScheduleEmails associated with it. That means that only a user with that role or an Admin will be able to use that Template, unless you remove or change the role.

Creating Templates with Email Builder¶

Email Builder enforces a mobile-responsive design, so your emails will look great on a wide variety of devices. To use this editor for your template creation, after clicking the New Email Template button, check the box for Use Mobile Responsive WYSIWYG. Enter a name for the template and, if desired, select a role. Only users with the selected role will be able to use the template.

This will bring up the Email Builder editor window, where you can begin creating the new template. We recommend you begin laying out the basic design of the template by first dragging columns onto the work area. You can specify the number of columns for each row. Once you have the basic layout, drag the element that you want in each panel: text, image, button, or HTML. Below is the editor when it first comes up:

At any time during template creation, you can preview how it will look on either a desktop or on a mobile device, using the buttons on the bottom, left corner. (This button cluster also includes Undo and Redo buttons.) Below is an example image of a mobile device preview.

Take note also of the two buttons in the upper, right corner of the editor. The Email Replacement Codes button will open, for your reference, a page with our help article on replacement codes. The Insert Special Link button will generate one of the special links available in TouchPoint, such as Register links, Vote links, etc. The URL for the link will be created and copied to the clipboard. You will then need to paste it into the appropriate place (e.g., a button link URL or a link created while editing text).

One utility of templates is that they ensure the proper elements are included in all emails sent by your staff and lay leaders. So don’t forget to include a footer for the template with all the required components. For more on this see Email Footers.

Modifying the Supplied Example Template¶

On your database has been placed a sample mobile-responsive template named “Example Template”, which you can use as a model to build your own templates with the Email Builder. You can also customize and rename the Example Template to make it appropriate for your use. Below are some suggestions for the various elements of the template:

The Top Image

With the template in the editor, click in the placeholder rectangle for the image. In the right panel will be tools for uploading and configuring the image. Click on the Upload Image button to load your own logo or image. An appropriately-sized image will approximate the placeholder size: 500 x 100 pixels.

Headline, Body, and Button

These three elements, immediately below the top image should likely be modified for each individual email, so you either leave them as they are or provide your own instructions within these elements.

Social Media Icons

If your church has Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, or Twitter accounts, you can configure the images in this section as links to your social media accounts. For each icon, click on the image. Then, in the right panel, find the Action section and enter the appropriate URL in the Image Link.

Hint

A resource for finding icons like these is the website https://icons8.com/.

Church Website

To modify this with your own church website address, click on the hyperlink to bring up the text formatting menu. Then, in the menu, click on the link icon. Modify the URL, text to display, and title. Then click Ok.

Footer

Modify the footer with your own information. But we encourage you to retain all three important components in the sample footer:

• Clearly state why the recipient is receiving emails from your church

• Provide a way for the recipient to unsubscribe easily

• Include the physical address for your church

See also

Email Footers

Email Templates and Roles¶

Each template can be assign a user role. The default is Everyone, but you may want to restrict certain templates by assigning a different user role.

Existing Roles

You can use existing user roles and assign those to certain templates. For example, you want only those with Finance role to use the template you create that has a footer with links to your online giving page, so you assign the role Finance to that template. Or you may create a template for Membership, for those staff members working in that ministry to use. You can also have templates that are open to most of your staff, but not lay leaders. So you could limit the template to those with Edit role.

Create New Roles

You can create roles to use just for locking down templates if you need to restrict the template more by the ministry rather than the standard user roles.

Be sure to create the role, assign it to those who need it, and then select that role for the template.

See also

New Users And Roles

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