Create Effective Campaigns Using Salesforce Email Template Builder

Nikita R.

Media-savvy content creator, with a curiosity for all Salesforce experiences.

Updated: Jan 9th, 2025

Salesforce email templates are used in campaigns to communicate with customers and leads faster than ever. They also help to maintain the look and feel of your brand within your emails so that you do not need to design them from scratch each time.

Email templates and campaigns these days can also be personalized for any target audience thanks to merge fields and segmentation features from Salesforce. For these reasons and more, join us in the article below to learn more about the Email Builder from Salesforce to create engaging communication content for your campaigns and promotions.

Create an Email Template in Salesforce

When creating email templates in Salesforce, you start to craft messages that are consistent. You can share these email templates with all your departments, so that you can deliver the same style, brand, and tone of communication across your entire organization for any campaign. When adopting to the use of email templates, your business gets to start maintaining a professional image.

So, let’s dive in and learn how to build an email template in Salesforce. We are going to focus on building a Text Email template.

1. Click on “New Email Template” in the Salesforce Builder

Start by navigating to Setup and searching for Email Templates in the Quick Find Box. Once you see it, click it and then choose Classic Email Templates. Now, you can go ahead and click on New Template > Text > Next.

You will be presented with a list of options. First, select the folder where you would like to save your email template. Then, tick the Available for Use checkbox if you want the template to be available to use. Don’t forget to give your email template a name. If you do, Salesforce will give your template a default name. You have the opportunity to change it later if you prefer. Also, ensure to type out a description for your template.

2. Add a Subject: Salesforce Email Template with Merge Fields

The next step is to begin composing the email by adding an email subject. You can further personalize your email by using merge fields in your template. To add a merge field, simply begin typing your content into the body of the email.

Then, move your cursor to the place you want to add a field and click the Insert Merge Field button. Choose the merge field you want from the ones in the list presented. These merge fields are derived from the Salesforce object the email template relates to.

If you want to start your email template by addressing the name of the person you will send it to, then choose these merge fields:

• {!Contact.FirstName}
• {!Lead.FirstName}

This way, your template will pull your contact’s or lead’s name from the object your email relates to. Then, continue to write the content of your email and click Save when you are finished.

Now, you have an email template for campaigns, and that is the power of Salesforce email automation.

3. Add Components and Customize Them in the Properties Panel

This is an optional step in creating email templates in Salesforce. You can add components and customize them by selecting an email template to edit. Now, look for the component you want in the Email Template Builder panel. Simply drag and drop the one you want on to your email. Some interesting components to choose from include:

• Text Blocks
• Images
• Buttons
• HTML

To customize the component, select it and take a look at the Properties Panel that appears. You can choose a setting that will help you customize the component, such as:

Text Alignment

Font Size

Color

Padding

Margins

Background Color

When you work with text components, you can use the Properties Panel to change the style of your font and add hyperlinks to it.

With regards to image components, you can choose a specific image by uploading it to the Email Template Builder. You can also configure your alt text for the image as well as modify its size or align it to another component in the email template.

Button components are also available to use in email templates. Salesforce lets you style the button text, the link URL, and alignment. You can also adjust your button’s style by configuring its color, border, and padding options.

Use and List New Templates in Lightning Experience and Account Engagement

You can work with many email templates in Lightning Experience and Account Engagement (previously known as Pardot). These Salesforce communication tools help to speed up marketing tasks and processes for campaigns. Here are two new template examples that you can use and list in Lightning Experience or Account Engagement.

Welcome Email Templates

These types of templates are ideal to send to customers when they subscribe to your content or purchase products and services for the first time. They give a company the chance to engage with customers in a professional manner.

First impressions count right? So, we suggest creating a welcome email template that uses positive tones in the messaging. You can also personalize the email if you have included merge fields into your template. First name or company name are good choices for merge fields in welcome email templates.

Promotion Email Templates

You shouldn’t stop communicating with customers and subscribers. You have to let them know about your special offers and promotions whenever they occur so you can boost sales.

With Lightning Experience or Account Engagement, you can add images or call-to-action buttons in your email templates. These elements increase customer engagement and give them direction on how to purchase your products or services.

Choosing The Right Salesforce Email Templates

How do you know which Salesforce Email Template to use for campaigns? Well, you need to choose the one that can communicate effectively with your target audience. This is a common dilemma for many marketing professionals trying to hit those business goals.

Let’s take a look at some points to ponder before you create templates with Salesforce’s Email Builder:

First, you need to understand why you are sending an email. Once you have a clear direction, you can choose an email template that matches your marketing goals. You can choose between some of these Salesforce email template examples:

• If the purpose of your communication is to confirm customer information, use a Transactional email template.
• When you want to communicate that your company is having a sale on products and services, choose a Promotional email template.
• For times when you want to announce news to customers or partners, use an Engagement email template.

Our next piece of advice is to understand your target audience. You can get a better understanding of who they are by using data analysis skills with segmentation methods.

When you can categorize your customers into different sections you can further personalize email templates. Designers can use information, like customer demographics or behaviors to craft email templates that relate better to that audience. This can be achieved with features like merge fields.

Classic Email Templates in Salesforce

When you want to create email templates in Salesforce, you can use the Classic Email Templates features. It can help teams to manage their communication with customers and are a popular option as they have tools to support tasks found in:

• Marketing Ventures
• Customer Service Interactions
• Transactional Reminders

As sales teams often have to communicate with customers, let’s take a look at a sales email template example from Salesforce that you can use in the real world.

In our modern era, sales professionals like to add HTML code and merge fields to email templates so that their messages can be personalized to customer preferences.

This can be achieved in Salesforce, and designers create them with the purpose of introducing products and services to customers for the sales team.

Salesforce Lightning Email Templates 

However, if you want a new way to work with email templates, use the Salesforce Lightning Email Template Builder. It has user-friendly tools and features to manage email templates.

You will also find that creating templates with the Lightning Email Builder is much easier than Classic Email Templates because the features are more intuitive.

How to Turn Your Lightning Experience Email Builder On

To enable the email template builder in Salesforce, follow these few simple steps!

1. Start by turning your Enhanced Email setting on. You can do this by going to Setup, which is found in the gear icon.
2. Use the Quick Find box to search for Enhanced Email.
3. Select the Enhanced Email setting and tick the box labeled Enhanced Email.
4. Click on the Save button

Now, you need to enable Lightning Email Templates. To do this, follow the steps below:

1. Head to the Quick Find box again and search for Lightning Email Templates.
2. Once you find it, click on it and turn on the Folders and Enhanced Sharing feature.

Next, you need to check your permissions to allow specific users to create email templates. To do this, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Quick Find box again and search for Permissions Set.
2. Once you find it, click on it, and select an existing permission set.
3. Then, select System Permissions and click on the Edit button.
4. Tick the following boxes:
   • Manage Public Lightning Email Templates
   • Manage Private Lightning Email Templates
5. Click on the Save button.
6. Now, head to Manage Assignments in your permission set and click on Add Assignments.
7. Choose the people you want to allow to use the Email Template Builder and click on the Assign button.

Related Entity Type in Email Templates from Salesforce 

Before we end the article, we need to discuss Related Entity Types. This concept is brought up especially when creating email templates in Salesforce, so it’s important that you understand what it is.

Related Entity Types refers to a Salesforce record type. These could include:

• Contacts
• Leads
• Opportunities

Email templates use these related entity types in conjunction with merge fields to pull data from Salesforce records into an email template.

Ensure you use them to make your email templates more tailored to your target audience while including dynamic content.

Reduced Manual Efforts for Email Templates with Titan Web

As we have learned, Salesforce’s builder is a powerful tool for creating custom email templates. However, there are a few limitations to this software. If you are on the market for an alternative solution or a third-party no-code app to elevate Salesforce and your marketing campaigns, we recommend Titan Web.

Our platform offers Salesforce no-code digital experiences. With Titan, you can configure the settings in your marketing project for any campaign to trigger the sending of an email from Salesforce whenever necessary.

You can use our Rich Text Editor to add content to the email body. The Rich Text Area is an editor that grants users the opportunity to enter, edit, and format text that needs to be submitted.

It has a toolbar, which provides text format options such as font family, bold, italics, alignments, and much more. It also allows you to open the source code and change the HTML manually.

All of your configurations can be set up using zero code and point-and-click functionality directly on the Titan platform. To see how to set this up, make sure to read our Configure Email Settings in Flow article.

We hope to see you soon!

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Disclaimer: The comparisons listed in this article are based on information provided by the companies online and online reviews from users. If you found a mistake, please contact us.