One would imagine that email is dead, but nothing can be further from the truth - email is still possibly the best and most robust channel to reach and inform and update a majority of Internet users. Nothing comes close to high quality transactional mail, esp coupled with superb search as normally provided by every email provider now.
So with that in mind, we decided to put some effort into refreshing existing email templates and create a new templating engine.
Email templates are getting some love
A variety of responsive, transactional #EmailTemplates are in use on each network, which are delivered based on events triggered by a member. Some examples: Signup verification email, welcome email post successful signup, Invite to network, Share content, Event registration, Forgot password and so on
The current set of templates were created in Jan 2021 and have served us well this past year, but we need fancier stuff now... well, coz its almost 2022 🥂
So the design of the templates have been refreshed & harmonized, they use the network's primary color and contain the Network site's short description in the footer. Where required, they also switch from 2 columns to single column on Mobile screens!
The welcome mail in particular also contains links to the social media accounts configured on the network essentials tab under Pro dashboard. No other email template carries links to social media accounts.
Hint: if you haven't made full use of the Network site short description field on your network, please do that right away. Not only is it good for SEO, it also appears in all the email templates.
PS: Descriptions like "XYZ site on the net" just don't cut it. There are 200 characters - use it well.
All the earlier templates have not undergone the transformation yet - its happening in stages.
Editable email templates, oh yeah
We've experimented with allowing editing of email templates earlier - but that was an all or nothing approach. Ie Network Heroes could choose to replace the entire template HTML with a custom one they've cooked up themselves - either hand coded or via some fine tools. But this approach had many issues:
- Creating email templates is not for the faint of heart. It really is rocket science and creating high quality templates that render well across different devices and clients is a big deal.
- If a Network decides to replace templates, they have to replace ALL templates in order to maintain the same look and feel - this is a tall order. Imagine needing to understand our template process and create a dozen templates with variables embedded. Not happening.
- Then of course there's a question of security - emails are delivered from a Maincross domain. What if the custom email template contains something that is malicious, even if inserted inadvertently?
Bearing these in mind, we decided to kill the earlier feature and create something that works out-of-the-box, can be quickly customized especially by a non-tech person, and is robust.
🥁 Voila, I give you our own custom email template feature
The template look and feel and dynamic aspects are taken care by us, while the Network gets to modify the body of the email as they like. Read more in the help article.
I believe this is the best of both worlds:
- We do the heavy lifting via a base template which works for all Networks out of the box. Updates and upgrades to the base template are automatically made available to all.
- The custom template body is created by the Network and merged with the base template to create the final template that is in use.
Editable email templates are in beta at the moment. We've opened this feature out on some networks only. If you'd like to turn this on for your Network, do let us know.
What's next?
First we'll upgrade all the existing templates to the new design and roll these out across all the Networks.
Then we'll allow the ability to create new templates, since currently only the existing transactional templates can be edited. This is the first step towards a large feature that is being planned out - newsletters and marketing campaigns, both of which require non-transactional templates to be created.
While the custom template feature is quite perfect for transactional mails, we would need a more powerful editor for creating non-transactional emails. We hope to release a drag and drop email editor early next year.