The Email Builder is the portion of GEVME which allows you to craft the content of your email. The email builder is used in three places in GEVME, namely:
- In Campaigns
2. In the Composer, after you load a template:
3. In Template, you can create your own email template:
To start crafting your email using the email builder, click on the green Add content button:
This will reveal the email widgets, which are explained in detail below:
UI Overview and Basic Widget Behavior
Before going into the details of each widget, it's useful to understand the basic way that the email widgets work and the possible actions on them.
1. Click on a widget from the widget selector to add it to your email.
2. Once added to your email, each widget is an independent block of content, distinct from the other widgets. For example, the diagram below represents the social widget having been added:
3. Adding more widgets will thus be represented by something like this:
4. Each widget can then be interacted with independently. To interact with a widget, hover over it to reveal the control buttons, then click on the corresponding button.
5. The control buttons and possible actions are:
- Edit
Click the first Edit icon to edit the content of the widget. - Duplicate
Click the second Duplicate icon to make a copy of the widget. - Delete
Click the Delete icon to delete the widget. - Move
Click, hold and drag the Move icon up and down to re-order sequence of the widget.
The rest of this article will describe each widget.
The Text Widget
There are two options under the Text widget:
1. Text
Choose this to simply add text to your email. Note that the text is rich text and can be customized and formatted using the built-in rich text editor. Editing a text widget will reveal the rich text editor and other text widget settings:
Note: Image upload with 1 allows maximum file size of 2MB, whereas file upload with 2 allows maximum file size of 5MB.
Files uploaded to Gevme are purged periodically.
2. Raw HTML Block
Choose HTML in case you want to insert a block of raw HTML code to your email.
The Image Widget
Choose the Image widget to add an image to your email. Please note that your image must be 550 px wide in order to appear correctly. The height of the image does not matter. Maximum image file size is 2MB.
Important Note:
The images have to be resized to the exact size and upload in the eDM for the images to be rendered correctly on Outlook.
The Content Block Widget
The Content Block widget is a special type of widget which allows you to add preconfigured blocks of content to your email.
1. Header
As its name implies, the header block is meant to be used at the top of your email (even through you can use it in whichever way you see fit). The header block contains your event name, date, venue and logo.
2. Vertical Block
The vertical block consists of columns of content, as shown above. The number of columns can be customized (maximum allowed is three) and images can be inserted at the top of each column.
3. Horizontal Block
The horizontal block consists of rows of content, as shown above. The number of rows can be customized (maximum allowed is five) and images can be inserted on the left of each row.
4. Footer Block
The footer block contains a predefined copyright notice text with your event name, as well as an unsubscribe link.
The Call-To-Action Widget
The Call To Action widget allows you to add CTA buttons with specific links to your email. There are 3 options for you to choose:
1. Call To Action button
This will add a CTA button linking to your event page for participants to register. Editing the CTA widget allows you to customize the button further, e.g. the text used on the button, the text colour, button colour, etc.
2. Take Survey button
Choose this option if you want to add a link to a survey that you would have created.
3. Generic CTA button
Choose this option to add a generic CTA button with a custom link of your own choosing.
Note: If you would have noticed, all 3 types of buttons are actually making use of the same CTA widget, just that for each case, the parameters are configured differently to fit a particular purpose.
The Social Widget
The Social widget is a quick way for you to add social buttons to your email. By default, the widget contains only the Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn buttons, but many more can be added and configured by editing the widget. Additionally, the alignment, size and text used for the icons can also be customized.
Note:
1. Always use web fonts so that the content will be rendered on all email clients, because they're the default fonts that are found mostly on different computers, devices, and operating systems.
** To ensure that the EDM layout is rendered correctly, do test the EDM received on various email providers (various devices/browsers/apps) that you and your participants commonly use.
Related Articles:
Video Guide on how to customise an email template in Gevme