Marketing Email Templates

Updated 20 Oct 2026 by Haydn

In this article group

Marketing email templates are the reusable emails your campaigns send. You build them from blocks, personalise them with partner variables, and set them Live so campaigns can use them.

You can also share a template with partners, so they can send your email from their own marketing rather than writing their own version of it.

Where to find it: Go to Campaigns, then the Templates tab. Click New Template to create one.

Who can use this: Anyone on your team with access to Campaigns. Requires the Marketing module, which Journeybee support enables for you.

The editor

The template editor has three tabs.

Content

Drag blocks from the sidebar onto the canvas and click each one to configure it. The sidebar groups them: Layout first (Columns (side by side), Divider, Spacer), then Content (Header, Footer, Text, Button, Resource link), Media (Image, Video) and Interactive (Social).

What you build is compiled to email-safe HTML, so it holds together in Outlook and the other clients that do not render modern CSS. That is also why the block set is deliberately limited: anything more elaborate would not survive the trip.

A few block features that are easy to miss:

Text colour: select text in a text block and use the Text color control on the toolbar — pick a swatch, type a hex code, or choose Reset color.
Brand colour swatches: every colour picker in the editor offers your company's brand colours, set once under Settings, then Branding. See Branding.
Image links and alignment: an image, including one inside a column, takes an Image Link — a web address (https://) or an email link (mailto:) — and a Horizontal Alignment of Left, Center or Right.
Columns (side by side): places content next to each other in two or three columns. The Column Layout dropdown offers Two equal columns, Narrow + wide, Wide + narrow, Small + large, Large + small and Three equal columns. Changing the layout keeps your content: text from a removed column merges into the last column, and a removed image or button comes back if you widen the layout again.
Emojis: an emoji in a text block is sent as itself, so what you see is what the recipient gets.
Resource link: an image, title and button that link to one of your live partner resources or certifications — pick which in the block's settings. Each recipient's link opens the content in their own portal (they sign in if needed). A Resource link block with nothing chosen shows a placeholder while you edit and is simply left out of the sent email; the editor warns you.

Preview

Shows the rendered email, with a toggle between desktop and mobile. Check mobile properly. Most partner contacts read email on a phone, and a two-column layout that looks smart on a laptop often stacks badly.

Settings

Name: your internal name for the template.
Subject: the email subject line.
Live: Live or Draft. Only Live templates can be selected in a campaign.
Partner visible: lets partners see and use the template in their own marketing.
Danger zone: archive or restore.

Personalisation

Type {{ in a text block to open the variable menu. Variables are replaced with each recipient's own details when the email is sent, so one template produces a personalised email per partner.

The same menu also offers Link to..., which inserts a link to a live partner resource or certification as a chip. Each recipient's link opens that content in their own portal — see Dynamic Content Variables.

The full list of available variables, including your own custom fields, is in Dynamic Content Variables.

Two habits worth having: always give a variable a sensible fallback in the surrounding sentence, and never put a variable in the subject line without checking the preview. "Hi ," is a worse opening than "Hi there,".

Using a template in a campaign

Set the template Live, then select it in a campaign's Email module. See Creating a Campaign.

Send a test to yourself from the campaign before the real send. The preview shows the layout; a test send shows you what actually lands in an inbox, including how the subject line and sender name read.

At send time, recipients who have unsubscribed are removed automatically, and every email carries an unsubscribe link. You do not have to maintain a suppression list yourself.

You can also send a template to individual contacts from a partner's page: open Compose Email on the partner and pick it under Campaign templates. A template does not need to be Live for this, so it is also a handy way to try a draft on a real inbox. See Emailing Partners.

Turning on Partner visible makes a template available to partners.

Which of your partner-visible templates a given campaign exposes is then chosen in that campaign's Templates module, under Available Templates. Only Live templates appear there.

This is how you get consistent messaging out through partners without writing it for each of them.

Managing templates

Duplicate: the fastest way to build a variant. Click the copy icon on the template's row in the Templates list, or Duplicate in the editor toolbar. The copy is named "Copy of …", opens as a Draft, and keeps the content, subject, channel and partner visibility of the original. Archived templates cannot be duplicated.
Archive: hides the template from the active list. An archived template cannot be sent, and the editor tells you so, but it can be restored from the Settings tab at any time.

Troubleshooting

My template is not selectable in a campaign

Only Live templates appear. Check the Settings tab, and check the template is not archived.

The campaign says there are no live templates

You have no Live template yet. Create one in the template editor and set it Live first.

A variable came out blank

That partner has no value for it. Blank tier, category or custom field renders as nothing, so write the sentence to survive it.

The email looks wrong in Outlook

Check the mobile preview and simplify the layout. Stick to the supplied blocks; anything hand-crafted is the usual cause.

Partners cannot see a template I shared

Two things are needed: Partner visible on the template, and the template selected under Available Templates in the campaign's Templates module.

I archived a template by mistake

Open it and use Unarchive Template in the Settings tab. Nothing is lost.

Good to know

Duplicate rather than rebuild. Most of your emails are variations on two or three layouts.
Test on mobile, not just desktop.
Archive old templates instead of deleting, so you can bring back a layout that worked.
Unsubscribes are handled for you: suppressed recipients are dropped at send time and every email carries an opt-out link.
The sent email now matches the preview's spacing closely — margins inside blocks are baked in and trailing empty lines are dropped — so an existing template may look slightly tighter than it used to.

Creating a Campaign: sending a template to partners.
Dynamic Content Variables: every variable you can insert.
Branding: the brand colours offered in the editor's colour pickers.
Marketing Campaigns: the Campaigns page and its tabs.
Emailing Partners: one-off emails to a partner's contacts.