Overview
Before you can design or send an email, you need to create a draft inside your Application's Templates section. This is where the look, content, and behaviour of your email all come together.
The send settings cover the practical side of things — who the email appears to come from, what shows up in the subject line, and whether to keep an archive copy of every send. The good news? Most of these only need to be configured once per Application, and future drafts will pick up the same defaults automatically.
Open the Templates section
Drafts live inside the Templates tab of your Application. Here's how to get there.
- In the secondary navigation menu, click Applications to view a list of all available Applications.
- Double click on the auto-highlighted Application, or click the Settings icon on the right hand side of the list view to open it.
- Click the Templates tab in the Application settings.
You'll land on the Drafts view — this is where any drafts in progress show up, and where you'll add new ones.
Add a new draft
Once you're on the Drafts page, you're ready to create your first email draft.
- On the Drafts page, click Add new to open the new draft settings.
- Enter a Name for your draft. Something descriptive helps later — e.g. "Welcome email v1" or "Monthly statement notification".
- Select a Type from the dropdown. Simple - Visual Email/HTML designer is the default and suits most use cases.
- Under Channels, tick Email. You can tick SMS as well if your draft needs an SMS counterpart.
- Click Add to create the draft.
Your new draft will appear in the Drafts list, ready to be opened and built out.
Open your draft for editing
Once your draft is created, you'll see it listed under Drafts with the version number, name, and timestamp.
- Find your draft in the list.
- Click the edit icon on the right hand side of the row.
This opens the draft and takes you into the configuration screens, where you'll set up the email itself.
Set up the basics (first time only)
The first time you add a draft to an Application, you'll be asked to fill in a handful of settings before you start designing. These define how the email behaves once it's sent — and the good news is, you only need to do this once per Application. Future drafts will inherit what you set here.
You'll work through three sections: Basic settings, From, and BCC settings.
Basic settings
This is where you give your template an internal label and a short description.
- Enter a Code. The Code is used when you want to link from one template to another — for example, linking an email template to an online version of the same content. If you're not sure, "Email" is a sensible default.
- Add a Description. This is just for your own reference, so write something that'll make sense to you (and your colleagues) later.
From details
This section controls what your recipients see in the "From" line of their inbox, plus the subject line and any custom headers.
- Enter a From name. This is the display name your recipients will see — not the email address. Something like your company name or team name (e.g. "Client Services") works well.
- Enter a From address. This is the actual email address the message sends from.
- Enter a Subject line. Personalisation tokens like %%FirstName%% are supported here, so you can pull recipient details straight into the subject.
- (Optional) Add any Custom email headers if you need them. This is an advanced option that lets you add custom indexes to the email header for archive systems — most users won't need to touch it.
- Click Save if you are ready to move onto designing your template.
Heads up — Approved Domains Only
You can only send from domains that have been approved and configured in CX Platform. If you enter a sender domain that hasn't been added, you'll see an error message listing the domains available to you. Need a specific domain that's not on the list? Get in touch with your System Administrator and they can arrange to have it added.
BCC settings
BCC settings let you automatically send a copy of every email (and SMS, if you've enabled that channel) to a designated archive inbox. Handy for record-keeping or compliance.
- Tick the BCC all documents to an archive inbox checkbox if you want a copy of every send to go to your archive inbox. For SMS, this will be sent as a plain text copy via email.
- Leave it unticked if you don't need archive copies — you can always enable it later.
- Click Save if you are ready to move onto designing your template.
What's next
That's it — your draft is set up and ready to design. From here, you can jump into the visual editor to build out the look and content of your email, add personalisation tokens that pull from your data fields, and preview how it'll appear to recipients.
When you're happy with the design, you'll be able to test it, schedule it, or send it on its way.