# Templates and the block email builder

> Set up a brand kit, design an email with drag-and-drop blocks, personalize it with Liquid, and save it as a template you reuse.

Source: https://sendbroadcast.net/university/email-marketing/templates-and-block-builder

Good design is not decoration. It makes your email easy to read and recognizably yours. In this lesson you set up a brand kit once, build an email with blocks, personalize it, and save it as a template so the next email takes minutes.

## Three ways to write an email

When you create a broadcast, a template or a sequence email, Broadcast offers three editors:

- **Rich Text**: a visual editor with a formatting toolbar. Best for plain, letter-style newsletters.
- **HTML**: full code control, for your own designs.
- **Drag and drop**: the block editor. You build the layout from blocks, with no HTML.

The block editor renders your design on the server into table-based HTML with inline styles. What you see on the canvas is what is sent, and it holds up in Outlook, Gmail and Apple Mail. This lesson focuses on it.

## Step 1: Set up the brand kit

Go to **Settings → Brand Kit**. Set your logo and its width, your website, your social links, your colours and your font. A sample email on the right follows every change.

![The Brand Kit page with logo, website and social links fields on the left and a live preview email on the right](https://sendbroadcast.net/assets/docs/university/brand-kit-21e58147.png)

The top of the Brand Kit page.

Every new block email starts from the brand kit, and three blocks read from it directly. The **Brand header** shows your logo, linked to your website. The **Footer** shows your sender name, physical address and unsubscribe link. **Social links** shows your profiles. Change the brand kit, and every draft picks up the new colours the next time it is saved. Emails already sent keep their HTML.

![The Brand Kit page at Typography and layout and Where to use this brand kit, with a live preview email on the right](https://sendbroadcast.net/assets/docs/block-email-builder/brand-kit-where-to-use-189e9a3f.png)

The sample email on the right follows every change.

Fonts are limited to stacks every mail client can render. Custom web fonts do not work in email.

## Step 2: Build the email

Create a new broadcast and choose **Drag and drop**. Pick a layout: **Blank**, or one of the ready-made layouts such as a newsletter or a product launch. Each one starts in your brand kit.

The editor has three panes:

1. **Blocks** on the left. Drag a block onto the email, or click it to add it after the selected block.
2. **The canvas** in the middle. Click a block to select it. Its toolbar moves, duplicates or deletes it.
3. **The inspector** on the right. It shows the selected block's settings, or the email's name, subject and preview text when nothing is selected.

![The block editor with the block list on the left, an email on the canvas and the selected text block settings on the right](https://sendbroadcast.net/assets/docs/block-email-builder/link-colour-ad2b5228.png)

The three panes. A Text block is selected, so the inspector shows its settings.

The editor saves as you go. Above the canvas, switch to the mobile width to check how the email looks on a phone. **Columns** blocks stack on phones, so check them there.

A few block notes. The **Button** block renders correctly in Outlook. The **Video** block is a linked thumbnail, because email clients do not play video. The **HTML** block takes your own markup, and Broadcast removes scripts and forms from it.

## Step 3: Personalize

Any text field with a tag button can insert a personalization tag, such as `{{ first_name }}` or `{{ custom_data.company }}`. Always give a fallback for fields that can be empty:

```liquid
Hi {{ first_name | default: "there" }},
```

To check the result, type a subscriber's name or email into **Preview as subscriber** above the canvas. The canvas renders with that person's real data. Choose **Sample data** to preview without a real subscriber.

For content that only some people should see, use the **Visibility** setting at the bottom of any block's inspector. Enter a tag, and only subscribers with that tag receive the block. Everyone else gets the email without it. Use it for a members-only section or a regional notice.

## Step 4: Save it as a template

Click **Save as template** above the canvas. The design appears under **Templates** with a "Drag and drop" badge.

A template stores a label, a subject, preview text and the body. When you start a broadcast or a sequence email from a template, Broadcast **copies** the content into the new email. You then change the email on its own. Editing the template later does not change emails you already made from it.

1. **Template** Label, subject, preview text, body
2. **Copy** When you start a broadcast or sequence email
3. **New email** Later template edits do not reach it

A template is a starting point. Each new email is a copy that lives on its own.

From a template's page, **Create Broadcast** starts a new broadcast filled with its content. Make separate templates for separate purposes: a weekly newsletter, an announcement, a welcome email. One generic template ends up fitting nothing.

![A template page with an email preview, and a Create Broadcast button under Quick Actions](https://sendbroadcast.net/assets/docs/templates/templates-show-e51f5dda.png)

Create Broadcast is under Quick Actions on the template page.

## The footer and unsubscribe link

A **Footer** block replaces the channel footer that Broadcast adds to other emails, so nobody sees two footers. Leave the footer block out, and the channel footer is added as usual. Either way, your marketing email carries an unsubscribe link.

## Test before you trust it

Send a test email to yourself from the broadcast's **Send now** dropdown. Read it on a phone and on a desktop. Click every link. Check that each personalization tag shows real values, not braces. See [the block email builder](/docs/block-email-builder) and [templates](/docs/templates).

## What you learned

- Set up the brand kit first. Block emails, headers, footers and social links read from it.
- The block editor sends exactly what you see, as email-safe HTML.
- Use `default:` fallbacks in Liquid, and **Visibility** to show a block to one tag.
- A template is copied into each new email. Editing it later does not change those emails.

## Quiz
1. What should you set up before you design your first block email?
   - The brand kit, under Settings → Brand Kit (correct)
   - A custom web font
   - A segment for each template
   Every new block email starts from the brand kit, and the header, footer and social links blocks read from it.
2. What does a block's Visibility setting do?
   - Hides the block on mobile
   - Hides the block in the preview only
   - Sends the block only to subscribers with a given tag (correct)
   - Hides the block from the template list
   Enter a tag in Visibility and only subscribers with that tag receive the block.
3. What happens to an email when you edit the template it was created from?
   - The email updates too
   - Nothing, the template's content was copied into the email (correct)
   - The email is sent again
   Starting from a template copies its content into the new email, which you then change on its own.