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A template is a reusable email body — header, hero image, body copy, CTA, footer — that you bind to a campaign or sequence step at send time. Build it once, ship it many times. Find templates at /dashboard/marketing/email/templates. When you open Templates, you land on a gallery view of every template in your account. Each card shows:
  • A live thumbnail (rendered by the same engine that sends real mail).
  • Name and last-edited timestamp.
  • A small badge for the template kind: transactional, newsletter, promo, nurture, etc.
Click any card to open the editor. New accounts ship with a starter set — newsletter, welcome, product launch, re-engagement — that you can duplicate and customize.

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Editing a template

The editor is split:
  • Left — the HTML source (or a structured block builder, if your account is on the visual builder beta).
  • Right — a live preview that re-renders on every keystroke. Toggle between desktop, mobile, and dark mode to catch rendering issues.
Saving a template never affects in-flight campaigns — they capture the template version at send time. To roll out a change to a sequence, edit the template and the next enrolled contact will get the new version.

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Variables and personalization

Templates use Liquid-style double-brace syntax for variables: 
<p>Hi {{contact.first_name | default: "there"}},</p>
<p>Your account at {{contact.company | default: "Acme"}} just hit {{contact.usage_count}} sends this month.</p>
Available namespaces:
  • contact.* — any field on the recipient’s CRM record (first name, company, custom properties).
  • account.* — your sending account info (company name, support email, address).
  • campaign.* — campaign-level metadata (subject, send date) — useful in headers like “View this email in your browser”.
  • unsubscribe_url — automatically populated; required by RFC 8058 and rendered in the footer.
Always provide a default: fallback for any variable that isn’t guaranteed to exist on every contact. A blank “Hi ,” is the fastest way to look like spam.

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The quality check

Before you save, click Quality check. It scans the template and reports:
  • Missing alt text on <img> tags — screen readers and image-blocked clients show alt text instead.
  • Low contrast — body text against the background needs to clear WCAG AA (4.5:1 for normal text).
  • Oversized images — flags any image over 500KB; some clients clip large emails.
  • Broken links — does an HTTP HEAD against every href and reports 4xx/5xx.
  • Spammy subject patterns — only runs when the template carries a default subject; flags ALL CAPS, excessive !, currency symbols, urgency language.
  • Missing unsubscribe link — blocks save if absent. Hiveku auto-injects a footer link if your template doesn’t include one, but the coach flags it for visibility.
  • Plain-text alternative — Hiveku auto-generates a plain-text version, but you can override it.
You can save with warnings — the quality check is advisory unless something blocks delivery (no unsubscribe, broken send-from variable).

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Test send

Same as on a campaign — fire a single render to your address using a sample contact. The test send uses a real CRM contact you pick (or a synthetic one), so personalization gets exercised end-to-end.

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Duplicating and versioning

Click Duplicate on any template card to start a new template from the existing one. There’s no formal version history per template, so the duplicate-and-edit pattern is what you use for big design changes — keep the old one around until you’re confident in the new one. Filter the gallery by:
  • Kind — newsletter, promo, nurture, transactional.
  • Status — draft, published, archived.
  • Last used in campaign — find the template you sent two months ago.
  • Search — name and subject text.
Archive templates you don’t use anymore. They stay readable in historical campaign reports but disappear from pickers.

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Working with the AI coach

The coach is template-aware:
  • “Draft a newsletter template using our brand colors and three story slots” — generates a starting design pulling color tokens from the branding memory domain.
  • “Update this template to use the new CTA button color” — does targeted edits without rewriting the whole thing.
  • “Run a quality check on this template and explain each warning” — runs the same check above and walks through fixes.
The coach respects the email-subject-length-guardrails rule, so it’ll never set a default subject longer than 60 characters without flagging it.

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Troubleshooting

Two common causes:
  • Variable name misspelled — {{contact.firstname}} won’t resolve; the field is first_name.
  • Test contact missing the property — pick a real CRM contact that has the field populated.
Some Outlook builds (especially Outlook 2016 desktop) handle CSS very differently from web clients. Preview the desktop tab and look for layout shifts. The quality check warns about CSS properties known to break in Outlook.
Resize to under 500KB or convert to WebP/JPEG with appropriate compression. Hiveku doesn’t host images for you — point to a public CDN or Hiveku Storage URL.
The auto-generator converts HTML to text using a simple stripping pass. For complex layouts, override the plain-text body manually — the editor has a separate tab for it.

Campaigns

Bind a template to a one-off broadcast.

Sequences

Use templates as steps in a drip flow.