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Every email your brand sends to a customer starts from a template in Settings → Apps → Emails: the order confirmation after a purchase, a renewal receipt, a members area login code, a course welcome email. This page explains what you see there. To design an email, see Building an email.

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The template list

Open Settings → Apps → Emails. Each row is one template: The tabs above the list filter it: All, Orders, Subscriptions, Members and login, Courses and Custom. Custom holds every template that is not a built-in event default, including the ones made for a campaign or an automation. Search and sort (recently updated, last sent, name, newest) sit next to the tabs. Where Emails sits. For most brands, Emails is under Settings → Apps → Emails and opens this template list. A brand with email campaigns turned on gets Campaigns as its own entry in the main sidebar instead. It opens on the Campaigns list, with an Email group beside it holding Templates, Suppression list and Settings. A campaign can carry A/B versions that are tested on a small group first: see A/B testing a campaign. Every email that went out is listed in Settings → Logs → Email Logs. The … menu at the top right of the template list links to the places that decide how email leaves your brand:
  • Sending settings: your SMTP server and the default sender name and address, in Settings → Emailing.
  • Email integrations: Amazon SES, Postmark, Brevo, Resend, Mailgun, SendGrid and Mailrelay, in Apps → Integrations. See Email Sending Accounts.

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Template types

The type of a template (its Variable scope in the template settings) decides two things: which event sends it, and which variables it can use. Your brand gets a Default template for each standard event when it first needs one, not when the brand is created:
  • Orders and Subscriptions: when you add the first merchant whose payments run through ElasticFunnels (NMI, Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.Net, Klarna, or a Test merchant). BuyGoods, ClickBank, JVZoo, Digistore24 and Shopify send their own receipts, so they do not add them.
  • Members and login: when you set up the members login (the sign-in method, or a page that requires login), or create a course.
  • Courses: when you create your first course.
If an email has to go out before its default exists (a shipped email for a network merchant with fulfillment, for example), the default is created at that moment and the email is sent. You can edit a default, and you can duplicate it to make a variant (a different receipt for one merchant, for example), but you cannot delete it. Card expiring, Final dunning and Refund request have templates, but no event sends them yet. New brands do not get them; brands that already have them keep them.

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Is a template in use?

The Status column answers the question “does a customer ever get this?” with the same rules the sending jobs use: The reason is printed next to the status, for example “Sends for NMI, Stripe” or “Not sent for BuyGoods, ClickBank: their checkout emails its own receipt”. Hover the reason (or tab to it, or tap it on a phone) to open a card that lists every merchant, course, campaign and automation that uses the template, one per row: whether it sends there, its name (click it to open it) and why, for example “BuyGoods: Not sent: its checkout sends its own receipt”. The email builder’s info panel shows the same list. To see what a template actually sent, open its row menu and click Open send logs. That opens Settings → Logs → Email Logs filtered to the template. The usual reasons a template is not sending:
  • The merchant’s checkout sends its own receipt. ElasticFunnels sends order and subscription emails for payments that run through your own gateways (NMI, Stripe, PayPal, Klarna, Authorize.Net). BuyGoods, ClickBank, Digistore24, JVZoo and Shopify email their own receipts, so no order email is sent for those merchants.
  • Another template is picked. A merchant with its own template selected sends that one instead of the default, and the row names it.
  • There is no sending account for that merchant. See Who sends your email.
  • Shipped emails need a fulfillment or order sync integration on the merchant, because that is what marks an order as shipped.
  • Renewal reminders go out only for merchants that have a renewal reminder template picked on their Email tab.
  • Login emails follow the members area login mode, and use your template only when the brand has its own SMTP server. Without one, ElasticFunnels sends its standard login email.
  • Campaign and automation templates count as sending while the campaign is going out or the automation is on.
Set Show to In use to hide every template that nothing sends today. All lists every template.

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Transactional emails and campaigns

Transactional emails are the ones a customer triggers: a receipt, a shipping notice, a login code. Each goes to one person because of something that person did, and it is sent whether or not they agreed to marketing email. Almost everything in the template list is transactional. Campaigns are newsletters and promotions you send to many people at once: all customers, one of your audiences, a form collection or a list of addresses you paste. Open Campaigns in the sidebar to write one. The steps, from audience to report, are on Email campaigns. A campaign goes to everyone in its audience except people who said no to email (they saw the email opt-in box at checkout and left it unticked), unsubscribed, bounced or marked an earlier email as spam. Sales from networks such as BuyGoods or ClickBank, and orders from checkouts without the box, are included. See Privacy & consent for how the box is recorded. You are responsible for having permission to email the people you send campaigns to. A new campaign starts on a ready-made layout instead of an empty page. How to edit it is on Building an email.

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Who sends your email

ElasticFunnels sends your email through an account you own: your SMTP server (Settings → Emailing) or an email integration: Amazon SES, Postmark, Brevo, Resend, Mailgun, SendGrid or Mailrelay (Email Sending Accounts). Each kind of email has one rule for which account sends it: A paused or disabled integration never sends anything, so it counts as no account. The full setup is on Sending Setup.

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Create a template

1

Click Create email

In the template list (Settings → Apps → Emails), click Create email.
2

Fill in the basics

Give it a Name (only you see it), a Subject and an optional Preview text, the line most inboxes show after the subject. From name, From email and Reply-to apply when the email goes through an email integration. When your brand sends over SMTP, the sender set in Settings → Emailing is used instead.
3

Pick the type

Variable scope sets the type, and with it the variables you can use. Leave it on General for an email that no event sends on its own.
4

Pick the editor

Visual Builder to design the email by dragging blocks, or Code Editor to write the HTML yourself.
5

Save, then design it

Click Save, then click the template’s name in the list. The editor opens in a new tab. See Building an email.
To make a template send for orders or subscriptions, pick it on the merchant’s Email tab. See Sending Setup.

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Row actions

The menu at the end of each row has:
  • Builder or Code: open the editor in a new tab.
  • Name, subject and sender: the template settings, with its versions.
  • Send test: sends the template to an address you type.
  • Duplicate: a copy you can change freely. Duplicate a default to try different copy without touching the one that sends.
  • Delete: removes a template you made. Merchants that had picked it fall back to the brand default. Defaults cannot be deleted.

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Versions

When you save a template with a changed subject, preview text, sender, reply-to address or content, the previous content is kept as a read-only version and the template moves to the next version number. Renaming the template does not make a new version. Open Name, subject and sender and look under Versions. Click View on a version to read its subject, sender and body. There is no restore button: to go back, copy what you need from the old version into the template and save. Each send records the template and the version it used, so the email log shows exactly which copy went out, for example Receipt · version 3, with Show what was sent. A campaign keeps the version it had when it started sending: editing the template while it goes out changes later sends, not the rest of that campaign.