Email Templates and Email Campaigns: What Is the Difference?

The Marketing > Emails area has two related sections. Understanding the difference makes it easier to work efficiently.

Templates

A template is a reusable design. Think of it as a preset for a newsletter, a promotion or a welcome email. You can include your logo, colors, regular images, videos and recurring text, then reuse the layout whenever you need it. You can build your own or start from the template library.

Campaigns

A campaign is an actual email you send. You choose a template (or start blank), customize it for the occasion, pick the audience and send or schedule it. The audience can be a single contact, a Smart List, a segment or contacts with a certain tag.

How they work together

1. Build a template once.
2. Create a campaign and select that template.
3. Adjust the content for this send.
4. Send or schedule it.

Editing a campaign only changes that campaign. Editing the template does not change campaigns already built from it.

Reusing campaigns

If you send something similar regularly, clone an earlier campaign instead of starting over. You can still change any part before sending.

Quick guide

In the builder you can duplicate, delete and rearrange content blocks easily in either case.

Good to know: Put the elements that never change, such as your footer and logo, in the template and leave the campaign for the message that does.