As your members engage across your communities and your admins manage their operation, the system automatically sends email messages, based on these various activities. For example, when a member is added to the community, that new member is notified via email. When an automation rule has completed processing, an alert email is sent to the Super Admin who scheduled it. These system-generated messages are based on a set of pre-configured, default templates.

While the pre-populated content in these templates is generally sufficient, Super Admins can modify them (for example, update the language or customize the formatting). These templates can be formatted in HTML and plain text, though the plain text version is often not necessary because most email clients automatically display HTML content as plain text.

ACCESSIBILITY: Any time you're designing webpage or email-based content, it's more important than ever to keep modern accessibility principles in mind. Because this article touches on content design, we recommend referring to Best Practices - Accessibility and its associated resources.

Access your system templates

To access your templates:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Email > Email Management > Email Templates.

NOTE: Refer to Appendix A - Email template categories for descriptions of the types of email templates in each category.

Manage system templates

NOTE: Some templates have an Edit option only. These are system email templates that cannot be deleted or copied because they are tied to actions/behaviors in the system.

1. Click the Category dropdown and select a category to view its templates.
2. Click a template's Edit button.

On the edit-template page, you can make changes like enabling/disabling the template and controlling which Community Admins can use the template. More than likely, though, you'll just want to update text in the HTML and Text versions of the email.

3. After making your changes, click Save at the bottom of the page.

WARNING: While Super Admins can modify the default community-based email templates, we recommend keeping edits to a minimum—specifically, the links should not be altered. These defaults are system wide, and have evolved over time to both provide the information sought by new members and to answer their questions. These links (e.g., the links to accept or reject community invitations) are critical to the function of your communities.

Create and edit email templates

In addition to the pre-loaded system email templates, you can create your own. You can also edit the system templates and any custom templates that have been created in your account.

See the articles listed below to learn how to create, edit, and manage Community Member- and Event-specific email templates.

• Create Community Member Email Templates
• Manage Event Email Templates

NOTE: Although these articles are specific to Community Member and Event email templates, the instructions are applicable because the create and edit processes are the same for all email templates.

Use and understand variables

When editing or creating a template, you can use variables to provide individualized and community-specific content and links to each recipient. These variables are replaced with the appropriate information when the email is sent, allowing you to easily include information that's automatically personalized for each recipient (e.g., automatically inserting each user's first name). Variables allow you to greet recipients by name and include other member-specific links and text.

The default templates for community invitations and join messages use variables which are then replaced with community-specific links when a message is sent. The variables make these templates applicable to all communities because each community's unique information gets automatically inserted. If you create templates to serve single communities, be sure to use specific links to any applicable community pages and Microsite pages.

Adding variables

You can only add variables in the HTML editor.

IMPORTANT: When mail merge variables are used in a message, they must exactly match how they appear in each template. Note the capitalization and absence of spaces and punctuation. If the syntax or structure of a variable is changed, the variable will not populate a value in the message.

To add variables:

1. Place your cursor where you want to insert the variable and click the Mail merge variable selector button.
2. Expand the categories to access the variables.
3. When you locate the variable that you want to insert, click it to add it to your message.

TIP: Variables do function in the Text version, and you can paste them there.

Recommended variables

There are four categories of variables:

• Contact
• Tenant
• Community
• Community Member

The Contact and Community categories offer the best options for admins; the other two include numerous variables that Community and Super Admins might never use.

The most commonly used variables are listed below. The bold text in the examples represents the contact- and community-specific information that replaced the variable.

Appendix A - Email template categories

The following table describes the types of email templates in each category.