Having managed to get Early Access to ActiveCampaign’s new email designer, we thought we would give you the lowdown on it, so you know what to expect when it goes to its finally release. Please remember though that it is still in Early Access and therefore things are likely to change over the next couple of months as they collect and work through the feedback they are receiving.
Getting started
When you create a campaign, the initial steps of naming your campaign and selecting your audience are exactly the same as before. The first difference you will then see is in the choices of templates. The templates are now split out into three options:
- “Basic templates”, which are just made up of Sections and Blocks, with very little in the way of formatting;
- “Designed templates”, which are the ones you will be familiar with, containing all sorts of suggested formatting and design layouts;
- “Layouts”, which are very basic templates consisting of just a layout without any Blocks or formatting; and
- “Past campaigns” where you can select an email campaign you have previously created to use as a template.
Of course, you can also choose to “Start From Scratch” if you want a completely blank canvas.
As before, once you have decided on your design option, you will be presented with a new window where you are asked to provisionally enter the sender details and a subject line. This window looks different than it previously did, and the personalisation tags are now symbolised by a lightning bolt, rather than the person you might be used to.
Initial impressions
Our first impressions of the new designer are that it offers a really nice, clean look. It’s not that the previous one is cluttered – it isn’t – but this one is just a bit more pleasing to the eye.
What we also liked about this designer is that some of the features work right off the bat and within the designer, so you do to have to send a test email to check that it works or see what the result will be (although we would also recommend doing that). As an example, please refer to image Rollover function we discuss further down this review. It works there and then, as soon as you have set it up.
However, we found that the biggest differences in the email designer are based around two things:
Structures:
Where before you had a single space in which you could place and position your blocks, the email designer now splits the email into Sections. Using the Global Settings, outlined below, you set different attributes for each section of your email, including a Header, Footer and Content and Info Area. (To be honest, we have not yet worked out what the difference between a Content section and an Info Area is.)
To create your email, you first drop a Structure into your section. A Structure is basically the number and layout of the columns you want to have in that part of your email. Each column of the Structure consists of a Container.
You can add as many different Structures as you like to a section, meaning the layout does become very flexible. You then simply drop your design Blocks into the relevant Container within the Structure and make any changes to the settings as you did before (We will talk about the settings in a bit more detail below).
In the previous email designer, you were able to drag and place your Blocks quite freely, so above, below to the right or left of each other. This is no longer possible, because of the way the Structures are designed. However, the Structures do achieve the same thing and probably in a way that allows for a more consistent display in the recipients email client.
Most of the same Blocks are available as in the previous email designer with some differences, e.g. they now have countdown Timer, Menu and Banner blocks.
Settings:
The settings are another area where the most changes seem to have taken place.
First of all, you have the option to set your some Global Settings using “Appearance”. Here you can set message width, padding, font and line spacing for the entire email, plus colours and text sizes for the different Sections. By doing this once and saving the email as your own Template, you can then ensure all of your emails align with your brand.
However, all of the Global Settings can also be overridden on a Section, Structure, Container and Block level as well, giving you a huge amount of flexibility within the design of your campaigns. There are simply too many different settings to cover here, but things like background and text colours, spacing between Containers, links and Alt text for images, size, alignment etc. etc.
There are two fantastic additions to Images and Buttons we want to mention though, which are that you can now add Rollover/Hover effects to them!
Rollover effects are available for images, meaning you can have one image that displays within the email when it sends, but it then changes to another image when the recipient goes across it with their mouse.
For Buttons, this is the Hover effect, where you can change the colour of the button as people go to click it. To use this function, you do have to switch it on in the Global Settings though, after which the options for the new button and text colours display in the Block settings.
There are a lot of aspects that we do not have the space to cover here, but some other noteworthy features of the new email designer include:
- The ability to Hide elements on either Desktop or Mobile versions of the email. You can do this across the entire email hierarchy, so from Section, down through Structures, Containers all the way to the individual Blocks. This will allow you to design emails very specifically for your audience and how they normally engage with your campaigns.
- The inclusion of a Revision History is brilliant for larger design teams who might be working on the same campaign. It allow you to compare versions of the email, so you might make some changes, and then ask a team member or manager to review and prove the changes before sending the campaign out. You (and they) then have the option to revert to a previous version of the campaign at the click of a button.
- For those of us who like to make some tweaks to the HTML code within the email, you can now easily toggle the HTML window on and off, so you can check and add custom HTML to the email with ease. (Please only play around with the HTML code if you know what you are doing. We take no responsibility for the results.)
- ActiveCampaign has now also added an onscreen Preview function for your emails. When you select this, it opens a new browser tab which will display the desktop and mobile versions of the email alongside each other for you to check your layout and that any elements you want to hide on one or the other version of the campaign are in fact not showing. One thing to note though, you must save any changes you made to the email before using the preview, as it only displays the last saved version.
- The humble text block has had some welcome additions making to it as well, with an increased variety of fonts and the ability to add emojis. (Who doesn’t love a good emoji? ????)
A work in progress
Obviously, this new designer is still in Early Access, meaning there are still a few things that need ironing out. ActiveCampaign are actively (sorry about that) collecting feedback from people signed up to try it out, and have a solid roadmap in place to plan to make changes based on feedback over the next couple of months. Here are a couple of areas we did not find were immediately obvious to us whilst testing it.
Social Links
The Social Links block has some excellent settings to help your find the right way of displaying them. Initially we did overlook how to add other Social Icons to the list, rather than the 5 that are included by default. To do this, you need to use the + button located next to the social icons size setting. While it did not jump out at us, knowing it is there now, we would be surprised if you cannot find a social icon you need!
Spacer
They have now combined the “Line Break” and “Spacer” Block for the previous email designer into a single block. While this in and of itself is no big deal, it defaults to a solid line, and it is not immediately obvious how to change it to an empty space. There are actually two ways to do this. Firstly, just change the line thickness to “0”.
The second method is to toggle the Dynamic Spacer on. This automatically removes the line and then allows you to drag the spacer to the height you need it to be.
Background colours
Another thing that could do with being a bit clearer is how to adjust the background colour of an entire Structure or Container. Basically, you have to select one of the Blocks within your email and bring up it’s settings. You will then notice at the top of the settings window, and up-arrow and the next available part of the email designer within the hierarchy of the elements.
For example, if we click on a text box, you can see that we can change the background colour for that Block, but to access the background for the entire container, we have to select the “To Container” at the top of the settings. If we are viewing the Container setting, we can go up to the Structure, and from there to the Section itself.
To be honest, we are unsure how it might be better to display this, but it did not immediately jump out at us, so perhaps just a highlight or something.
Saving your work
And finally, there is currently no option to just save the changes you have made to the campaign without using “Save and Exit”. ActiveCampaign are aware of this and are working on an update to the Autosave which will mean the designer saves after every change you make. This will be very welcome, as otherwise having to exit and go back into the campaign could get a little tiresome.
In conclusion
So there you have it. Our whistlestop tour of the new ActiveCampaign Email Designer. Overall, we have to say that we really like it. The layout is clean, the new way of building an email is easy to familiarise yourself with and some of the new features are fantastic additions!
Yes, there are a few things that are not especially obvious to start with and others that will take getting used to, but we are really excited to see what else they are able to add over the next couple of months. ActiveCampaign have said that they are hoping to be feature consistent with the existing designer before the end of the summer too.
Interested in finding out more about ActiveCampaign and how it can help your business? Call us on 01889 280010 or email hello@zephi.co.uk to arrange a demo.
