How to build an email template

Hey. Welcome to another video. Today we're going to be building email templates, and we're going to be doing it in two ways. First in the dashboard within the template manager, and then we're going to ask Claude to build one for us. If you're wondering why you'd use templates at all, let me give you a quick one then. Any email you send more than once belongs in a template. You create it once, and your code just sends the template slug. And every email picks up the latest published version.

So your content and your code stop living in each other's pockets. All right. Um so I've logged into my account, and we're going to navigate to email and then into templates. So this is the full template manager, and every template in your workspace will live here. Let's open one up I've just created.

So you can see the content, and all of these curly brackets basically make sure that we have a variable So we can completely customize um based on Liquid. So it allows you to build up conditions and loops, um and really just gives you the full flexibility to make sure that the structure of your email is set, but that the individual recipient will always receive a template that's specific towards them.

Now you can see um that this current uh email is or this current template is published. And then under versions we can actually see the multiple versions. Um so this makes sure that there's always version control, allowing us to roll back in the event that a change has happened and that we don't necessarily like it, um but it also makes sure that we always know exactly where we are at.

Uh the draft is the one that we can work from, so you can have a draft at any different stage. It will never be the one that's going to be used for actually sending. That's always going to be the latest published version, giving you that full control.

Now building one in the dashboard is also possible through the new template manager. You decide on a specific category, so either for marketing or transactional. Um, do take note that this can't be changed at a later stage. So, let's build a marketing template.

Now, the builder is pretty straightforward. Uh, we can set up the subject. We can create different blocks. We can add a title, multiple titles. Um, but yeah, this might take quite some work. So, one of the other options that we have is actually going into the code builder. Now, if you are working with an AI, you can actually give just a basic prompt to an AI to build an HTML email template and paste it in here. Give me a quick second and I'm going to just do that myself.

All right, so I just had a quick session with my agent and I'm just going to paste the HTML that it provided for me. And if we go back to the visual, we can actually see the visual representation of the template that was created.

Now, from here we can actually create custom variables. So, here we can add first name. And that is then implemented in there as well. Now, to the fun part. Let's just actually have an agent building one completely. So, I'm going to publish this version.

And then if we go back, we can see the published version here. And now give me 2 seconds and I'm going to open up a specific coding agent session. All right, I've spun up this a quick uh, Claude Code session and we're actually going to ask it to create a template on our behalf. We need a new email template for our marketing Bird workspace.

Uh, it is to send out new Bird Shoes for each new sign up. So, I'm not even being very strict or very specific in terms of the prompt that I'm giving it. This is of course up to you in terms of how depth you want to go and how much information you want to give your agent as it goes. Now, because I've already set up the CLI in the MCP, my agent will know exactly what to start doing. Um in the event that you haven't set up the CLI yet, we've got a different video where we explain everything in terms of how to get your coding agent set up.

Now, I've actually got a different skill um also running which is called Superpowers. I can highly recommend it. Uh which is going to create a bit of a brainstorm session as we're going to be building out this template. So, let's see what it comes up with. All right. So, here it's giving me a few uh few options. What is the offer here? Is it free pair of Bird Shoes or discount? Let's go for discount code.

Um and we're building an HTML um setting up in the Bird platform with the CLI. So, let's say um set it up in the Bird platform. Um and make it Birdy. You can decide. So, actually just going to give it a bit of creative freedom to see what it's going to come up with. All right. So, now it uh is indeed checking the Bird CLI and the Bird skill. So, this enables it to fully understand exactly the format that it needs to talk to how exactly to communicate to make sure that it doesn't make any mistakes.

Um so, it has authenticated. So, again, that's already happened during the original stage. If you haven't done that yet, do take a look. Now, it's actually proceeding to create the template. So, here you can see the actual code that it sent up. And it's actually saying the template is created. Um going to set the HTML content and making it properly Birdy.

Now, I just refreshed page on the templates and you can actually see that the welcome Bird Shoes template is already there, but indeed there's no preview yet. So, let's go back to our session. And here we can see that it's still creating the uh template. So, we're just going to give it another minute or so and I'll be back when it's completed.

All right. So, it decided to open up the template right in my code editor, which is amazing. So, I can exactly see the content that it has created. Now, I'm loving the color vibes that it went for. Um in the meantime, it's pushing the template into the Bird platform, setting up the content. Um it's going to validate and submit to go live.

So, I'm just going to give it another second to complete that. Good catch. Okay, so here it's actually saying it identified an unsubscribe URL as needed. It's actually editing that right away. So, this is again the power of the CLI showcasing its understanding of requirements when it comes to emails to make sure that it actually follows all the procedures that we set um from the system.

We're going to allow it to re-upload the fixed content. And then if we move into the template manager and just refresh the page, we can now actually see that the template is up. We can see that it's immediately published and has the unsubscribe button as well.

Now, let's do a fun one. Send me a example at And here we can actually see the email in my inbox as it came in. We've got the links set up. We've got the codes. And it's as simple as that. Happy sending.