Email Templates in Shape Software

Email templates in Shape make it easy to send consistent, personalized emails without rewriting the same message every time.

You can use templates for one-to-one emails, automated follow-up, bulk marketing, cross-branch campaigns, and internal notifications. They can include merge tokens, user-specific signatures, formatting, links, images, emoji, and other personalized content.

A well-organized template library saves users time and gives administrators more control over the messages their teams send. This guide covers how to create and manage templates, how personalization and sender settings work, where templates can be used, and how to test them before they go out.

Where email templates can be used

• Manual one-to-one emails
• Bulk email campaigns
• Drip campaigns
• Automated Actions (triggers)
• Cross-branch email campaigns
• Internal email notifications

You don’t need separate messaging for every workflow. A follow-up template can give users a starting point for one-to-one email, while other templates are built for automated nurture, marketing, or internal notifications. Build templates around the purpose of the message, rather than creating a new one every time someone needs to send an email.

Creating an email template

Email templates are managed in Settings › Email Templates. Depending on your Role Permissions and Settings access, not every user can create or edit templates.

When creating a template, you can set:

• Template name
• Subject line and inbox preview
• Email body
• Sender (From) and email signature
• Email footer
• Merge tokens
• Role visibility
• Open and click tracking
• Other available settings

Shape supports both standard and advanced email templates. Both use the same personalization, sender, signature, tracking, and access controls.

Organizing email templates

As your library grows, folders help users find the right message. You might organize templates by new lead follow-up, customer nurture, application or onboarding, transaction updates, past customers, referral partners, marketing, internal notifications, or department.

Folders are for organization only. They don’t control who can see a template. To restrict access, use role visibility.

Controlling template access by role

Administrators can choose which user roles can use each template. These restrictions apply everywhere in Shape, not just when sending a manual email. If a role doesn’t have access to a template, users in that role won’t see it anywhere in the platform.

This is useful for department-specific messaging, manager or admin templates, approved marketing content, internal notifications, and specialized workflows. Larger organizations can keep one central email library without making every template available to every user.

Personalizing emails with merge tokens

Merge tokens pull information from each record into your email when it’s sent. Instead of writing a separate version for every recipient, build one template and let Shape fill in the details, like the recipient’s name, their assigned user, or other record data.

To add a token, click the Tokens button in the template editor, search for the detail you want, and choose the version in curly brackets { }. For example, “Hi {First Name},” becomes “Hi Sarah,” for Sarah and “Hi Michael,” for Michael. The tokens available depend on your system. See Merge Tokens for more.

What if a token’s field is blank? The token is left blank in the email. Test templates that rely heavily on tokens, and write sentences that still read well when an optional field is empty.

Dynamic sender and email signature options

Templates can send from, and sign as, specific assigned department users, such as the Assigned Sales User, Assigned Manager, Assigned Loan Officer, Assigned Processor, or other departments you’ve set up. Shape pulls the right assigned user’s information when each email is sent. That lets everyone share one template while each email still comes from the right person.

General User vs. department user. When you choose a specific department, Shape uses the user currently assigned in that department. When you choose the general User option, Shape uses the most recently assigned user.

From and Email Signature settings

The From setting decides who the email comes from. The Email Signature setting decides whose signature appears. Usually you’ll set them together: if an email comes from the Assigned Sales User, you’ll typically want that person’s signature too. This matters most in automated and bulk email, where the person starting the send may not be assigned to every recipient.

Bulk email sender and signature logic

Shape has extra logic for bulk email when sender and signature settings don’t line up:

1. No specific sender or signature selected: Shape uses the information of the user starting the bulk email, even if they aren’t assigned to the record.
2. A specific assigned department user is selected: Shape uses the user assigned to that department.
3. A department user is selected for both From and Email Signature, but no one is assigned: The email fails, because Shape can’t identify who should send it.
4. The starting user is the sender, but the signature uses a department with no one assigned: Shape uses no signature, rather than adding inaccurate information.

This lets you use dynamic senders at scale while reducing the chance of an email going out with the wrong person’s signature.

Email footers

An Email Footer is added beneath the signature when an email is sent. It’s separate from the user’s signature, so you can keep standard information at the bottom of every email without adding it to each template or signature. A finished email has three layers:

• Email content: the template or message itself
• Email signature: the sender’s or assigned user’s signature
• Email footer: standard content added beneath the signature

Footers are ideal for company information, licensing, disclosures, legal language, and standard contact details. Because the footer is separate, you can update that information once instead of copying it into every template and employee signature.

Signature vs. footer: The signature identifies the individual sender and can change with the assigned user. The footer holds standard organization-wide content. Keeping them separate lets Shape personalize who an email is from while keeping company information consistent.

Using email templates in drip campaigns

You can choose email templates when building email steps in drip campaigns. After you choose a template, you can edit its content inside the campaign. Because a drip step may intentionally hold a modified version, Shape doesn’t overwrite the step whenever the original template changes.

To update a drip step after editing a template:

1. Update and save the original email template.
2. Open the drip campaign.
3. Find the email step.
4. Re-select the updated template.
5. Save the campaign.

This matters most when making organization-wide changes to disclaimers, messaging, links, or branding used in existing campaigns.

Using templates with Automated Actions

Email templates also work with Automated Actions (triggers). Unlike drip steps, triggers use the original template directly, so editing the template updates what the trigger sends. That makes templates especially useful for event-driven email, like sending a message when a record reaches a certain status.

Using templates for internal notifications

Templates aren’t only for customers. They can send standard notifications to assigned sales users, managers, loan officers, processors, and other department users. Dynamic user options let you build reusable notifications without hard-coding employee information. For example, a template can alert the assigned user when something important happens on their record.

Open and click tracking

By default, email templates can track opens and link clicks, which helps with sales follow-up, marketing reporting, and automation. But not every email should count as engagement.

You can turn Open Tracking and Click Tracking on or off for each template, independently. You can keep both on, turn off just one, or turn off both.

When to turn tracking off: Internal notifications are a good example. If an automated email about a customer goes to the assigned user, you don’t want that employee’s opens and clicks counted as the customer’s engagement. For customer-facing sales and marketing email, keep tracking on.

Email inbox preview

Inbox preview text is the short line many email apps show next to or below the subject line before the email is opened. For example:

Subject: Your next steps are ready Preview: Here’s everything you need to keep things moving.

Use preview text to support the subject line rather than repeating it.

Send a test before you send

Before using a new or updated email, use Send a Test to see exactly how it will look with real record data. A test catches problems before they reach a large audience or an active automation.

You can send a test from two places:

• Email templates, while creating or editing a template in Settings
• Email pop-ups, when you’re writing an email from a record or sending a bulk email, before you click Send

How to send a test

1. Click Send a Test.
2. Enter the email address that should receive the test, usually your own.
3. Enter a valid Lead ID. Shape uses that record’s information to fill in tokens, the sender, and the signature, instead of picking a random record.
4. Send the test, then check it in your inbox.

The test reflects the template’s sender and signature settings using the selected record’s information. That makes it especially useful for checking merge tokens, dynamic senders, signatures, footers, links, formatting, and personalized content.

What to check

• Subject line and inbox preview
• Sender name and From email
• Email signature and footer
• Merge token values
• Links and images
• Emoji, spacing, and formatting
• How it looks on a phone
• Required disclosures or organization-specific information

For more complex templates, test with a few records that have different assignments and data. For example, if a template uses the Assigned Sales User signature, test with a record that actually has a Sales User assigned, and one that doesn’t.

Automatic unsubscribe handling

Shape automatically includes an unsubscribe option on automated and bulk marketing emails, including bulk email, drip campaigns, automated email workflows, and cross-branch campaigns. When a recipient unsubscribes, Shape records it and blocks future emails according to its email opt-out rules.

Manual emails: One-to-one emails don’t automatically include the unsubscribe link, so users can keep normal direct conversations going. Your organization is responsible for the communication, consent, disclosure, and unsubscribe practices that fit your business.

Emoji and rich email content

Templates support more than plain text. Properly encoded emoji work in subject lines and content, and templates can include images, links, branded formatting, buttons, video-related or embedded media where supported, and other HTML content.

That makes templates useful for onboarding, education, newsletters, product information, training, marketing, and video follow-up. Keep in mind that email apps display rich content differently, so important information shouldn’t depend on one image or video showing exactly as expected.

Email character and encoding protection

Copying content from another app, like a document, website, PDF, or AI writing tool, can bring along hidden or badly encoded characters. The text may look normal but show up as garbled apostrophes or quotes, broken dashes, square boxes, replacement characters, corrupted emoji, or odd formatting.

Shape scans subject lines and email content for common encoding problems before they reach recipients. Properly encoded content is fully supported, including real emoji 😃, accented characters like café or naïve, smart punctuation, and international characters. The safeguard detects problems; it doesn’t rewrite your email.

If an email fails because of invalid characters

Check the email or message logs, then look at any content you copied from somewhere else. Try:

1. Retyping quotation marks, apostrophes, and dashes directly in Shape.
2. Deleting and re-entering text with unusual characters.
3. Re-inserting emoji as real emoji.
4. Removing extra formatting from copy and paste.
5. Sending a test again.

If the content looks fine but still fails, contact Shape Support with the template or content. Character detection is an extra safeguard, not a guarantee every encoding issue will be caught.

Email templates and deliverability

A well-designed template is only part of successful email. Deliverability also depends on domain authentication, sender reputation, bounce rates, engagement, spam complaints, list quality, volume, content, and unsubscribes.

Shape sets up authenticated sending during onboarding. If you use your own sending domain, keep your DNS authentication records in place, and make sure your DMARC settings don’t cause mail providers to refuse your email. Authentication alone doesn’t guarantee inbox placement, so healthy sending practices and clean data still matter. See Email Domain Authentication & Deliverability.

Best practices for email templates

Write like a person. A reusable template doesn’t have to sound generic. Keep the language natural and personalize where it actually improves the message.

Use merge tokens intentionally. An empty field leaves an empty spot, so avoid sentences that get confusing when optional information is missing.

Match the sender and signature. Pay extra attention to department-based senders in automated and bulk email.

Keep standard content in the footer. Put information that belongs beneath every signature in the Email Footer, not in each template or signature. Organization-wide updates become much easier.

Send a test before scaling. A mistake in a one-to-one email affects one person. The same mistake in a large automated or bulk campaign affects many. Use Send a Test with a real Lead ID first.

Keep your library organized. Use clear names and folders so users find the right content quickly.

Control access where it makes sense. Role visibility keeps specialized or internal templates away from users who don’t need them.

Use tracking intentionally. Keep tracking on for customer-facing email, and consider turning it off for internal notifications.

Check drip campaigns after important updates. Editing a template doesn’t update existing drip steps. Re-select the template where the campaign needs the new version.

Building a scalable template library

You don’t need a template for every email your team might send. Start with the messages your organization repeats most, and ask:

• Is this sent often enough to standardize?
• Who should it come from, and should it use a department-specific sender or signature?
• What should be personalized, and are those fields reliably filled in?
• What belongs in the user’s signature, and what belongs in the footer?
• Is the recipient a customer, prospect, partner, or internal user?
• Should opens and clicks count toward engagement?
• Will it be used manually, automatically, or both, and in which workflows?
• Which roles should have access?

Thoughtfully built, your template library becomes the foundation for one-to-one outreach, automated follow-up, internal notifications, marketing campaigns, and organization-wide communication, while each email still reflects the right recipient, sender, signature, footer, and record details.

Frequently asked questions

If I update an email template, will an existing drip campaign update automatically?+

No. Drip steps can be edited separately once a template is selected. Open the campaign and re-select the template to use the new version.

How do I add merge tokens to a template?+

Click the Tokens button, search for the detail you want, and choose the version in curly brackets { }.

What happens if a merge token’s field is blank?+

The value is left blank. Write sentences that still read well if an optional field is empty.

Can I send a test before sending an email?+

Yes. Use Send a Test in an email template or an email pop-up. Enter a test email address and a valid Lead ID so Shape fills in tokens, sender, and signature with that record’s information.

Why do I need to enter a Lead ID for a test?+

The Lead ID tells Shape which record to use for tokens and dynamic senders, so your test shows exactly what that customer would see.

Can templates use the assigned user’s signature?+

Yes. Templates can use configured assigned department users. The general User option uses the most recently assigned user.

What’s the difference between an email signature and an email footer?+

The signature identifies the individual sender. The footer is separate content added beneath the signature for standard organization-wide information.

What happens if an email is set to come from a department with no assigned user?+

The email fails, because Shape can’t identify who should send it.

Can I restrict templates by user role?+

Yes. Role restrictions apply everywhere the template would otherwise be available. Folders don’t control access.

Can I use emoji or rich content?+

Yes. Properly encoded emoji, images, links, buttons, video-related content, and other supported HTML work. Display can vary by email app.

Can I turn off open or click tracking?+

Yes. Open and click tracking are separate controls you can turn on or off for each template.

Does Shape automatically include an unsubscribe link?+

Yes, on automated and bulk marketing emails. Manual one-to-one emails don’t automatically include it.

Why did my email fail because of invalid characters?+

Content copied from another source can contain hidden or corrupted characters. Retype smart quotes, apostrophes, dashes, and emoji directly in Shape, then send a test again.

Need help?

If you’re building a new email strategy or have questions about templates, sender setup, signatures, footers, automation, or deliverability, your Shape account representative or Support team can help. For larger setups, it’s worth reviewing your template library alongside your drip campaigns, Automated Actions, bulk email, cross-branch campaigns, role permissions, email authentication, and opt-out settings.

Email: help@setshape.com · Phone: (888) 718-6344

Related guides: Merge Tokens · Bulk Email · Drip Campaigns · Email Reporting & Engagement Tracking