Email Templates in Shape Software

Email templates in Shape make it easier to create consistent, personalized emails without requiring users to rewrite the same message every time.

Templates can be used throughout Shape for one-to-one communication, automated follow-up, bulk marketing, cross-branch campaigns, and internal notifications. They can include dynamic merge fields, user-specific signatures, formatting, links, images, emoji, and other personalized content.

A well-organized template library can save users significant time while also giving administrators more control over the messaging their teams use.

This guide covers how to create and manage email templates in Shape, how personalization and sender settings work, where templates can be used, and important best practices for testing and maintaining them.

Where Email Templates Can Be Used

Email templates can support several communication workflows throughout Shape, including:

• Manual one-to-one emails
• Bulk Email campaigns
• Drip Campaigns
• Automated Actions and triggers
• Cross-branch email campaigns
• Internal email notifications

This flexibility means you do not necessarily need to create separate messaging for every workflow.

For example, a follow-up template can give individual users a starting point for one-to-one communication, while other templates can be designed specifically for automated nurture, marketing campaigns, or internal notifications.

The key is to build templates around the purpose of the communication rather than creating a new template every time someone needs to send an email.

Creating an Email Template

Email Templates are managed within your Shape settings.

Navigate to the applicable Email Templates settings area to view, organize, create, and edit the templates available within your organization.

Depending on your organization’s Role Permissions and Settings access, not every user may have permission to create or modify templates.

When creating a template, you can configure the content and other available options such as:

• Template name
• Subject line
• Email body
• Inbox preview
• Sender configuration
• Email signature
• Email footer
• Merge fields
• Role visibility
• Open tracking
• Click tracking
• Other available template settings

Shape supports both standard and advanced email templates. Both can take advantage of the core personalization, sender, signature, tracking, and access-control functionality available within the email template system.

Organizing Email Templates

As your organization builds more templates, organization becomes increasingly important.

Shape allows templates to be organized into folders so users can more easily locate the appropriate message.

For example, you might organize templates by:

• New lead follow-up
• Customer nurture
• Application or onboarding
• Transaction updates
• Past customers
• Referral partners
• Marketing
• Internal notifications
• Department

Folders are intended for organization. They do not independently control template permissions.

If you need to restrict who can access a particular template, use the applicable template role visibility settings.

Controlling Template Access by Role

Administrators can control which user roles have access to individual email templates.

These restrictions apply throughout Shape rather than only when manually sending an email.

If a role does not have access to a particular template, users in that role will not have access to that template in the applicable areas of the platform.

This can be especially useful when you have:

• Department-specific messaging
• Manager or administrator templates
• Approved marketing content
• Internal notifications
• Specialized workflows
• Templates intended for particular groups of users

Template permissions give larger organizations a way to maintain a centralized email library without requiring every template to be available to every user.

Personalizing Emails with Merge Fields

Email templates can use dynamic merge fields to personalize content using information stored within Shape.

Rather than creating separate versions of the same email for every recipient, you can build one template and allow Shape to dynamically insert the appropriate information when the email is generated.

Depending on your configuration and available fields, this can include information related to the recipient, assigned users, record data, and other supported Shape fields.

For example, instead of manually typing the recipient’s name into every message, you can use the applicable first-name merge field.

When Shape generates the email, the merge field is replaced with the corresponding value from that record.

What if a merge field does not contain data?

If the field used by a merge token is blank on the record, the resulting value in the email will also be blank.

For that reason, we recommend testing templates that rely heavily on merge fields and considering how the sentence will read if an optional field is not populated.

Dynamic Sender and Email Signature Options

One of the more powerful parts of Shape’s email template system is the ability to dynamically determine who an email should come from.

Depending on your organization’s configuration, templates can reference specific assigned department users.

For example, you may have options such as:

• Assigned Sales User
• Assigned Manager
• Assigned Loan Officer
• Assigned Processor
• Other configured department users

Shape can dynamically pull the appropriate assigned user’s information when the email is sent.

This allows an organization to maintain a shared template while still making the resulting communication come from the appropriate person.

General User vs. Department User

There is an important distinction between selecting a specific department user and using the more general User option.

When a specific department is selected, Shape looks for the user currently assigned within that department.

When the general User option is used, Shape uses the most recently assigned user.

This gives administrators flexibility based on how assignments are structured within their organization.

Understanding “From” and Email Signature Settings

The From selection determines who the email is sent from, while the Email Signature setting determines which signature should appear in the message.

In most cases, these should be configured intentionally together.

For example, if an email should come from the assigned Sales User, you would typically also want the email signature to represent that person.

This becomes particularly important for automated and bulk communication, where the user initiating the send may not be the person assigned to every recipient.

Bulk Email Sender and Signature Logic

Shape includes additional sender logic for Bulk Email to help handle situations where sender and signature selections may not align.

Here’s how it works:

1. No specific From sender or signature selected: Shape defaults to the information of the user initiating the Bulk Email, even if that user is not assigned to the record.
2. A specific assigned department user is selected: Shape uses the information associated with the user assigned to that department.
3. A specific assigned department user is selected for both From and Email Signature, but no user is assigned: The email will fail because Shape cannot identify the user who is supposed to send the message.
4. The initiating user is selected as the From sender, but the signature is configured for an assigned department that does not have a user assigned: Shape will use the Don’t use any email signature option rather than inserting inaccurate signature information.

This logic helps organizations use dynamic sender information at scale while reducing the chance that an email goes out with another user’s incorrect signature.

Email Footers

In addition to the email signature, Shape supports an Email Footer that can be appended underneath the signature when an email is sent.

The footer is separate from the user’s email signature. This allows organizations to maintain standardized information at the bottom of emails without requiring users to manually add the same content to every template or individual signature.

The final email can therefore contain three distinct layers:

Email Content
The actual template or message being sent.

Email Signature
The applicable sender or assigned user’s signature.

Email Footer
Standardized footer content appended beneath the signature.

This is particularly useful for organization-level information that should remain consistent across users, such as:

• Company information
• Licensing information
• Disclosures
• Legal language
• Standardized contact information
• Other organization-wide footer content

Because the footer is separate from the template content and user signature, it also makes ongoing maintenance easier. Standardized information does not need to be manually copied into every template or every employee’s signature.

Email Footer vs. Email Signature

It is helpful to think of the signature and footer as serving two different purposes.

The Email Signature generally identifies the individual sender and can dynamically reflect the appropriate assigned user.

The Email Footer provides standardized content underneath that signature.

Keeping these separate allows Shape to personalize who an email is coming from while still maintaining consistent organization-level information at the bottom of the message.

Using Email Templates in Drip Campaigns

Email templates can be selected when building email steps within Shape Drip Campaigns.

There is an important behavior to understand when updating templates that are already being used by a drip.

After selecting a template in a Drip Campaign, the content can be edited within the campaign itself. Because the campaign may intentionally contain a modified version of the original template, Shape does not continually overwrite the campaign step whenever the source template changes.

If you update an email template used by an existing Drip Campaign:

1. Update and save the original email template.
2. Open the applicable Drip Campaign.
3. Locate the email step.
4. Re-select the updated email template.
5. Save your campaign changes.

Re-selecting the template pulls the latest version into that drip step.

This is especially important when making organization-wide changes to disclaimers, messaging, links, branding, or other content used in existing campaigns.

Using Templates with Automated Actions

Email templates can also be used within Automated Actions and triggers.

Unlike Drip Campaigns, Automated Actions reference the underlying template rather than maintaining a separately editable copy in the same way a drip step can.

This makes templates particularly useful for event-driven communication.

For example, an organization might configure an Automated Action to send a particular email when a record reaches an applicable status, meets defined criteria, or triggers another configured event.

Using Templates for Internal Notifications

Email templates are not limited to customer-facing communication.

They can also support internal workflows by sending standardized notifications to users such as:

• Assigned sales users
• Managers
• Loan officers
• Processors
• Other department users

Dynamic user and department options make it possible to build reusable notifications without hard-coding individual employee information into every workflow.

For example, an organization could create an internal notification that alerts the appropriate assigned user when an important event occurs on their record.

This is also one of the situations where Shape’s email tracking controls become particularly useful.

Open and Click Tracking Controls

By default, Shape email templates can track email opens and link clicks to help users understand recipient engagement.

This information can be useful for sales follow-up, marketing reporting, automation, and understanding which recipients are interacting with your communication.

However, not every email should necessarily contribute to engagement reporting.

Shape allows Open Tracking and Click Tracking to be controlled at the email template level.

These controls are independent.

That means you can:

• Keep both enabled
• Disable open tracking while retaining click tracking
• Disable click tracking while retaining open tracking
• Disable both

When would you disable tracking?

Internal notification emails are a good example.

Suppose an automated email about a customer is sent to the assigned user. If that employee opens or clicks the email, you may not want their activity interpreted as engagement from the customer associated with the record.

For a template like that, tracking can be disabled as appropriate.

For normal customer-facing sales and marketing emails, keeping tracking enabled can provide valuable engagement information that can also be used as part of your follow-up strategy.

Email Inbox Preview

Shape also supports customization of the email inbox preview associated with supported email templates.

Inbox preview text is the short supporting text many email clients display next to or underneath the subject line before the recipient opens the message.

For example:

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

Subject lines naturally get most of the attention, but preview text can also influence how an email appears in a crowded inbox.

When available for the template you are creating, use preview text to support the subject line rather than simply repeating it.

Testing an Email Template Before Using It

Before placing a new or significantly updated template into an active workflow, use the Test Email functionality.

Testing allows you to see how the email behaves with real record data before using it with a larger audience or active automation.

Shape’s Test Email functionality allows you to provide a test recipient email address and a valid Lead ID.

The Lead ID gives Shape an actual record to reference when resolving dynamic content instead of selecting an arbitrary record for the test.

This is particularly important when testing:

• Merge fields
• Dynamic sender information
• Email signatures
• Email footers
• Links
• Formatting
• Personalized content

The test should reflect the configured sender and signature behavior using the selected record’s information.

A Good Testing Process

Before launching an important email template, check:

• Subject line
• Inbox preview
• Sender name
• From email
• Email signature
• Email footer
• Merge-field values
• Links
• Images
• Emoji
• Spacing and formatting
• Mobile readability
• Any required disclosures or organization-specific information

For more complex templates, we recommend testing against records with different assignment and data scenarios.

For example, if your template uses an Assigned Sales User signature, test a record that actually has a Sales User assigned.

Automated Unsubscribe Handling

Shape automatically includes an unsubscribe option on applicable automated and bulk marketing emails.

This includes applicable communication sent through workflows such as Bulk Email, Drip Campaigns, automated email workflows, and cross-branch campaigns.

When a recipient unsubscribes, Shape records that preference and prevents future email communication according to the platform’s email opt-out behavior.

What about manual emails?

Manual one-to-one emails do not automatically receive the same unsubscribe link.

This distinction allows users to continue normal direct communication while providing unsubscribe handling for automated and larger-scale marketing communication.

Organizations are responsible for determining the communication, consent, disclosure, and unsubscribe practices appropriate for their business and use cases.

Emoji and Rich Email Content

Shape Email Templates support more than plain text.

Properly encoded emoji are supported and can be used in subject lines or email content where appropriate.

Templates can also support rich content such as:

• Images
• Links
• Branded formatting
• Buttons
• Video-related or embedded media content where supported
• Other supported HTML email content

This can make templates useful for much more than simple sales follow-up.

Organizations can use richer email content for onboarding, educational content, newsletters, product information, training resources, marketing campaigns, video follow-up, and other communication.

Keep in mind that email clients can render advanced content differently. Important information should not depend entirely on a particular image, video, or rich-content element displaying exactly as expected.

Email Character and Encoding Protection

Copying content between applications can occasionally introduce invisible or improperly encoded characters into an email.

For example, content copied from a document, website, PDF, AI writing tool, or other application may visually look normal while containing underlying formatting or character encoding that does not translate correctly when sent as an email.

Without safeguards, this can result in problems such as:

• Garbled apostrophes or quotation marks
• Broken dashes
• Square boxes
• Replacement characters
• Corrupted emoji
• Unexpected formatting

Shape includes an additional email character safeguard designed to detect common character-encoding problems before problematic content reaches recipients.

The safeguard scans email subject lines and body content for known encoding issues.

Properly encoded content remains supported, including:

• Real emoji 😃
• Accented characters such as café or naïve
• Properly encoded smart punctuation
• International and non-Latin characters and scripts

The safeguard is designed to detect problematic content, not rewrite your email automatically.

If an Email Has an Invalid-Character Issue

If an email fails because of problematic characters, review the applicable email or message logs and inspect content that may have been copied from somewhere else.

Try:

1. Retyping quotation marks, apostrophes, or dashes directly in Shape.
2. Deleting and re-entering text displaying unusual characters.
3. Re-inserting emoji as actual emoji characters.
4. Removing unnecessary formatting introduced through copy and paste.
5. Testing the email again.

If the content appears legitimate but continues to fail, contact Shape Support with the affected template or content so the issue can be reviewed.

Important

Character detection is an additional safeguard, not a guarantee that every possible encoding issue will always be identified.

Email encoding can be complex, and new or unusual character combinations can occasionally behave differently across sending methods and recipient email clients. Shape continues to improve these protections as new scenarios are identified.

Email Templates and Deliverability

A well-designed template is only one part of successful email communication.

Email deliverability can also be influenced by:

• Domain authentication
• Sender reputation
• Bounce rates
• Recipient engagement
• Spam complaints
• List quality
• Sending volume
• Message content
• Unsubscribe behavior

Shape supports authenticated email sending as part of the email setup process. Organizations using their own sending domain should make sure the appropriate DNS authentication records remain correctly configured.

Authentication helps email providers verify that Shape is authorized to send email on behalf of your domain, but authentication alone does not guarantee inbox placement.

Healthy sending practices and clean recipient data remain important.

Best Practices for Building Email Templates

The strongest email template libraries tend to balance consistency with personalization.

Write Like a Person

A reusable template does not need to sound generic. Keep the language natural and use personalization where it actually improves the message.

Use Merge Fields Intentionally

Dynamic fields can save time, but remember that an empty source field results in an empty value. Avoid building sentences that become confusing when optional information is missing.

Match the Sender and Signature

Pay particular attention to department-based sender selections when using templates in automation or bulk campaigns.

Keep Standardized Content in the Footer

If information should consistently appear underneath user signatures, consider maintaining it through the Email Footer rather than copying the same content into individual templates or signatures.

This can make organization-wide updates significantly easier to manage and helps keep standardized information consistent across senders.

Test Before Scaling

A formatting or personalization issue in a one-to-one email affects one recipient. The same issue in a large automated or bulk campaign can affect many more.

Testing becomes increasingly important as the size and complexity of the workflow increases.

Keep Your Library Organized

Use clear template names and folders so users can quickly find the right content.

Control Access Where Appropriate

Role visibility can prevent specialized or internal templates from becoming available to users who do not need them.

Use Tracking Intentionally

Open and click data can be extremely useful for customer-facing communication. Internal notifications may be better candidates for disabling one or both tracking methods.

Review Existing Drip Campaigns After Important Template Updates

Remember that changing the source template does not automatically replace an existing drip step. Re-select the template when the campaign needs the new version.

Building a Scalable Email Template Library

The goal does not need to be creating a template for every email your team might ever send.

Instead, start with the communication your organization repeats most often.

Ask:

• Is this message sent frequently enough to standardize?
• Who should the message come from?
• Should it use a department-specific sender or signature?
• Which information should be personalized?
• Are those merge fields reliably populated?
• What belongs in the individual user’s signature?
• What belongs in the organization-wide footer?
• Is the recipient a customer, prospect, partner, or internal user?
• Should opens and clicks count toward engagement?
• Will the template be used manually, automatically, or both?
• Does it belong in a Drip Campaign, Automated Action, Bulk Email, or cross-branch campaign?
• Which user roles should have access?
• Should the message be part of a larger automated communication strategy?

This is where Email Templates become much more than saved email copy.

A thoughtfully built template library can provide the messaging foundation for individual outreach, automated follow-up, internal notifications, marketing campaigns, and organization-wide communication while still allowing the final email to reflect the correct recipient, sender, signature, footer, and record information.

Frequently Asked Questions

If I update an Email Template, will an existing Drip Campaign automatically update?+

No. Drip Campaign email steps can be edited independently after a template is selected. If you update the source template and want the drip to use the new version, open the campaign and re-select the template.

What happens if a merge field is blank?+

The resulting value will be blank. This is why it is important to consider optional fields when writing the surrounding sentence.

Can templates use the assigned user’s signature?+

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

What is the difference between an Email Signature and Email Footer?+

The Email Signature generally identifies the individual sender. The Email Footer is separate content appended underneath the signature and is useful for standardized organization-level information.

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

If the selected From configuration requires an assigned department user and there is no applicable user assigned, the email will fail.

Can I restrict templates by user role?+

Yes. Template role restrictions apply throughout Shape wherever that template would otherwise be available.

Can folders control who sees a template?+

No. Folders are organizational. Use template role visibility for access control.

Can I use emoji?+

Yes. Properly encoded emoji are supported.

Can I include video or rich content?+

Yes. Shape Email Templates support rich email content, including video-related content and other supported HTML elements. Rendering can vary by recipient email client.

Can I disable email open tracking?+

Yes. Open tracking can be enabled or disabled at the template level.

Can I disable click tracking without disabling open tracking?+

Yes. Open and click tracking are independent controls.

Does Shape automatically include an unsubscribe link?+

Shape includes unsubscribe functionality on applicable automated and bulk marketing emails. Manual one-to-one emails do not automatically include the same unsubscribe link.

Why did my email fail because of invalid characters?+

Content copied from another source can sometimes contain hidden or corrupted character encoding. Try retyping the affected content directly in Shape, particularly smart quotes, apostrophes, dashes, emoji, or other unusual characters.

Can I test personalization before using a template?+

Yes. Use the Test Email functionality with a valid Lead ID and test recipient so Shape has actual record information to use when resolving dynamic content.

Need Help?

If you’re building a new email strategy or have questions about templates, sender configuration, dynamic signatures, email footers, automation, or email deliverability, your Shape account representative or Shape Support team can help you review the available options for your organization’s setup.

For larger implementations, it is often worth reviewing your template library alongside your Drip Campaigns, Automated Actions, Bulk Email strategy, cross-branch campaigns, role permissions, email authentication, and opt-out configuration.

These pieces work together. When they are configured thoughtfully, Shape can help your team maintain consistent messaging while still personalizing communication to the right recipient and the right sender at scale.