How to Customize Email Templates

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Auctiva allows you to customize email templates so that you can add a personal touch to your messages. This tutorial will show you how to make changes to the email templates.

Introduction

Auctiva has dynamic email templates that send messages to customers regarding winning bids, payment transactions and other important information. The email templates are used to automatically send messages when certain events occur (e.g., a winning bid) and also manually send a message when you need to make contact with a buyer.

Watch the Instructions or follow these instructions to learn how to make changes to your email templates.

Instructions

For most of your uses, the current email template layouts will suffice, however, you can make changes if you like. We recommend that you exercise caution when editing/creating templates. It's usually best to copy the email template and edit the copy rather than the original so that you can always return to the original email template. If you want to create an email template from scratch, go the Custom Email Templates page by hovering the mouse over the eBay Sales tab and clicking on the "Create New" link under Custom Emails(Figure 1.1). Then, click on the "Create an Email Template" and skip to Step 2.

Step 1. Copy email template.

  • Go the Custom Email Templates page by hovering the mouse over the eBay Sales tab and clicking on the "Manage" link in the Custom Email section (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1. Go to Custom Email Template page.

  • Find the email template you'd like to customize. Use the filtering options if necessary.
  • Click on the Copy icon (Figure 1.2-A) of the appropriate email template to make a copy of the template. The Copy Template section will load at the top of the page.
  • Enter a name for the copied email template.
  • Click on the Save button. A confirmation message will display.
  • Find the newly copied email template by changing the Show Only field to the "All Template Types" option.
  • Click on the Modify icon (Figure 1.2-B) to edit the email template.

Figure 1.2. Copy email template (A). Modify email template (B).

Step 2. Edit email template.

  • eBay Site: Choose the eBay site to be used with this email template. If you are not an international seller, you can choose the "All Sites" option or whatever site is your default site. International sellers can specify sites and create unique email templates based on each region using this field.
  • Template Type: This field is inactive if you copied an email template in Step 1. Otherwise, you can use this field to establish the purpose of the email template. This will define when the email template will be used based on the event that occurs.
  • Template Name: Choose a name for this template. This name will not appear to the buyer.
  • Template Tags: Use template tags to customize your template. Click on the buttons (Figure 2-A) in the editing section to find tag options.
  • Email Subject: Enter in a subject for this email. Make sure to keep the email subject as specific as possible so that the email message will not get caught in the buyer's email spam filter. For example, you could add an item title or number from the template tags to make it a unique subject (see Step 3 for more details on adding template tags). A vague subject (e.g., "You've Won!") is more likely to get filtered by a buyer's spam filter software.
  • In the content field (Figure 2-B) you can enter/edit in the email template content in either the Standard mode or HTML mode by clicking on the Source button (Figure 2-C). You should use the HTML mode only if you're comfortable with editing HTML code.

Figure 2. Template tags (A). Content field (B). Standard/HTML mode switch (C).

Step 3. Insert template tags.

  • In the custom template tags section (Figure 2-A), you can add unique template tags. These tags are variables that are replaced with the related information when the email message is generated from this template. The variety of options for template tags is dependent upon the Template Type for security reasons. This means that some template tags are removed from this section in order to protect the privacy of buyers' information.
  • To add a template tag, place the cursor where you'd like the variable to be inserted (Figure 3.1-A) by clicking the mouse in the content field. Move the cursor to the appropriate area using your keyboard arrows if necessary. Then click on the button that fits the general topic (Figure 3.1-B). A pop-up window will appear with subcategories. Click on the tag that you want to insert (Figure 3.1-C). The template tag will be inserted in the place of your cursor (Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.1. Place cursor where the template tag will be added (A). Click on the appropriate topic button (B). In the pop-up window, click on the template tag you want (C).

Figure 3.2. The template tag is inserted.

Step 4. Complete edits.

  • Continue to make your edits as necessary.
  • Click on the Preview button (Figure 4-A) to see how your edits appear in the message.
  • If you are satisfied with your changes, send a test email to your email address by clicking on the Send Test Email button (Figure 4-B). It may take several moments for the test email message to arrive to your email inbox.
  • Click on the Save button (Figure 4-C) to save your changes. The Custom Email Templates page will load.

Figure 4. The Preview (A), Send Test Email (B) and Save (C) buttons.

Step 5. Set email template to default.

  • Once you've checked your test email and you are confident that email template is working properly, you will need to set the email template as the default email template. Once it is set to the default email template, it will be used for generating emails to your buyers based on the Template Type selected.
  • In the Custom Email page, find the email template you have edited/created. Use the filter options if necessary.
  • Click on the Default icon (Figure 5) to set this template as the default template for this Template Type.

Figure 5. Click on the Default icon.

This completes the task of customizing an email template in Auctiva.

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