Creating Approved Email Templates

Approved Email templates are HTML files managed by Vault PromoMats. End users of Approved Email select templates as a starting point when composing an email to send to accounts. With the exception of certain Configuration Tokens, end users cannot edit templates within Veeva CRM, ensuring approved content remains unchanged when sent by end users to recipients.

At least one template is required for Approved Email to function. See the Vault PromoMats documentation for more information on uploading templates and image assets.

Templates can reference Vault-managed or external images and hyperlinks. When hyperlinks point to content in Vault, a specific syntax is used in the href. If a template references images using a relative path, for example <img src = ‘localdrive/imagename.gif’>, Vault PromoMats can load and deploy the images to a public web server so all email recipients can view the images. See the Approved Email Vault documentation for more information.

Do not include tokens in commented out sections of Approved Email content.

Do not sync email templates that do not contain HTML code.

Email Template Requirements and Examples

Templates must contain a minimum structure of a standard HTML document, plus an <table> tag containing only the {{insertEmailFragments}} token when using Email Fragments. Templates must be UTF-8 encoded and should adhere to the following guidelines:

  • All comment tags must be preceded with a space or other form of indentation
  • Use <table> (and nested <table> tags) for absolute placement. Do not rely on <div>.
  • Do not link to external CSS style sheets. CSS should be inline in the head using the <style> tag or inline in the <body> HTML.

  • Only a subset of CSS functionality are supported in many email clients

    Up to 40 percent of all emails are opened on mobile devices. Email templates should be created with a mobile experience in mind. This typically follows responsive design process where the CSS adapts to render on both desktop and mobile email clients.

  • Images should be formatted for screen resolution and be as small as possible
  • Hyperlinks containing non-ASCII characters, for example accented characters, must be converted to ASCII via Punycode or a similar tool. Hyperlinks that contain non-ASCII characters do not function correctly when sent to recipients.

Email Template HTML files cannot have more than 131,072 characters.

No standard exists for creating HTML for emails as each email client supports a different subset of CSS. See Resources for Creating Approved Email Content for a list of useful sites and resources to use when creating templates.

Example Email Template Structure

Copy 
<html>
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
    <title>My Title</title>
    <style type="text/css"><!-- Inline CSS styles--></style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <!-- Content goes here. Styles can also be inline. -->
    <table>
      <!-- Required if using fragments. Table must be empty and include the following token -->
      {{insertEmailFragments}}
    </table>
  </body>
</html>

Using the Email Template Editor

Users can quickly create, manage, and update responsive HTML files for Email Template documents within Vault using MailUp’s BEE email editor.

See Using the BEE Email Template Editor in the Vault documentation for more information.

Uploading Templates to Vault

Once templates have been coded and locally tested, it must be uploaded to Vault. See How to Set up Email Templates in the Vault documentation for more information.

Ensure a template's assigned country has a corresponding abbreviation in Vault. If an assigned country does not have an associated abbreviation, a sync error occurs when syncing media from Vault to CRM.