Newsletter Templates

Newsletter templates contain layout and design used for sending newsletters. Templates can be assigned to multiple newsletters, saved and updated for later use.

Managing Templates

Templates are listed alphabetically by name, along side each are three icons.

• Preview Template Icon - Click this icon to preview the template in a popup window.
• Edit Template Icon - Click this icon to edit the template.
• Delete Template Icon - Click this icon to delete the template.

Newsletter Template

• Name - Name of the template, used when Sending Newsletters. Template names are not displayed publicly.
• Template Contents - HTML markup source of the template. Markup can be entered manually or created using the available TinyMCE editor.

WYSIWYG Editor

• Enable/Disable Editor

When editing newsletter templates it is possible to manually override the WYSIWYG Editor setting and disable the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor for the Template Content input. Because TinyMCE “cleans up” HTML markup (removing some tags and altering the format of others) in some instances you may wish to disable the editor before pasting your template contents to preserve your markup format.

Note: Template contents can still be previewed when viewing the templates list without using the preview tool in TinyMCE.

Template Variables

The following variables can be used when creating a template. When newsletters are sent the variables will be replaced with their related content to construct the final email sent to subscribers.

Variable Format

[variable_name]

For the template to be successfully used to create the appropriate content they must follow the format above. Variable names should be enclosed within square brackets, in lower case and match the variable options listed below. Any other content within the template will be delivered to the subscriber exactly as it appears.

Supported Variables

Events

• [events] - Primary list of upcoming events, customized by subscriber settings.
• [billboard] - List of current Billboard Events. ¹
• [newest] List of newest events. ¹
• [popular] List of the most popular events. ¹
• [today] List of today's events. ¹

Message

• [message] - Custom message created when composing a newsletter draft.
• [track] - 1px by 1px image used to identify when a newsletter is read.

Subscriber Variables

• [firstname] - The subscriber's first name.
• [lastname] - The subscriber's last name.
• [email] - The subscriber's email address.
• [postal] - The subscriber's postal code.

Social

• [facebook] - Facebook Share button.
• [twitter] - Twitter Tweet button.
• [follow] - “Follow us on Twitter” image.

Links

• [calendarurl] - Link to the public calendar.
• [editcancel] - Link to the edit or cancel newsletter subscription.
• [archive] - Link to the archived version of the newsletter available in the public calendar.

Statistics

• [event-count] - Total number of active events.
• [location-count] - Total number of Saved Locations.

¹ List size for these variables is determined by current list setting configuration. [today] uses Billboard List Size.

Newsletters Without Events

To send a newsletter without an event list you can either omit the [events] variable from your template or select past dates when Composing Drafts. When no events are available (due to empty days, or past dates) the [events] variable will simply be removed (instead of being replaced with a list of events). This not only increases the flexibility of your templates but also allows non-event based newsletters to be sent using Helios Calendar.

Saving the Template

Once you have entered, or made changes to, the template you can save the template by clicking the “Save Template” button.