Our email marketing tool lets you send one-off email campaigns as well as automated email sequences that tightly integrate with CRMs, like HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Copper.
When composing an email you have two formatting options:
Rich text email editor - conversational email for personal-looking email
Custom HTML - literally any design. Create an email template elsewhere and insert it into Outfunnel
This article describes how to insert a 3rd party generated email template to the composer and send it out through Outfunnel.
How to create custom HTML emails?
1. Switch to Custom HTML. Once you've created a new campaign or email, click on the Newsletter option on the toolbar and select Custom HTML. Please note that when you switch to HTML (or back to rich text) all existing content will be removed.
2. Insert the HTML code from another tool into the composer. Most 3rd party tools have the option to download an HTML file of the email. Once downloaded, open the .html file in the browser (or code editor), right-click on the screen, and select View page source. Copy everything you see and paste it into the Custom HTML composer in Outfunnel.
We recommend using a free tool like stripo.email for the best results but HTML from Mailchimp and other email providers also works. Alternatively, you could also use a free tool like Word to HTML to quickly create a simple HTML that you can paste into Outfunnel.
3. Replace merge fields with Outfunnel-compatible merge fields by using the Personalize dropdown.
Unsubscribe merge field: an unsubscribe field is mandatory and is usually found at the bottom of the email and needs to be replaced with {{unsubscribe_url}}. It might look something like [unsubscribe_url] or |UNSUB|. If an unsubscribe link does not yet exist, simply add it. Here's an example where the link is placed behind a word: <a href="{{unsubscribe_url}}">Unsubscribe</a>. Learn more about unsubscribes.
View email in browser merge field: should be replaced with {{message_url}}
Person/Organization specific merge fields: If you've used any custom merge fields then these can be replaced easily by selecting the right merge field from the Personalize dropdown in the editor.
Pro tip: Hit Ctrl+F or Cmd+F to open the search box and type in the field name (ie unsub or unsubscribe) to easily find the merge fields
Pro tip: After you've replaced the fields to verify that the fields are working, we recommend sending a test email to yourself with sample data.
4. Delete unsupported merge fields. Your email template might also include the merge fields that are unique to the other email provider and cannot be replaced by Outfunnel. These should just be deleted.
For example, with Mailchimp you might have the below merge fields in your email that are either in the header or footer of your email (these are not replaceable in Outfunnel): |ARCHIVE| ; |REWARDS| ; |LIST:NAME| ; |LIST:DESCRIPTION| ; |ABOUT_LIST| ; |LIST:ADDRESS|
5. Review your email and if all looks good, you are ready to send out the campaign.
A couple of things to keep in mind
💡 Images not showing when sending the email. Depending on where you created the HTML template, the images in the email may not be available on a public server which means that the images may not show in the email. To fix, simply upload the images to Google Drive or another service and add the URL in the HTML template.
💡 iFrame code is not supported. iFrame code will be automatically removed from HTML when the email is sent.
💡 Blue background when importing from Mailchimp HTML. This happens due to incompatibility issues with some templates. To fix remove the # from in front of the colors ("transparent" instead of "#transparent").
The easiest way to find these is to open up the search bar (CTRL+F) and search for #transparent.