HI Paula,

There are two types of email templates in Iterable: Content Templates and Campaign Templates.

Content Templates should be thought of as “boilerplate” templates - i.e. you like the email’s layout, but want/need to be able to replace the copy, images, etc. Most of the time, when Marketers talk about email templates, they are talking about the concept of Content Templates in Iterable. Content Templates live in the CONTENT > TEMPLATES section of Iterable’s UI.

Campaign Templates are individual “templates” that are assigned to unique campaigns. No two campaigns have the same Campaign Template. Campaign Templates live in CAMPAIGNS > YOUR_CAMPAIGN > DESIGN > TEMPLATE. 

Confusion arises when you edit an individual campaign email because you are editing its Campaign Template even if you started from a Content Template to begin with. This is intentional to make sure that changes to your individual campaign do not affect the original boilerplate that you started from, in case you want to use it again for another future campaign.

pANSWER] Best practices are as follows:

1. Any time you have a new email layout design, build it out first as a Content Template, that way you can easily reference it later no matter how many campaigns it is used in, whether 1 or 100.
2. To avoid confusion, name your campaign templates after the campaign itself. (If you don’t do this, the template name you see in the Campaign Overview will maintain its original Content Template name, which is, again, confusing.)

Hope that helps! Let me know if any additional Q’s.

Hi Paula!

Drake’s answer above should be helpful here, but if you have any other questions or need additional assistance, don’t hesitate to email support at support@iterable.com

Thanks!
Mel

Hi Drake and Mel,

  What about SMS Templates?  I don’t see anything about our SMS messages that would be common among the different campaigns that would warrant a boiler plate SMStemplate.   So is it better just to create the template when creating the campaign(Campaign Template) or should I always create a Content Template for each message first?   

If I do use a boiler plate template, and that boiler plate has a change , for example the footer.   Would that automatically change all the emails that used that particular boiler plate template? 

Thank you again!!

Paula

Hi @PaulaRVO  thanks for these thoughtful questions! 

Tagging @MelChristman  for insights on SMS template strategy.

Paula, would you be able to mention any specific SMS elements you plan to reuse across campaigns? Also, would a boilerplate template work for you if most SMS messages have consistent elements, or do you think flexibility is more important to adjust content per campaign? This context could help Mel provide the best recommendations on whether campaign-level or content templates work better.