Extend the Email Builder Experience

This guide walks through ways to extend the email builder experience for your Account Engagement use cases.

  • Packaged email templates: Package your email templates to distribute on AppExchange. This use case is primarily for Independent Software Vendors, known as ISVs.
  • Custom Components for the email templates and email content: Custom components extend the building experience by providing a way to implement integrations and new standard building component types.

A great email design is an easy way to increase prospect engagement and boost campaign effectiveness. A beautiful email in an easy-to-read format helps to set your marketing apart, and catches your prospects’ attention.

However, creating a great email design isn’t easy and often requires skills that not all marketers have. Packaged email templates can help fill the gap. Instead of incurring the cost and expending the effort to create their own templates, a marketer can go to AppExchange and purchase ready-to-use templates designed by experts. Now a marketer can get templates in seconds and incorporate them into their next campaign.

  • Decide whether your primary goal is brand awareness or generating revenue. If the primary goal is brand awareness, then consider listing the templates as a free app.
  • Second-generation Packaging (2GP) isn’t supported for email template packaging.
  • The email template can be in an enhanced email template folder.
    • If a package includes an enhanced email template folder, the target organization must have enhanced folders enabled.
    • If an email template is in a subfolder, you must add the parent folder and the child folder to the email template package.
  • For merge fields based on custom fields that are used in the Recipients prefix (for leads and contacts), Account Engagement adds references to those merge fields. If the custom field is renamed, the reference in the template isn’t updated. To use the new field name and update the reference, edit the custom merge field in the template.

This overview provides the high-level steps to create packaged email templates.

This process is intended for ISVs who want to list a package of email templates on AppExchange. If you’re a customer, you can follow a similar approach but we recommend using change sets for moving templates between orgs.
  1. Use an Account Engagement sandbox to design your email template. If you're an ISV, then read the Account Engagement ISV Getting Started Guide to learn how to sign up and get an Account Engagement developer environment.
  2. Set up a user with the Access Drag and Drop Content Builder permission. Learn more in Salesforce Help.
  3. Design and test the email templates using the Salesforce Email Template Builder. Learn more in Salesforce Help.
  4. Package and list the templates on AppExchange. You need Salesforce developer environment to package templates and list an app on the AppExchange. Learn More

Users then download the package and unpack the email template. Then they can use it as if it is their own.

Custom components allow you to extend the email builders by developing Lightning Web Component (LWC) modules that can be embedded and configured within the builder canvas for email templates or email content. Overall, the goal of custom components is to provide marketers with reusable components that accelerate the design of a new email record. Here are the two most common use cases.

  • Integrating with an external source. Allows marketers to pull information or content quickly from another source to use within their email. For example:
    • Pull in webinar data and add it to the email automatically, bypassing manual steps, and avoiding errors.
    • To access content that isn’t stored in Salesforce, integrate an external CMS.
  • Reusable email formatting. Allows marketers to design an email with advanced components that aren’t standard. For example:
    • Create a data table component that allows marketers to easily embed tables into an email.
    • Create a reusable component that has an image, title, and text to make building the email quicker for common patterns.
  • Account Engagement doesn’t support scratch orgs. Although you can use Second-generation Managed Packaging (2GP) to develop the custom component, you can’t test email sends without a Account Engagement production org.

This overview provides the high-level steps for building a custom component.

  1. Use an Account Engagement sandbox to develop your custom component. If you're an ISV, then read the Account Engagement ISV Getting Started Guide to learn how to sign up and get an Account Engagement developer environment.
  2. Learn the basics of Lightning Web Components and set up your Salesforce DX Environment. See Build Lightning Web Components on Trailhead.
  3. Set up email in your Account Engagement org to enable the new building experience within Account Engagement. See Salesforce Help for setup instructions.
  4. Build an LWC custom component. See the Custom Components Getting Started Guide. You can find an example of custom component code in EmailBuildPoC on GitHub.
  5. Deploy and test your custom component in your Account Engagement sandbox or Account Engagement Developer org.
  6. Package and deploy the custom component.

Your customers can download the package, install, and configure it in their own orgs. Finally, they can add the custom components to their own email templates.