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• Composing Messages

We made the message editor as simple as we could, with the big emphasis of juggling multiple messages at once. The left panel displays the list of the campaign’s messages — so you can switch between them instantly, reorder them, and add new messages.

The editor has two tabs:

• Visual Editor — a classic “what you see is what you get” rich text editor. You can safely paste formatted text here from other platforms like Word, Pages, or Google Docs — it parses them well, while stripping off any unnecessary formatting.
• Markdown — if you’re a raving Markdown fan, then this tab allows you to speed up the process by pasting content directly from your Markdown editor of choice.

Between these two formats, we're addressing Markdown as "the source of truth." So if you try to manipulate styling or extra line breaks in the Visual Editor, it might not work out. Our goal is to promote a classic, clean layout with the focus on your content (regular paragraphs, headlines, etc).

In the editor, you’re working on the “email body” — actual email content. Before sending, we’ll add the footer section, which you can customize in Email Settings (learn more about it here.

Setting message conditions

You can choose to only send a message to a specific subset of users. To do that, click "Only send to users who match specific conditions…" in the top area of the screen, and the filters will appear. This feature allows you to use behavior data to skip irrelevant messages, which is hugely helpful (e.g. in onboarding campaigns).

You can also choose what days of the week you want this message delivered on. To view these options, click "Show advanced options" next to the time delay settings.

We calculate this by moving from the "last message sent" time to X days into the future as per delay set, and then — if it doesn't fall into the desired day — keep adding one more day until it matches on of the sending days.

How to send a message e.g. every Sunday. Imagine you have an evergreen newsletter campaign, so you want all messages to go out on Sundays 7 days apart. How do you set it up?

• Make sure all other days of the week are unchecked, so that the message is only sent on Sundays.
• Set them 6 days after the previous message. It minimizes the chance of a potential delay that would cause those emails to go out two weeks apart (if the sending takes too long and rolls into a Monday).

Sending a test message

You can always test any message live in your inbox using the test feature. "Send a test" link is available in the top right corner of the screen.

Previewing your messages

This feature allows you to preview your messages using data from any individual user. This is particularly helpful if you need to test Liquid tags, snippets, and other variable parts of your message. To open the preview window, click "Preview" in the top right corner of the screen.

How will my messages look and feel?

Our default template looks like a simple text email, but slightly more polished. If you prefer sending long-form emails or articles, then you’ll appreciate nicely formatted headers (H1-H4), lists, etc. Here’s a snapshot of how a sample email would look in your inbox:

Custom themes

While we still encourage you to keep things simple, Userlist can support multiple themes. You can manage themes in your settings.

Among the themes, you'll find:

• Basic — our default "lighly styled" template. You can customize the accent color.
• Plain — super-basic, as if your emails were sent from Gmail.
• Branded — a heavier email template with customizable background colors and your logo in the headline.
• Custom - access to the theme HTML, for much more control.

Here's an example of a Branded theme:

After you're done with customization, you can then pick one of these themes for each individual message inside campaigns and broadcasts.