The email editor is where you write the emails for your campaigns, your welcome email and second-order nudge, and the emails you send to one customer. You start from a ready-made template or an empty page, build the email from blocks, check it in the preview, and save it.
You will learn #
- How to start an email from a template
- How to add, arrange and fill blocks, including products from your store
- How to add each customer’s name and details with variables
- How to draft the text with your own AI tool
- How to preview an email and send yourself a test
- How to manage your saved emails
Before you begin #
- Set your logo, colors and social links once. They’re on the Email sending page, under Email branding, and every email uses them. Brand color and Accent color are the colors every new email starts in. Your postal address comes from your WooCommerce store settings, under WooCommerce → Settings → General.
- Add a test address, if you want to send yourself tests. Add it under Test recipients on the Email sending page, or type it next to Save & send test in the editor.
Open Email templates #
- In your WordPress admin, open Tendlio → Customers.
- Click Email templates.
The page has three parts: Start a new email, Your emails (the emails you’ve saved) and, once you’ve deleted one, Recently deleted.
Start a new email #
- Under Start a new email, open Choose a template.
- Pick a template. They come in two groups:
- Layouts are designs for any audience, grouped by what the email is for: Announcements, Products, Offers, Letters and Inspiration. The cards show each layout in your brand colors, with products from your store. The Start from scratch card opens an empty editor.
- Prewritten messages are each written for a particular customer group, for example “Win-back: At-Risk + Hibernating”. The welcome and second-order ones are meant for the Welcome & second order page, where they go out on their own.
- Click Use this template on the card you picked, or Start blank on the Start from scratch card.
The editor opens with the template’s blocks, and saves nothing until you click Save template.
A template is written around its name, so the Free delivery template talks about free delivery. It doesn’t invent the details: there’s no discount code, date or other promise in it that you haven’t set. If your offer has a code or an end date, add it yourself.
Some layouts come with an example photo, such as a parcel being packed or a table set for a party. It shows what the layout looks like and isn’t a photo of your shop, so replace it with one of your own products before you send.
Name the email and write the subject #
At the top of the editor:
- Template name: the name you see in your lists. Customers don’t see it.
- Subject and Preview text. The preview text shows next to the subject in the inbox.
- Intended audience: who the email is written for. It groups your emails, tunes the AI prompt further down, and suggests that group when you choose this email on Campaigns. It never decides who gets the email: you choose that when you start a campaign.
You can save an email without a subject while you work on it. Tendlio doesn’t send an email that has no subject, so add one before you use the email.
Build the email from blocks #
- Drag a block from Add block: into the email, to the spot where you want it. Clicking a block’s button doesn’t add the block: the button only reminds you to drag it.
- Click into a block to write in it. Text blocks have bold, italic and link buttons.
- To move a block, drag its handle, or use its up and down arrows. The other buttons on a block duplicate it and delete it.
↶ Undo and ↷ Redo step back and forward through your block changes. Outside a text box, Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z do the same.
The blocks are Hero, Heading, Text, Button, Coupon / callout, Divider, Image, Image + text, Columns, Spacer, Social, Product and Product row. Hero is a full-width band with a headline and a button. Coupon / callout is a boxed line for a coupon code or a short announcement. Tendlio doesn’t create coupon codes, so make the coupon in WooCommerce and type its code into the block.
Add products from your store #
A Product block shows one product, and a Product row shows up to three. In the Brand theme, Layout turns a Product row into a grid of two or three across, or a list, and then it holds up to nine; a Product block can show its photo beside the details or large above them. To fill them:
- Pick products yourself: click Add a product, start typing a product name, and click it in the results.
- Fill from your store: click Best sellers, On sale now or New arrivals. Tendlio fills the block with products that are published, in stock and can be bought. Best sellers picks the products that sold the most units in the last 12 months, as your last analysis counted them. Before your first analysis, it goes by WooCommerce’s all-time sales.
A Product row also has Which products go here. Keep The ones you choose, or pick Picks from each customer’s orders. With Picks from each customer’s orders, Tendlio fills the row for each customer in the welcome email, the second-order nudge and an email you send to one customer: up to three products your customers buy together with what this customer bought, leaving out what they already have. When there’s nothing your customers buy together with what this customer bought, the row shows your best-sellers instead, still without what they already have. A campaign sends the same email to everyone, so there the row shows your best-sellers.
Tendlio reads each product’s name, price and link when the welcome email or the second-order nudge goes out, and when you click Send to this customer for an email to one customer. In these emails, it leaves out a product that can’t be bought any more, for example one you deleted or one that sold out. A campaign sends its products as they were when you last saved the email.
Choose the look #
Under How it looks:
- Theme: Brand draws the email in your brand and accent colors from Email sending, and every template and new email starts in it. The other themes, such as Clean, Modern, Bold or Dark, are starting color palettes.
- Colors: in the Brand theme you set two, Brand and Accent (main button and details), and the background, headings and text follow from them. Leave the accent empty and the brand color takes its place. Tendlio uses the accent for text only where it’s easy to read; elsewhere that text uses a darker shade of your brand color, or black or white, whichever is easier to read. In the other themes you set Brand (buttons & links), Background, Headings and Body text. Picking a theme resets the background, headings and text to its palette and keeps your brand and accent colors. Click a swatch to pick a color, or type a color code, such as #8064b1, into the box next to it.
- Block options in the Brand theme: each block also gets a Background (white, a light tint of your brand color, warm cream or your brand color), and blocks next to each other on the same background read as one band. A Hero also has its alignment, headline size and headline color; a Button can be an underlined link instead.
- Change layout: if you like your words but not the design, pick another arrangement to see a preview of it, then click Apply layout. Your headline, text, button, products and your own photos move into it, and its theme comes along. Your brand and accent colors stay. Undo brings your blocks back.
- Footer: Tendlio adds it to every email: your social icons, your store name, your postal address and the unsubscribe link. It’s part of the frame around the email, so you can’t delete it by accident.
The logo at the top of the email comes from Email branding on the Email sending page. In the Brand theme it sits in the middle, at most 180 by 48 pixels, in its own proportions. Without a logo, or when Tendlio can’t read your logo’s size, the email shows your store name.
Add each customer’s details with variables #
- Click into a text block where you want the detail.
- Pick it from Insert variable:, under the blocks.
In the editor, a variable shows as its name in double braces, for example {{first_name}}. In each customer’s copy, Tendlio replaces it with that customer’s value when it prepares their email. The list shows what each variable fills in: the customer’s name, their order count, what they’ve spent, your store’s name, the unsubscribe link, and more. Button links accept variables too.
If a customer has no name on their orders, the name variables stay empty, and Tendlio removes the comma or space they leave behind, so “Hi {{first_name}},” reads “Hi,”.
When you save, the editor warns you about a variable it doesn’t know, for example {{firstname}} typed by hand, because it comes out as nothing in the email. It also warns you about a {{ that never closes, which goes out as you typed it.
Draft the text with your own AI tool (optional) #
- Open Don’t want to write it yourself? Let AI draft this email (optional).
- Read the prompt in the box. Tendlio wrote it for the email’s Intended audience, with your store’s name and type. Change anything you like, then click Copy prompt.
- Paste the prompt into Claude or ChatGPT and work on the draft together until it says what you’d tell these customers yourself.
- Copy the text, paste it under Paste AI output here, and click Insert as text blocks. Each paragraph becomes a text block at the end of your email.
Tendlio doesn’t send your prompt or your email to any AI service. The prompt goes only where you paste it, and it carries no customer details. When you change the Intended audience, the prompt changes with it, and if you’ve edited the prompt, Tendlio asks first. If you paste the prompt itself into the email by mistake, the editor warns you when you save.
Preview and test the email #
- Preview shows the email with sample details in place of a customer’s. Switch between desktop and mobile width at the top of it.
- Click any part of the preview to jump to that block in the editor, ready to type.
- The size next to Preview is how large the email’s code is. Gmail cuts off emails larger than about 102 KB behind a “View entire message” link. Keep it under about 95 KB, because the email each customer gets is a little larger once their details are in it.
- When your screen is too narrow for both, the preview moves below the blocks. Focus mode hides the menus to make room, and if your screen is wide enough without them, the preview sits beside the blocks again. The Focus mode button is in the page header, in the Add block: bar and in the toolbar at the top of the screen, and your browser remembers whether it’s on. Exit focus mode brings the menus back.
To send yourself a test:
- Type an address next to Send a test to:, or leave it empty to use the test recipients from the Email sending page.
- Click Save & send test. Tendlio saves the email first, then sends the test, with the same sample details as the preview.
Tests go out while sending is Off, and they don’t touch the emails waiting for your customers.
Save the email and manage your emails #
Click Save template. The email appears under Your emails on the Email templates page.
When you save, the editor also warns you about a block you left empty, such as a product row without products, and about an image that was deleted from your Media Library. Tendlio leaves both out of the email your customers get.
If the email still has an example photo from the layout, the editor asks whether you want to keep it or replace it with a photo of your own, when you save and when you send a test. Keep it saves the email and the editor doesn’t ask about that photo again. Replace it opens your Media Library. Campaigns and the Welcome & second order page ask the same question when you pick an email that still has one.
Each saved email has these buttons:
- Edit opens it in the editor.
- Send opens Campaigns with this email chosen.
- Clone makes a copy to change.
- Archive takes the email out of Your emails, out of Campaigns and out of Send to this customer. An automatic email that already uses it keeps sending it. The page has no list of archived emails to bring one back from, so if you might want the email again, use Delete instead.
- Delete moves the email to Recently deleted, at the bottom of the page, where Restore brings it back. That list shows your 20 most recent deletions.
When the welcome email or the second-order nudge sends one of your saved emails, that saved email is marked In use. If you delete it, the automatic email stops going out until you pick another one on the Welcome & second order page, and Tendlio asks you to confirm first.
Write your own HTML #
Advanced: edit HTML replaces the blocks with an HTML box, for when you want to paste your own email code. Tendlio first asks whether to start from your current design or from an empty box. Variables work in HTML too. If your HTML has no {{unsubscribe_url}} link, Tendlio adds its standard unsubscribe footer when you save. Back to blocks returns to the blocks.
Why the editor works this way #
A campaign sends the email as you last saved it #
A campaign can take days to reach everyone. It keeps the email you saved when you clicked Start campaign, so the first and the last customer get the same email. That includes the products: their names and prices are the ones from your last save, so save the email again before a campaign if your prices changed.
The welcome email and emails to one customer read products for each customer #
These emails go out one at a time, sometimes weeks after you saved the email. Tendlio reads each product when it prepares each customer’s email, so the price and link are current, and it leaves out a product you’ve removed or that has sold out.
The footer can’t be removed #
Marketing email law expects an unsubscribe link and a postal address in every email. Tendlio adds both to the footer of every email. Campaigns and emails to one customer won’t go out while your store address is empty, so fill it in before you switch sending to Live.
The AI draft goes through copy and paste #
You draft with the AI tool and account you already use, and the text becomes part of your email only after you’ve read it and pasted it in.
Additional resources #
- How to send a campaign to your customers: send a saved email to a group of customers.
- How to welcome first-time buyers and nudge them to a second order: the automatic emails that send a saved email.
- How to find and contact customers in the Customer list: send a saved email to one customer.
- How to set up email sending and switch it to Live: the logo, the social links and your test addresses.
- How to recover abandoned checkouts and carts: the cart reminder emails, which you write on the Recover sales page.
Frequently asked questions #
Does Tendlio write my emails with AI? #
No. It writes a prompt for you, and you run it in your own AI tool, such as Claude or ChatGPT, then paste the reply back.
Can I use my own HTML email? #
Yes. Advanced: edit HTML replaces the blocks with your own code, and Tendlio adds the unsubscribe footer if your HTML doesn't have the link.
Why does my campaign show an old price? #
A campaign sends the email as you last saved it. Open the email and click Save template before you start your next campaign. A campaign that's already going out keeps the version it started with.
Where do I change the logo in my emails? #
On the Email sending page, under Email branding. Every email uses it.