How to Create a Template in Gmail? Ultimate Guide

23.4.2024
Read time: 13 min
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How to Create a Template in Gmail? Ultimate Guide
Try Publicate For Free Today
02.03.2022
Read time: 13 min

Email is the beating heart of most organizations nowadays. Almost 3 million companies use Gmail as their email service provider but since the platform prioritizes sending over design, companies are looking to other options.

More companies are learning how to create a template in Gmail with powerful design tools, to be able to build and send beautiful emails in minutes.

Using templates in Gmail is a multi-step, laborious process with very limited capability, but you can overcome these limitations in a few clicks with the help of an email builder.

In this post, we’ll show you exactly how to create templates in Gmail, and how you can take your emails to the next level using an email builder.

Guide Index

What is an Email Template?

An email template is a pre-designed email you can customize with your own content to suit your campaign.

Email templates contain a variety of useful fields, ready and waiting for you to add text, images, links and calls-to-action.

Email builders like Publicate, let you design engaging emails quickly and easily. It also provides access to hundreds of professionally-designed, free email templates for Gmail and other email service providers.

There’s no need to bring coders or designers into the process. With Publicate’s drag-and-drop functionality, anyone can create emails in minutes.

Simply choose from a variety of ready-made templates, customize, export to Gmail, and send. There is even a direct integration so you can select your template right inside Gmail.

Plus, with insightful analytics, you can measure how every template performs. Get insights into everything from open rates, click rates, heat maps and social sharing, so you can make sure your templates are as engaging and effective as they can be.

Plus size woman at work in bright, open office workplace with computer
Picture from Unsplash

What are the Benefits of Gmail Templates?

When you need to send engaging emails that look professional, and are fast to build, it pays to explore your options. If you’re struggling with the time and costs associated with hiring designers or coders, or feel lost when looking at a blank Gmail compose window, a template is an excellent alternative.

Here are just some of the benefits.

1. Save Time

A HubSpot study found that salespeople spend 31% of their time searching for or creating content such as emails. Email is a powerful tool but it can be a time suck.

Gmail is essentially a blank canvas - ever found yourself staring at the white screen wondering where to start? When you create your Gmail templates in an email builder, you can make use of hundreds of prebuilt, engaging and fully customizable templates.

For professionals who have to send the same email multiple times, this lets you maximize outreach without typing the same message over and over again. It’s all already there for you.

2. Achieve Brand Consistency

Templates go beyond making pretty emails in Gmail. They keep your brand’s visuals (from colours to logo and layout) and tone aligned.

Brand consistency makes you recognizable, builds trust and loyalty, and helps you stand out from the competition. This is all key when you need to make an impression in a busy email inbox.

3. Improve Outcomes

The best Gmail templates have been designed by professionals with the customer journey in mind. They prioritize engaging layouts suitable for a range of messages, whether you’re launching a new product range to your customers or announcing a new hire to your staff.

Once you know how to create a template in Gmail (it’s super easy - we’ll show you in this guide!), it’s easier to hit your goals. With an email builder like Publicate, you can build your emails easily using drag and drop, then export and send HTML emails in Gmail or your preferred email provider. With built-in analytics, you can track those all-important success metrics, for continuous improvement.

How to Enable Email Templates in Gmail?

When you find yourself sending the same or similar emails, you probably feel like your time could be better spent elsewhere. We’ll show you how to enable templates in Gmail so you can streamline the process and send emails faster.

  1. Log into your Gmail account.
  2. Click Settings (the gear icon at the top right corner of your screen).
  3. Click the Advanced tab at the top.
  4. Choose Enable in the Templates section.
  5. At the bottom, click Save Changes.

This should take you to your inbox, where you can start creating templates.

One drawback of Gmail templates is that the platform doesn’t enable visual or well-designed templates - you’re restricted by Gmail’s limited editor. Usually, you’ll end up with plain text, or pretty bland, emails.

If you want to create a visually appealing email template in Gmail, you’ll need to use an email builder like Publicate. Jump to the section on how to do this.

How to Create or Change Email Templates in Gmail?

With the template functionality enabled in your Gmail account, you can start creating and changing templates. First up - here’s how to create a template in Gmail:

  1. Click Compose.
  2. Type your email template in the compose window.
  3. Click More (the three dots at the bottom of the window) and choose Templates.
  4. Select Save draft as template and then Save as new template.
  5. Give the template a name and hit Save.

You can use a similar process to edit existing templates. Simply:

  1. Click Compose.
  2. Type your email template in the compose window.
  3. Click More (the three dots at the bottom of the window) and choose Templates.
  4. Click Save draft as template and go to Overwrite template.
  5. Select the template you want to overwrite and click Save.

While it’s easy enough to create and edit templates in Gmail, you’re limited to the functionality of the Gmail editor and the custom options are very limited. This means It is hard to make these emails beautiful or engaging. They might struggle to hold the attention of your audience.

For well-designed email templates your recipients will enjoy, you’ll need to introduce an email builder to the process.

How to Insert and Send Email Templates in Gmail?

Sending your message using a ready-made template couldn’t be easier. Grab the template you need when you compose a new message using the following steps:

  1. Open Gmail and click Compose.
  2. Click More and choose Templates.
  3. Under Insert Template, you can choose a saved template to add to your email.
  4. Compose or customize the message and click Send.

It’s a handy time-saving trick, but what if you want to know how to create a template in Gmail that looks more professional and engaging? You might want to incorporate a better layout, your brand elements and powerful multimedia.

An email builder like Publicate has features that make this happen. A direct integration with Gmail also lets you choose your email template from Publicate right inside Gmail, so you can design stunning newsletters with just a couple of clicks.

How to Manage Existing Email Templates in Gmail?

Email templates save us from copying and pasting, or rewriting, the same message multiple times. Gmail lets you store up to 50 templates at a time, (if you need more you can use an email builder), so how can you manage your stack of templates with ease?

1. Deleting a Template

Get rid of templates gathering dust. If you no longer use or need a template, delete it to make room for Gmail newsletter templates you will use.

To do that, click on the three dots at the bottom of the compose window. Hover over Templates and Delete template. Then choose the template you want to delete.

2. Overwriting a Template

In Gmail, you can’t just edit a template, so overwriting is your best option when you want to make changes to an existing template.

Simply write the new version of the template in the compose window. Click on the three dots, hover over Templates and Save draft as template. Then click the name of the template you want to update and select Overwrite template.

3. Email Sequences

Email sequences help you re-engage and convert customers, so you can scale your business. If you wanted to launch sequences in Gmail, you’d have to manually create templates, typing them out email by email.

When you bring an email builder like Publicate into the mix, you can take advantage of hundreds of free templates for Gmail. Publicate has a direct integration with Gmail. So, you can find and customize templates from the Publicate platform, and send them to unlimited recipients from Gmail.

This is a great option for teams who need to follow up on leads or try to move customers down the sales funnel. It takes just minutes to create and send entire email sequences to your target database.

4. Personalized Fields

Templates let you send mass emails that feel like a one-on-one conversation.

Embrace the power of personalization by using custom fields to add the recipient’s First Name, Last Name and Company.

5. Shared Email Templates

Shared email templates help keep everyone on your team on the same page. On its own, Gmail doesn’t enable template sharing across multiple users.

However, we can’t stress the importance of consistency enough. That’s why you need an email builder like Publicate, which enables collaboration across your entire organization.

With an email builder, anyone in your team can create a template for Gmail, starting with your team workspace. Invite anyone to add content, use brand assets to keep everything on brand, plus set up approvals and permissions for fast reviews.

Easing the entire workflow, an email builder like Publicate lets you effortlessly get or give approval for a newsletter design. Write, co-edit, review, and approve all in one platform.

How to Improve Email Templates?

Templates boost your team’s organization, productivity and success. Follow these guidelines to make the most out of Gmail templates.

1. Use Clear Titles

Name your templates using short, precise titles. Long or confusing titles will probably mean your team members waste time trying to find the right template. Remember that this is all internal (your customers won’t see your template titles!) so the best approach is clear and direct.

Aim for template titles of 25 characters or less, as Google only shows the first 25 characters in its pop-up list. Here are some title examples to get you started:

2. Personalization

Customers prefer personalized emails, so take advantage of custom fields in tools like Publicate. Use the platform to personalize emails in one click. Then, you can export to Gmail and hit Send. Seamless.

3. Automation

Automation takes time-consuming tasks off your hands and keeps important marketing activities running in the background.

Set automation rules within Gmail to improve company response times, keep customers engaged, help your team adhere to service level agreements (SLAs) and ensure brand consistency.

You can configure this in Gmail by setting a filter. Select Show search options to the right of the search bar. Set your filter and use the Advanced settings feature to select Send template as one of the further options.

Select the template you want to use and it will become part of your automated response.

4. Design

Visual elements and a beautiful design pave the path for increased engagement in your emails.

Since Gmail’s design capabilities are so limited, it’s best to use an email builder that lets you drag and drop customizable modules into one professional-looking email. Publicate is one such email builder. In the next section, we’ll cover how to create beautiful email templates that perform, using Publicate.

How to Create an Email Template with Publicate?

Gmail itself doesn't have the functionality to create well-designed newsletters. So, if you’re not a designer or coder, how can you create an email template that looks good and performs well?

You design it in Publicate and export it to Gmail. Publicate makes it simple to send HTML emails in Gmail. It removes the need for HTML knowledge; all you need to do is drag and drop your way to beautiful newsletters in minutes.

Let’s show you how.

  1. Choose a template from Publicate’s extensive library.
  2. Customize the template using pre-built drag-and-drop modules. Whatever content you need to add - from headings to videos to social media links - the right modules are waiting for you in the Publicate platform.
  3. Add your chosen content. You can do this by uploading content from your computer or simply pasting in a webpage or YouTube video. Publicate will dynamically scrape content from that page and add it to your newsletter.
  4. Finish customizing the template with the message you want to share. No need to scour third-party websites for high-quality images, either. Publicate connects to the best free image and GIF libraries, for a world of imagery that’s ready to drop into your email.

It’s good to know that Publicate uses code that’s extensively tested using Litmus software to ensure it renders well on over 57 email clients, including Gmail.

How to Send an Email Template with Publicate?

So, you’ve made use of Publicate’s templates, multi-media libraries and drag-and-drop editor, your email looks great, and you’re ready to send it out into the world.

How can you send your Publicate email template in Gmail?

  1. Install the Publicate Google Chrome Extension.
  2. Open your Gmail account and make sure you’re logged into the account you need.
  3. Click Insert Newsletter at the bottom of your email composer window.
  4. Select your template and it will load directly into the body of the email.
  5. Send it out to the recipients you want, knowing your email is structured to work beautifully across every device!

Wrap Up

You can create a template in Gmail with a few simple steps covered in this blog. Although easy to create, Gmail templates lack visually appealing designs, which could impact their performance.

You can overcome this obstacle by using an email builder like Publicate alongside Gmail’s sending capabilities.

When you know how to create a template in Gmail using an email builder, you can broadcast quality emails in minutes. With a selection of beautiful pre-made templates and the ability to collaborate with your team, you can achieve consistent branding, and send emails to your customers and employees without anything slowing you down.

Try it for yourself with a 14-day free trial.