Retainful gives you three ways to build an email. All three are available for campaigns, automation emails, and saved templates.
Choose your editor
The drag-and-drop editor
Drag blocks from the sidebar onto the canvas, then click any block to edit its content and style.
Available blocks
- Text — headings and paragraphs with full formatting.
- Image — upload images or pick from your media library.
- Button — your call to action; link it to any URL.
- Divider — visual separation between sections.
- Coupon — displays a discount code, including unique codes generated by automations.
- Product — pulls real products from your connected store, with image, name, and price. Choose products manually or use a dynamic feed (best sellers, newest, recently viewed).
- Custom HTML — embed your own HTML inside an otherwise visual email.
Working faster
- Auto-save — the editor saves as you work; if your browser crashes, you can restore your progress.
- Universal blocks — save a block (like your header or footer) once and reuse it across emails.
- Personalization — insert merge tags from the toolbar; see Personalization.
- Preview — check the desktop and mobile rendering before sending, and use web view to see the email as a standalone page.
The rich text editor
A focused writing surface with text formatting, links, images, and merge tags. Emails built here tend to feel more personal — great for founder notes and plain-text style announcements, which often get better engagement than heavily designed emails.
The HTML editor
Paste or write complete HTML email markup. You’re responsible for email-client compatibility (tables, inline styles — the usual email quirks). Merge tags work in HTML too.
Email clients are far stricter than web browsers. If you hand-code, test in multiple clients — what works in Chrome may break in Outlook.
Save and reuse templates
Any design can be saved as a template under Templates:
- Build a branded base template once — logo, colors, footer — and start every campaign from it.
- Templates are shared across campaigns and automations, so your branding stays consistent everywhere.
- Duplicate a template to iterate on a new version without touching the original.
