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Tips for using the drag and drop editor

This article provides instruction and tips on using the drag and drop editor in your Frankie account when creating an email campaign. 

We're on a design mission to build a lovelier world, one email template at a time. To do this, we've empowered every Frankie account with an easy-to-use drag and drop editor to build your email campaigns with.

When creating a new mailing / campaign, if you chose to use a blank template, or have selected one of the predesigned templates in our gallery, the drag and drop editor will be featured on the left side of the template and is full of features designed to make creating emails easy and fun. Here are just some of the ways you can make your own design changes, edit the content on the fly, and save time without compromising style.

Customize the look of your campaign

At the top of your campaign, there are options to change your template's columns, background color, accent colors, and more.

You can customize any template with your brand colors. All you need to do is explore the color option areas from the header to the footer – and see how dashing the template of your choice looks in many hues.

 

Adjust the columns of your campaign 

You can easily change the layout of your mailing from one column to two (or three) by clicking on the Columns link at the top left of your campaign, or you can also choose to add a sidebar to the right or left side of the main content.

 

Move content blocks around 

Drag in any content block from the editor's menu to the left of your mailing, then rearrange the blocks by clicking the four-arrow icon at the top of any block. When moving content blocks, look for the areas marked "drop" to select your placement.

 

Create a photo gallery with image blocks 

You can further customize your campaign by arranging your images into a mini gallery. There are two ways to create a photo gallery. One is to drag and drop an Image block into your mailing, then click the gear icon on the yellow menu above the block to 'Change block styles and options' and then click on the Settings tab of the image editor that pops up to increase the image count. You will see the image placeholders adjust in the mailing as you change the number.

Or, you can simply add multiple image blocks to your campaign and adjust them to your liking. Once you add the images, they will automatically re-size to match all of the photos in the gallery, depending on how many you add to each row.

Make your images clickable

You can also make your photos clickable with a hyperlink. To do add a hyperlink, click the image placeholder and select an image from your library or upload a new one, then add a URL to the field marked 'Give this image a link' and then select to save it.

Here, you will also see an option to add the alternate text of your image. Alternate text is what visually impaired people will read instead of seeing the image, so you just want to describe what the image is. Although it is not required, not all email recipients will have images turned on in their email program. This is why it's a best practice to add some sort of a description as the alternate text, so folks know what they're missing.

 

Add captions or images from Facebook or Flickr

Adding captions to your images is always a good idea when featuring products or anything that would benefit from a description. To do this, you just need to click the gear icon at the top of an image placeholder and select the Settings tab. Toggle the Captions option to On to see the caption field load beneath that block, and then click it to add copy. 

There is also the option to add images directly from your Facebook or Flickr accounts. The process for this is the same as adding a photo from your image library in your Frankie account to your mailing. Click on an image placeholder to bring up your library options and then link to your Facebook or Flickr account to browse your photos and make a selection.

How to clear text formatting

Is your text not formatting correctly? When you copy formatted text from other programs like Microsoft Word and just paste it into your campaign, it can cause unexpected results. To avoid this, we suggest first pasting your content into a plaintext program first. You would just need to select the Plaintext option instead of the HTML option in the upper right corner of your campaign.

Or, you can also start fresh by using the Remove Formatting button in the text toolbar that appears when you click to use a text block. Simply highlight the copy and click the button, then use the toolbar to assign new text styles. 

Rename your campaign

You can assign an internal name for your campaigns to keep them better organized. Simply click the title of your mailing in the upper left corner to rename it.

 

How to revert or undo changes

Did you make a change that isn't quite right? When this happens, click the Revert To button at the top of your campaign to see previous versions within that single editing session. When any campaign is open, Frankie will check every 15 seconds to see if you've made changes and then saves that version of your mailing, which can be found here. We will save up to 30 versions per editing session, at which point the older ones begin to roll off.  

 

Always send a test campaign first

It's important to make sure your campaign looks right before sending it out to all of your contacts on your list, which is why we highly suggest getting into the habit of always sending a test campaign to yourself and / or an editor beforehand.

Please note: Sending a test campaign first is especially important when your mailing features any links or hyperlinks, because if you make the mistake of sending it out to a list of contacts with a broken link in it, then we will advise re-sending a correction of your sent mailing to ensure your recipients receive the most up to date and relevant link. This is due to the fact that most activity with a mailing happens within the first 24-48 hours after delivery, and fixing a broken link in a sent mailing generally takes us longer than that to remedy on the back end. 

You can see how your email campaign will look in the inbox at any time by clicking on the blue Send Test button at the top of the editor. You can choose to send a test mailing to up to 10 recipients at a time, and we'll automatically add [TEST] to the subject line. You can also add a note to your testing recipients that will be seen just above the campaign in their email.