

Show HN: Drag/Drop Email Template Creator for Transactional Emails - bialecki
https://www.klaviyo.com/email-templates

======
eob
I'm happy any time I see web design/development moving into the web browser
and out of text files. It feels like the natural progression of things.

Some comments:

\- The example email (Weekly Summary) made me think "SPAM!" as soon as I saw
it, because it looks like the kind of email that Twitter sends me and goes
straight to my trash bin. On the other hand, I imagine there are a lot of use
cases where summary emails are welcomed.

\- Other than that, the image does a good job communicating the features you
provide. I'm left wondering where the data comes from though. Do I upload a
file? Integrate with my back-end?

\- I was confused when the iPhone image showed template tags instead of a
rendered result. Are you trying to imply that I will be editing templates
using my mobile? That seems weird. If you're trying to show that your design
templates are responsive, maybe just show the _rendered_ version of the
previous Weekly Summary template on an iPhone.

\- Site looks slick -- I like it!

\- Seeing this make me think that it would be cool for some If This Then This-
style framework / API that hooks into your back-end and generates mails
automatically. That would enable people to send me the emails that I enjoy
reading, like "SoAndSo just cheered you on FitBit".

~~~
gnud
> I'm happy any time I see web design/development moving into the web browser
> and out of text files. It feels like the natural progression of things.

I'm often not. I'm not talking about this tool specifically (it looks very
nice, and I havn't tried it), but when tools move away from text files, we
tend to lose important facilities like "replace image A in all our email
templates with image B".

~~~
eob
This is very true.

But if you buy into the "browser will become the runtime for most things"
argument, you'll be able to do this within your browser-based HTML editor,
too, one day.

------
felipe
This is an excellent concept that targets a real pain-point I faced many
times, which is: How to properly lay-out or template emails without the pain
of actually sending transactional emails through SMTP and looking at them in
the client (Gmail, mobile, etc...). This also prevents designers and
programmers to collaborate, so your concept would allow designers and
marketeers to design and change email layouts independently from the
programmer, which is another pain-point for non-developers.

Having said that, it seems that you expect the app to use your SMTP, and IMHO
that's a deal-breaker. Once an app or company is already using a SMTP
provider, changing to an unknown one (which could impact deliverability and so
on) is a deal-breaker. However, if you provide a tool that somehow the
marketing dept can change templates which then the developers can somehow
fetch into the source codebase, now that would be (I think) a good value.

I am a software developer (not a designer nor marketeer) so I may not be the
target user for this tool, but I think it would be valuable for developers
too.

~~~
bialecki
Sorry, I think there's some confusion (you're not the first person). This tool
is just to create the HTML. Our subscription email service allows you to send
email, but the email creator is just for creating templates. Basically we took
a feature and made it public and free -- our way of trying to make email a
little better for everyone.

Create your template, save it, copy the HTML, and do with it what you want.

We're also talking with some email as a service companies about how we can
integrate this with their service/app.

~~~
felipe
That's excellent! I got confused because as I was looking at your web site I
saw the "Pricing" link at the bottom and assumed that was the price of the
tool. Maybe you could create a separate web site to help clarify this point?

~~~
bialecki
We probably should. You'll notice there's no pricing link in the header. That
was our quick hack for this launch. ;)

------
niftylettuce
<https://github.com/niftylettuce/node-email-templates>

<https://github.com/mailchimp/Email-Blueprints>

------
scottmotte
Love the copywriting above the fold. It is very personable, communicates a
need to me that I didn't know I had, and tells me it can solve that need (all
in a quick read).

------
eli
It would be really nice if I could start using the tool before giving you my
email address.

~~~
bialecki
We're working on it. We wanted to allow for saving, so that's why we ask for
an email.

~~~
eli
Totally makes sense, but if you can hold off on bugging them until they
actually need to save (or maybe until 10 minutes have passed, whichever comes
first) I think you'll be better off.

------
navs
I love the drag and drop HTML development idea. I'm curious whether there's
any open source libraries out there or open sourced projects that can help me
develop something similar. Any suggestions?

------
MasterScrat
I really like the look of your site. Did you make it yourself from Bootstrap,
or is it a template?

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dirkdk
Just disabled. Too much HN love? :)

------
somid3
love the ease by which I can set a template. nice

