Campaign Emails and Templates

Emails are the individual messages recipients receive. A campaign can contain multiple linked emails, while an email can also remain standalone for a one-time broadcast.

Create an email

1. Open Campaigns → Emails.
2. Click New email.
3. Give the email a clear internal name.
4. Use the builder to create the design and content.
5. Link the email to a parent campaign if it will be used in that campaign's Journey.
6. Select an audience when the email will be used as a standalone broadcast.
7. Save and preview the email.

The email name is an internal label shown in the Emails list. Use a name that makes the message's purpose and position obvious, such as Learning 01 — Welcome.

Use the email builder

The builder separates four complementary jobs:

• Chat — Describe the audience, goal, tone, and content you want. The assistant can create or refine the design.
• Layout — Inspect and reorder the complete nested layer tree. Select any layer—even inside a section or column—to edit its supported fields directly.
• Design — Make quick edits to top-level content blocks.
• Quality — Review composition, accessibility, mobile behavior, CTA focus, and brand alignment.

The builder also lets you:

• Link or unlink a parent campaign.
• Select an active audience.
• Preview the rendered message.
• Redesign while preserving your copy.
• Save the current design as a reusable template.

Changes autosave after editing, and the Save button can be used when you want an immediate save.

Link an email to a campaign

Add existing draft emails directly from the campaign's Workflow tab. Selecting an email there links it to the campaign and places it in the workflow in one action.

Use templates

Open Campaigns → Templates to browse curated designs and templates saved by your workspace.

From the gallery you can:

• Filter by welcome, newsletter, promotional, product update, event, transactional, re-engagement, feedback, or general purpose.
• Preview a complete rendered design.
• Click Use template to create a new draft email from it.
• Delete a workspace-owned template when it is no longer needed.

Coherence gallery designs are original starting points with different composition systems—not just different colors. For example, a learning lesson uses progress and exercise sections, an event uses a date-badge poster and agenda, and a transactional notice uses a restrained status and details layout.

Visual templates may include labeled image placeholders in wide, landscape, square, or portrait formats. Each placeholder carries art direction so your team knows what belongs there. Select the image layer in Layout, then add a hosted Image URL, update the alt text, or refine the art direction and aspect ratio. The placeholder remains useful draft content, but Preflight blocks a send until every image slot has a real URL.

To save your own template:

1. Open a finished email in the builder.
2. Click Save as template.
3. Enter a template name and category.
4. Save it to the workspace gallery.

Using a template creates a new email draft. Editing that draft does not modify the original template.

Generate a design with AI

The email assistant uses the email prompt and workspace brand settings. Describe the email's purpose, campaign context, and desired visual direction—not only its topic. For example:

Create lesson 3 of a ten-email onboarding course. Teach workspace owners how to invite their team, include one short exercise, and preview the next lesson.

The generator selects a composition suited to the request. Learning emails emphasize lesson progress and an exercise; offers emphasize the offer and proof; events emphasize date, agenda, and RSVP; transactional notices emphasize status and scannable details; re-engagement emails include a clear preferences path.

Use Quality to review hierarchy, composition, CTA focus, density, spacing, image accessibility, mobile behavior, and brand alignment. Use Improve with AI for a targeted correction, or Redesign to preserve the current words while changing layout, palette, typography, and spacing.

Reply tracking

When you send a one-off email to an audience, Coherence can record who replies. Each recipient's copy of the email carries its own private reply address. When someone replies:

1. The reply is recorded against that recipient.
2. Coherence keeps the full original message, including its formatting and attachments, so you can read it in Coherence.
3. A plain-text copy is forwarded to the email's reply-to address — or its From address, if it has no reply-to — so the reply still reaches your inbox.

Replies go to the reply-to address the email was sent with. Changing the address afterwards does not redirect replies to an email that has already gone out.

The forwarded copy

Every forwarded reply uses the same plain-text layout, whoever sent it:

• Sender: the forward comes from the replier's email address "via" your workspace (for example, "[email protected] via Acme"). Its Reply-To is that address, so replying to the forward answers them directly.
• Coherence's lines come first: whether the sender was verified (for example, "Sender verified: [email protected] (DKIM)"), the campaign name, the sender's address, and a link — View the full reply … in Coherence — to the original.
• The reply text comes last, quoted. Every line starts with > and long lines are wrapped. Nothing Coherence adds appears after the quote, so anything below it was written by the sender.
• No formatting or attachments. Forwards are always plain text. Open the link to see the original's formatting and download its attachments.
• Unverified senders are flagged. When Coherence can't verify the sender's address, the forward starts with a warning, and its subject starts with [Unverified sender]. Treat its links, attachments, and payment requests with care.

A very long or complex reply may be forwarded with its quoted text shortened, or with a note that it has formatted content only and can't be shown as text. Open it in Coherence to read the whole message.

Read replies in Coherence

Open the email in the builder and select the Delivery tab. Once sending starts, the Results panel has a View replies link that opens the email's Replies page. You can also get there from a recipient's replied badge or from the link in a forwarded reply.

The Replies page lists every reply, counted or not, with a label: Reply, Auto-reply, Not counted, Spam, or Too large. Select one to read it:

• A Verified or Unverified sender badge shows whether the sender's address could be verified. An unverified reply also shows a warning that the From address may be forged.
• The message is shown with its original formatting. External images stay hidden until you choose Show once, or Trust sender for a verified sender.
• Attachments can only be downloaded — they are never opened in Coherence. Files that aren't a common document or image type, or whose content doesn't match their name, are marked Risky file type. Attachments are not virus-scanned, so scan anything you didn't expect before opening it.

Viewing replies requires the permission to view email campaigns, which Owners, Admins, and Managers have by default.

See who replied

The email's Results show Replied next to Opened and Clicked: the number of people who replied and the reply rate (people who replied divided by emails sent). Hover over Replied to see the total number of replies when some people replied more than once.

In the recipient list below the results:

• Each person who replied has a replied badge — replied ×2 and so on if they replied more than once. Hover over it to see when they first replied, or click it to view their replies.
• Click the Replied filter to show only the people who replied.

The Campaigns → Emails list also has a Replied column with each email's repliers and reply rate.

What counts as a reply

Only a reply that Coherence can verify came from the exact address the email was sent to counts toward Replied. Everything else is still recorded on the Replies page.

A reply that claims to come from the recipient but can't be verified is not counted.

Limits and retention

• Reply addresses expire. A reply address stops working 90 days after the email is sent. Later replies are not recorded or forwarded.
• Forwarding is capped. Each reply address forwards at most 20 messages in any 24 hours.
• Stored replies are deleted after a year. The full message and its attachments are removed after the retention period (365 days by default). The reply counts stay.
• Journey emails are not tracked. Emails delivered as steps of a campaign's timed Journey keep your regular reply-to address, so replies to them come straight to you and are not counted.

Before using an email in a journey

Confirm that:

• The email is linked to the correct campaign.
• The subject and content match the journey step.
• Merge values have sensible fallbacks.
• All links are valid.
• Every image placeholder has been replaced with a real hosted image URL and has useful alt text.
• The mobile preview is readable.
• The sender has a compliant mailing address and unsubscribe handling.

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Next: Learn when to use Audiences and when to use campaign Enrollment.