How to Use the Sparkforge Email Builder and Inline Editor

The Sparkforge email builder ships inside Templates and Campaigns under Marketing → Emails. It's a drag-and-drop layout tool with inline WYSIWYG editing, so the formatting you see while editing is what lands in the inbox. This guide covers the elements, the styling controls, mobile formatting, and the AI writing assistant.

Open the builder

1. Go to Marketing → Emails → Templates (or Campaigns).
2. Create a new template or open an existing one.
3. The toolbar gives you three controls: Add Elements, Manage Elements, and Appearance.

Default padding

Every block ships with default padding so emails stay visually consistent: top 12, bottom 12, left 24, right 24 pixels. Override on individual blocks when needed.

Elements you can drop in

• Text — headings (H1–H4) and paragraphs with the inline editor for bold, italic, color, font, and links.
• Image — upload up to 10 MB or paste an external URL. Set alt text, width, height, padding, alignment, and an optional click-through link.
• Button — text, font, color, action (URL, mailto, file download, telephone), border radius, alignment, and full-width toggle.
• Divider — height, line type (solid, dashed, dotted), width %, color, padding.
• Social — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., with icon style, text or icon-only display, and color.
• Footer — address, unsubscribe, privacy links. Required by most carriers and inbox providers.
• Code — paste raw HTML for layouts the standard blocks don't cover. Test across email clients before sending.
• Video — YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, or HTML5 with a custom thumbnail and play button.
• Shopping Cart — product name, price, quantity, line total. Useful for ecommerce-adjacent flows.
• RSS Header / RSS Items — pulls feed data via {{rss_feed.title}}, {{rss_item.content}}, etc., for automated digest emails.
• Layouts — single column, two column, 1/3:2/3, 1/4:3/4, or four column.

Inline text editing

Highlight any text to open the inline toolbar. Change heading level, font, size, color (hex), bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, alignment, line height, and bullet style (disc, circle, square, decimal, lower-alpha, lower-roman, etc.).

Hyperlinks support a custom title attribute, open-in-new-window toggle, and a saved link list so frequent URLs are one click. The Clear Format button strips styling pasted in from Word or Google Docs.

Custom values and color tokens

Custom values like {{contact.first_name}} insert recipient-specific data. You can also use custom values inside color fields (background, body, button) — the canvas renders the resolved color in real time, no preview-mode switch needed.

AI writing with Content AI

The Content AI panel generates draft text from a context, content title, brief description, keywords, tone, and number of variations (up to 5). Use it for first drafts, then edit by hand.

Right-dock the edit panel

Switch the edit panel to the right side of the canvas to work side-by-side with Email AI suggestions. Toggle is in the editor toolbar; Email AI must be enabled in Agency Labs Settings → sub-account feature.

Appearance: template-wide styling

• Background color — fills the area behind the email body.
• Body color — fills the content area itself.
• Content width — defaults to 600 px; widening can break mobile rendering.
• Background image — upload or URL. Always set a fallback color since some clients strip background images.
• Button — corner radius, color, font.
• Divider — default height, color, style.
• Custom CSS — for fine control. Email CSS support varies by client; test before sending.

Mobile formatting

Set distinct font sizes, alignment, and line height for H1, H2, H3, paragraph, and button blocks under the Mobile Formatting panel. Single-column layouts, 14 px+ body text, 22 px+ headlines, and 44×44 px tap targets are the safe defaults.

Preview in browser link

New blank templates include a Preview in Browser link at the top by default. To add it to existing campaigns, drop in the Preview URL element and customize the text. If your agency or location has set a whitelabel API Domain, the preview URL uses it automatically.