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CRM 4 Email Templates - Adding Graphics, Images, and formatting

Post Author: Joe D365 |

One of the frequently asked questions we get asked related to email templates is how to include images or graphics or attachments in crm 4 email templates. Well, the short answer is that you can't include attachments in email templates, BUT, you can still create very nice and professional looking templates by using image links.

In fact, by using image links your emails will be much smaller then embedding the images right in the emails, thus saving crm database space, and email resources.

Here's a short blog creating email newsletter containing graphics and images and nice formatting.

  1. The first thing you will need to do is create a public facing web page with your newsletter. If your company has a public facing site this can be a subfolder in your public site. For example, our Sep 09 newsletter is a single page:

    https://powerobjects.com/blog/newsletter/Sept09/sept09_newsletter.html

    You can use any web site editor – FrontPage, Dream Weaver, etc.

    If your company does not have an easily maintainable public facing site, use one of the many free services that allow you to create a public facing site – for example Microsoft Office Live offers free hosting of public facing sites and they have a good online editor.

    http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-us/

     

  2. Once you have a public facing one page web site newsletter, select all on the page, then copy. Using keyboard short cuts, you can click on the page, then control-a (for select all), then control-c (to copy). Do this on a browser while browsing the public facing web site newsletter.

     

     

  3. In crm, create a new email template. In the body of the email, we can not right click and select paste. However, we can use the control-v, keyboard shortcut to paste.
  4. The last step is to verify all links. We need to verify both image links and hyper links to make sure they have the a 'fully qualified path'. This means that the URL is complete. Simply click on the link or image, and enter control-K. A link image box will then appear. Verify the url is complete and if not enter it fully with http://www....

That's it – you can now email blast your newsletter. You can now use crm email template with very nicely formatted newsletters. This process may appear a bit cumbersome, but after you create a couple newsletters you will notice it is not bad at all.

Alex Fagundes

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

16 comments on “CRM 4 Email Templates - Adding Graphics, Images, and formatting”

  1. Another item to mention on the fully qualified links is to make this easy on yourself and build the webpage this way in the first place. Most web editing tools like to place hyperlinks and image links as relative links. Spend a little time up front cleaning up the code for the webpage and your life will be a lot easier!!

  2. While I like the idea of tracking the bulk email sent to prospects and contacts, I'd hate to lose the ability to use click tracking to build up personas. Is there any way to have CRM track clicks?

    1. Hi. Great question. Our clients have been using powerMail for a little while. PowerMail is a crm component we wrote that allows you to not only track when and how many times an email is opened, but also tracks each and every url clicked on. The data lives right in crm. This is free for all of our clients, but we are now making it avail for adhoc purchases. My next blog will be on PowerMail.

  3. Great tip which has saved me hours and hours of work. I've found this tip to work for anchored links in the email body, but do you have any suggestions for background images that CRM sees in the template but can't be seen when the emails are sent?

  4. Wayne - I'd have to test this....I'm guessing it would have more to do with how the email client rendered the email - if it is going out as html then you would think all would be fine, but there might be some background image rules I'm not aware of....

    1. Hi Janus,

      Yep - you can add dynamics fields to an email template. The fields need to come from the entity that the template is based on OR from entities 'one level higher'. So if your template is for contacts you can pull fields from the contact entity and the owner entity.

  5. Frist Happy New Year everyone
    I have created the signature template, I can save this template and still see the link, I can then insert this template into an email, I still see the image at this point is when my issue happens, when I save, or send the email the link disapears with no sign of it even being there.

  6. Hi Leon,

    Check the history and the email that was sent. Is the link being physically removed or simply broken and not working? What we have seen often is that the web server where the images are from is not public available so emails received by folks outside your company have broken links.

  7. Hi Wayne,
    You say you found a tip to work with anchored links aswell, can you tell me how this needs to be done?
    I would like to send newsletters through this template with and index section. This section holds anchored links to other parts within the same html body (so no pop-up to an online html page). Can you -or anybody else who knows this- tell me how this works in CRM?

    Thx in advance!

  8. Hi L. Overbeek
    In you CRM E-mail teplate edit anchored links (press Ctrl-K).
    In hyperlink remove all symbols up to #AhchorName

  9. .I'm late to this party, but I cannot get the dynamic field thing to work.

    In my template, I have the following: http://www . mysite . com / survey.asp?tn={!Ticket:Ticket Number}

    But, in the e-mail I receive, the URL is only the part up to the '=' sign. The rest is just text (the correct text / actual ticket number) that is added at the end, and when clicking the URL, the important data is _not_ included in the URL, which is the entire point of this exercise... Help??

  10. How do I single space the wording in my email template. It won't let me format the text other than bold, underline and change the font size. What about single spacing, paragraph indention

  11. Hi there,
    How do you then get the newsletter to also specify the contact's last name?
    For instance, you have hyperlink "Get the scoop" what if I want to Hyperlink
    "Get the scoop" and add the last name of the contact to it to look something like this : -
    Get the scoop - Thomas ! (Thomas being the last name of the contact and it changes with every contact that we sent out)

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