How to add links, buttons and social icons to an email

There are three ways to send someone somewhere from an email: a link on a piece of text, a button, and a row of social icons. All three are set in the editor, on the Content step of a campaign, automated email or recurring email.

Linking a piece of text

Click into the text block and select the words you want to link. In the toolbar that floats above the text, click the link button.

The Insert link dialog opens with a Link URL field. Paste or type the address and click Apply. If you leave out https://, it's added for you, because several email clients won't open a link without it.

To change or remove a link, put the cursor in the linked text and click the link button again. The dialog is now called Edit link: change the address and click Apply, or click Remove link.

The color links take is set for the whole email in the editor, under Settings > Links, so you set it once rather than on every link.

Picking a link the email already knows

Some links are different for every contact, such as the link to your contacts portal or to the contact's subscription preferences. You don't have to look those up. The arrow at the end of a link field lists the links this email can fill in, and typing filters the list. Pick one and each contact gets their own address when the email is sent.

The list is in every link field: the dialog for linked text, and the Link field of a button, image, GIF and social icon.

Adding a button

Drag the Button block from the Content tab into your email, then click it. The panel on the right opens on that block, and the first field is Link. Put the address there, or pick one from its list. Here too, https:// is added when you leave it out.

The rest of the panel is the button as a shape: its background and text color, width, alignment, corner radius, borders, inner and outer padding, and the colors it takes when someone hovers over it.

To change the wording, click into the button on the canvas and type.

A button is worth using for the one thing you actually want people to do. Contacts reading on a phone will tap a button far more readily than a line of underlined text.

Drag the Social block into your email and click it. Under Networks in the panel on the right you add each network you want shown and set the address it points at.

You don't have to type your own profile links every time. Add them once to your brand kit and every new Social block arrives with those links filled in and only those networks switched on. To get there, click the gear icon at the top right of the dashboard to open Settings, then click Brand kit under Account and go to the Social Media section. Only admins see Brand kit. See How to configure your brand kit.

The rest of the panel controls how the row looks: icon size, the spacing between icons, inner padding, whether the icons sit in a row or a column, alignment, and whether each icon shows a label next to it.

Your brand kit links are copied into the block when you add it. Changing a profile in your brand kit later doesn't change emails you've already built.

So to point an icon somewhere new, for example after you've changed your Instagram account:

Change the link in your brand kit, so new emails get the right one.
Open each email that already has a Social block, go to the Content step, click the block and change the address under Networks. Then save the email.

Before you send

Check the email in both the desktop and the mobile preview, then send yourself a test and click every link in it. A wrong or missing address is the one mistake you can't take back once the email has gone out.