Documentation

What your emails look like

Every email Kicklace sends for you is some plain text you wrote, drawn inside a card with your name at the top of it. This is what you can put in that text — the little markup, pictures, the variables filled in for each person, and the signature it is signed off with — and the four things you can change about the card.

Every email Kicklace sends for you — a welcome an automation sends, a broadcast to a list, a note you write to one person from their record — is the same thing: some plain text you wrote, drawn inside a card with your name at the top of it. This is what you can put in that text, and what you can change about the card.

There is no drag-and-drop builder here and there is not meant to be. An email that arrives as one column of readable text lands in more inboxes than a designed one, and every part of the card is an inline style, because email clients throw stylesheets away.

The markup

Plain text, with a few marks that mean something. Everything else is text.

You write	You get
A blank line between two lines	Two paragraphs
`# A heading`	A heading
`- One thing` on each line	A bulleted list
`important`	important
`[the guide](https://example.com/guide)`	A link
`[Start here](https://example.com/start)` alone on its line	A button
`![The new hinge](https://example.com/hinge.png)`	A picture
`---` alone on a line	A dividing rule

A bare address like https://example.com becomes a link too. A stray asterisk is just an asterisk.

Pictures

![caption](https://…) puts a picture in. On its own line it takes the card's width; in the middle of a sentence it sits in the line. It is never wider than the card, so it does not force a phone to scroll sideways, and the caption is its alt text — the words somebody sees when their mail client blocks pictures, and the words a screen reader says. Write it as what the picture is, not as "picture".

Two rules:

The address has to be https. An http:// one and a data: one are left as the characters you typed, and the editor says so in a band under the preview. Put the file somewhere with an https address — your own site, or wherever your images already live — and use that.
The picture is not carried with the email. It stays wherever it lives and the email points at it, so an address that stops working stops showing.

In the text-only copy of the email, a picture is written out as [caption: https://…], because nobody reading that copy can see it.

Variables

A variable is written {{like_this}} and filled in for each person as the email goes out. Typing {{ in any of the three composers opens a menu of the ones this workspace can fill.

Variable	What it stands for
`{{first_name}}`	Their first name, or "there"
`{{name}}`	Their full name, or "there"
`{{email}}`	Their email address
`{{phone}}`, `{{title}}`, …	Any field on the Person object, by its key
`{{organization}}`	The organization they are linked to
`{{signature}}`	The sender's sign-off

Somebody Kicklace knows only by their email address is greeted as there, never by the address: people who join from a form on a website usually arrive without a name.

A variable nothing can fill comes out empty, never as the braces — nobody should ever receive an email that says {{phone}}. The template editor says which variables the person you are previewing against has nothing behind.

Signatures

Two of them, and which one an email carries depends on who is writing.

Yours is on Your profile, under your name. It is on you rather than on a workspace, so if you work in two of them you sign off the same way in both. Write it in the same markup — a couple of lines, a link if you like — and the preview beside the box shows how it will read.

The workspace's is on Settings → Sending → The look, and only an owner or an admin can set it. It is what a broadcast or an automation signs off with: those are the workspace writing, not a person.

Where it goes:

An email you write to one person from their record is signed with your signature, and with the workspace's if you have not written one. If your words do not say {{signature}} anywhere, it goes at the end, where a person signs off.
A broadcast and an automation use the workspace's, and only where the template says {{signature}}. Nothing is ever added to the end of a list email you did not ask for.
With neither written, {{signature}} comes out empty, like any other variable nothing fills.

The look

Settings → Sending → The look, for owners and admins. Four things, and the template editor shows the result as you change it.

Logo — a PNG or JPG at a public https address. It is drawn 28 px tall at the top of the card, with your workspace's name beside it. A client that blocks pictures still shows the name.
Accent — a hex colour like #3b2a1e. It is the buttons, the links, and the line across the top of the card. Pick one dark enough to read as text on white: a link is words, not a block of colour.
Wordmark and headings — a serif reads as an editor's note; a heavy sans as a product.
Body text — the face the words are set in. The list is short on purpose: an email client draws only what is already on the machine, so System, Arial, Georgia, Trebuchet and Verdana are the ones that really arrive. Each one names its fallbacks in full, because the last name in that list is the one a phone with none of the others will use. The heading keeps its own face whatever you set the body in.

There is also a Send a test to me button on the same screen. It only ever goes to the address you signed in with, so it cannot be turned into a way to mail somebody else.

Kicklace's own emails

The sign-in link and the code beside it, a password reset, an invitation to a workspace, the notice an automation sends a member, the copy a support inbox forwards on: all of them wear the same card, with the Kicklace wordmark at the top instead of your workspace's name. They are Kicklace writing to you, so they carry no list, no unsubscribe link and no signature.

An email a customer's inbox forwards on to you prints their message exactly as they wrote it, in a monospaced block. Nothing in somebody else's email is read as markup: a customer writing [see this](…) wrote characters, not a link.