One of the first things that many new clients want to do is jump right into building out their mailer in their preferred format. We’ve developed a series of tools that enable you to build, save and proof your creative design quickly and easily.

Start by clicking the 'Start Designing' button in the 'Build Postcard, Letter or Self Mailer' tile.

Next, you’ll see 3 choices that represent different ways to Create Templates.

More on Templates

Templates are re-usable creative assets that you build and store in Postalytics. If you’ve ever done email marketing, they work in a very similar way.

Postalytics templates are built and managed entirely on the web, in your account, via HTML. Often these templates include image files that you upload into our free Asset Manager. Then, when they’re entered into a template, they’re all assembled in HTML so that they can easily be copied, modified and personalized using data that you import from a variety of sources.

Templates are stored in a library, by default in “Draft” mode. Until templates have been proofed, they remain in Draft mode and cannot yet be used in a campaign.

The Asset Manager

Postalytics has a built-in Asset Manager for you to store and organize image files for use in your direct mailers. It’s easy to use and a free part of every Postalytics account.

Learn More About The Asset Manager

3 Ways To Create Templates

Postalytics has 3 methods of creating templates that can be used in direct mail campaigns:

  • Pre-Built Templates

  • Build Offline

  • Create in Editor

Pre-Built Templates

While you can choose any of these options to get started, we’ll begin with the Pre-Built Templates, as they’re pre-designed templates that can get you familiar with the Postalytics Direct Mail Editor.

Pre-Built Templates are professionally designed, with background images, sample personalization and pURL/QR Code tracking features enabled in many of them.

Learn More About Pre-Built Templates

Build Offline

Do you have a design that you’ve exported to a .JPG file that you’d like to use in Postalytics? We’ve built an easy file uploader for you.

When you choose 'Build Offline', you’ll be uploading what we refer to as a “full background image”. This means that the .JPG image file you import meets the full bleed specifications to take up the entire background of the postcard or letter.

It's important to note that the Build Offline tool is only to upload those full background images. We’ve built file verification logic into it to protect against improperly sized full backgrounds from getting accidentally loaded.

Learn more about offline built templates using Adobe® products or Canva.

If you want to upload other image assets (non full background images such as logos, photographs, etc.) that you’ll be inserting into templates, use the Postalytics Asset Manager.

Create In Editor

The Postalytics Editor is a powerful drag & drop tool that enables marketers to create professional postcards and letters without needing to become experts in complex offline tools.

You can easily start building a template in the editor by selecting the format (Postcard, Letter, Custom Envelope, or Self Mailer) and if applicable, the size & layout.

The Editor is broken into 3 distinct work areas:

  • The Build Panel – contains elements, such as text boxes, lines, bullet points, variables, pURLs, etc. that you use to build your template. These can be added to a template by either drag and drop or by clicking, then drag & drop.

  • The Canvas – is the work area of the template, where you build your creative and modify it to generate the look & feel you are going for.

  • The Properties panel – contains overall template properties (like default font, background images, etc.) as well as properties that can be modified for the selected element on the Canvas.

A full review of the Editor features can be found in our help article Understanding the Postalytics Direct Mail Editor.