Many of our users are accustomed to using Gmail's Canned Responses as a primary way to set up templates before using Mixmax. We recommend using Mixmax Templates in place of Canned Responses.
Advantages of Mixmax Templates over Canned Responses
Mixmax Templates offer a few advantages for you:
They can be shared with other people. To learn more, go to Sharing a Template.
You can add smart variables that automatically fill in information based on your recipient. You can find more on that in Template variables.
You get template performance analytics. See the number of times you've sent each template, plus the open, click-through, download, and reply rates.
How to turn your Canned Responses into Templates
This will be a fairly manual job to set up. Once it's done, we're sure you'll enjoy Mixmax Templates even more. Follow these steps to transfer your Canned Responses over.
Open a new compose window.
Insert a Canned Response from the hamburger (three-dot) menu in the bottom right corner.
Once the response is in the message body, hover over the Templates icon in the top bar.
When the menu pops out, click the Save this message as a Template button.
Clicking this button will take you to the Mixmax dashboard with your template created for you to double-check. You will need to give your template a unique name and select the folder you want to save it to. Once it looks good, you can save it by clicking the Save button at the bottom right corner.
Saving an email you wrote in a Sequence as a Template
There is no button that turns a Sequence stage into a Template, so the email has to be copied across by hand. There are two ways to do it.
From a Gmail compose window. This is the quicker route, and it uses the Mixmax extension for Chrome, so make sure it is installed.
Open the Sequence stage and copy the email body.
Open a new compose window in Gmail, paste the body in, and add the subject line.
Hover over the Templates icon in the top bar and click Save this message as a Template.
Give the Template a unique name, choose a folder, and click Save.
From the Mixmax web app. This works whatever mail client you use, and it is the route to take in Outlook, where the Mixmax Add-in can insert Templates but not create them. The subject and body are copied one at a time, so it helps to open your Sequence and the Templates page in two browser tabs and switch between them.
Open the Sequence stage and copy the subject line.
On the Templates page, create a new Template and paste the subject in.
Switch back to the Sequence stage and copy the email body.
Switch back to the Template, paste the body in, give the Template a unique name, choose a folder, and click Save.
In Outlook, the finished Template is then available from Insert email template in the Mixmax side panel.
Check your variables, whichever route you took. Variables that describe you or the recipient, like {{first name}} or {{sender signature}}, keep working in a Template, and so do Salesforce fields on the recipient's contact if your Salesforce account is connected — those fill in when you use the Template, based on who you are emailing.
Variables that came from your Sequence's recipient list do not, because outside the Sequence there is nothing to fill them from, and they will send as literal text with no warning. Give each one a fallback, like {{Listing City | fallback: "your area"}}, or remove it. If the email uses {% if %} conditions on those variables, remove the conditions too, or the condition tags themselves will appear in the sent email.
Accessing your saved templates
You can visit your templates page within your Mixmax Dashboard. You can find and edit any previously created templates there.
Whenever you want to use a template, simply type the keyboard shortcut ; (a semicolon) and start typing your template title. A drop-down menu will appear where you can select your template.
Or, click Templates in the top bar of the compose window to find and select your template.