How to Upload an Email Template in Drip

In this tutorial, we’ll be creating an email template in Postcards and using the code from that to create a custom email campaign in Drip.

Prerequisites

• A Designmodo account
• A Drip account
• A text editor that can open HTML files

Steps

1. Create a template in Postcards and add Drip shortcodes

First, create a template in the Postcards app and add Drip shortcodes directly to it.

Adding the shortcodes at this stage makes the rest of the process easier. Once the template is exported with the shortcodes already in place, you can simply copy and paste the code into the Drip editor without any additional modifications.

The two shortcodes required by law are the unsubscribe link and your address. They look like this:

{{ unsubscribe_url }}

{{ inline_postal_address }}

In this example, I created a simple template using Header 7 and Footer 1.

The footer is where we’ll be adding our shortcodes.

Click the footer, and that’ll open the menu on the left side. We’ll be editing the address and the email link values.

Find the text element where the address is defined and change it to the address shortcode.

Next, find where the email is defined. Change the text to “Unsubscribe” and the URL to the unsubscribe shortcode.

Wait a few seconds for the auto-save.

Once your design is ready, the next step is to export the HTML from Postcards so you can import it into Drip. Postcards give you two ways to do this through the Export menu:

• Copy Email Code — this is the quickest option. It copies clean, production-ready HTML directly to your clipboard, so you can paste it right away into Drip:
  • Click Export in the top-right corner.
  • Select Copy Email Code.
  • The full HTML will be copied automatically to your clipboard.

• Download as ZIP — this downloads the full HTML package of your email, including the index.html file. Make sure "Host images/fonts online" is enabled before downloading, unless you plan to use your own hosted image and font files.
  • Click Export in the top-right corner and select Download as ZIP.

• Click the "Download as ZIP" button.

• Open the ZIP and extract the contents into a folder.

• Inside the extracted folder, locate the index.html file.
• Open index.html in a text editor such as Notepad, Notepad++, or Visual Studio Code.
• Copy the full HTML code from that file. (CTRL + A - to select all, then, CTRL + C - to copy)

Extract the file into a folder you can work with. It should look something like this:

Now we have everything we need for the custom Drip email campaign.

2. Create a custom email campaign in Drip

In the Drip app, go to the Campaigns and click “Single emails.”

You will be redirected to the 'Single Emails' page. From there, click 'Create' and select 'New text/HTML campaign' from the drop-down menu.

A pop-up window will appear. Name the campaign as you wish, then click 'Create Campaign'.

3. Add the Postcards template code to the Drip editor.

Once the editor opens, select the 'Switch to Custom HTML' option.

In the modal that appears, click 'I understand'.

This will open a new editor like this:

Replace all the content in the editor with the code from your Postcards template.

If you click the 'Preview' option at the top of the editor, Drip will show you what your email campaign will look like.

If you scroll down to the bottom, you’ll see that the shortcodes have been updated with the values set in your Drip account. Mine looks like this:

You can send yourself a test email to see how it will appear in a real inbox.

Use 'Save' to store the template, or choose 'Send Test Email' to preview it in your inbox.

If everything looks good and there are no errors, your campaign is ready to go.

I also sent a test email to myself — here’s how it appears in Gmail:

What we covered

1. How to create a Postcards template and edit field values.
2. How to export a Postcards email template.
3. How to create a custom HTML email campaign in Drip.