How to Upload an Email Template in Intercom

In this tutorial, we’ll be creating a custom HTML email in Intercom using a Postcards email builder template.

Prerequisites

• A Designmodo account
• An Intercom account
• A text editor that can open HTML files

Steps

1. Create a Postcards template with the required Intercom tags

The first step is to create a Postcards template and include the required Intercom tags. Adding them at this stage means you won’t need to edit the code later.

The required Intercom tags are the content and unsubscribe URL:

{{ content }}

{{ unsubscribe_url }}

In the Postcards app, I created a template using Header 7 and Footer 1. It looks like this:

We’ll add the content tag to the Header section.

Click on the Header to open the side menu, then select the 'Text' element.

Replace the content in the editor with the content tag.

Scroll down to the Footer section and select it.

Locate where the email is defined, then replace the values with the unsubscribe text and tag values.

Wait a few seconds for the auto-save.

All the changes we need to make in this template are done.

Once your design is ready, the next step is to export the HTML from Postcards so you can import it into Intercom. 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 Intercom:
  • 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 Intercom email campaign.

2. Create a new email template in Intercom

In the Intercom dashboard, go to Outbound.

Next, select 'New Message' in the top-right corner.

In the pop-up prompt, choose 'Email'.

Select the Plain template and click Use this template.

The editor will open — switch to the HTML editor in the bottom-left corner.

This will open a text editor where you can add your HTML code.

Paste the template code into the Intercom editor, add a title, then click 'Save and Close'.

Now your template is ready to go!

I sent myself a test email, and it looks like:

What we covered

1. How to create and export a Postcards template with Intercom email tags.
2. How to create a custom HTML email template in Intercom.