Building Your First Email
Overview
This guide walks you through building a complete, on-brand email in Temway — from an empty canvas to production-ready HTML you can drop into your email service provider (ESP). You’ll set up the layout, drop in content blocks, apply your workspace branding, preview on mobile, and export.
The HTML you export is tuned to render reliably in Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail.
Before you start: sign in with Google and create a workspace if you haven’t already. Setting up your branding first means every block you add inherits the right colors, fonts, and logo automatically.
Setting up the structure
Emails in Temway are built from three nested layers: Sections stack vertically, Rows sit inside sections, and Columns split rows to place content side by side.
Add a section
- From the block palette, drag a Section onto the canvas.
- Sections are your top-level containers — give one a background color, padding, or borders to define visual zones, like a dark header band above a light body.
Add a row and columns
- Inside the section, drag a Row.
- Choose a column layout — 1, 2, 3, or 4 columns.
- Columns hold your actual content blocks, so pick the layout that matches the row’s purpose: single-column for body copy, multi-column for feature grids.
Build the rest of the skeleton first — typically a header, body, and footer section — then fill in content. It’s easier to refine structure before blocks are in place.
Adding content blocks
With your structure in place, drag content blocks into columns:
- Text — Rich text with custom fonts, sizes, weights, letter spacing, line height, alignment, and text transforms.
- Image — Upload from your workspace or link to one; arrange in grids of up to 4 columns.
- Button — Call-to-action with custom label, link, background color, padding, and corner radius.
- Social — Pick from popular networks and add your profile URLs; icons render as crisp PNGs in the final email.
- Video — A thumbnail with a play button that links out to YouTube, Vimeo, or anywhere else.
- Divider and Spacer — Visual separators and vertical breathing room between blocks.
Click any block on the canvas and the properties panel on the right updates with that block’s settings. Adjust styling, content, and spacing — changes apply to the preview in real time.
Styling with your branding
Most styling is handled by your workspace branding so you stay consistent without retyping hex codes on every email:
- Brand colors flow into buttons, links, and themed elements automatically.
- Fonts — heading and body families, with custom font support on every plan — inherit from your workspace.
- Logo and default spacing carry over from branding defaults.
Need a one-off style? Override branding at the block level for a single email without touching workspace settings. Because branding is workspace-scoped, each workspace keeps its own identity — emails never leak colors or fonts from one brand into another.
Preview on desktop and mobile
Before exporting, switch between Desktop and Mobile viewports in the preview panel. Email clients render on a wide range of screen sizes, so confirm your layout reflows the way you expect:
- Multi-column rows stack into a single column on narrow screens.
- Check font sizes, button tap targets, and image scaling.
- Single-column layouts are the most reliable on small screens — reach for multi-column only when the content truly needs it.
Export to your ESP
When the email looks right, export production-ready HTML:
- Click Export in the builder to render the email.
- Temway generates clean, production-ready HTML to paste into your ESP — Mailchimp, SendGrid, or any provider that accepts custom HTML.
- Drop the HTML into a campaign or template in your ESP.
Want to see how it lands before sending for real? Use Test send to deliver a preview to your own inbox — Temway enforces a per-plan daily limit on test sends and does not replace your ESP for production campaigns.
On the Free plan, exported emails include a small “Designed with Temway” badge. Upgrade to Starter, Pro, or Max to remove it.
Next steps
- Configure your branding for consistent styling across every email.
- Invite team members to collaborate on designs.
- Explore every email block and its settings.