Zylo Tips: Building an Email Template – Guide + Best Practices

Good communication skills are critical for running an effective SaaS Management program. And it’s also important to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Zylo’s email template manager makes it easy to customize and automate emails. You can:

• Customize communications with an intuitive email editor
• Add dynamic fields to provide context to your users
• Align communications with corporate brand standards
• Create templates and send emails using automation

Email Template Use Cases

In Zylo, email templates are primarily used for license reclamation Workflows and Automated Alerts and Reports. 

• Workflows: You’re sending users an email to let them know their license is not being used, and you’re making a request to have that license back. 
• Automated Alerts and Reports: You’re automating the sending of any data in Zylo. Often that’s to either share information or ask a user to take some action. 

To get started, let’s look at the following steps in Zylo.

Set Brand Standards for Consistent Communication

To make your message recognizable to recipients in your organization, establish brand standards in Zylo. 

If you go up to your initials in the top right of the application and click on Admin, you’ll be brought to the Company Info tab. If you don’t have Admin, that means you’re not an administrator in the account. Reach out to your team to find out who is and ask them to help you set this up. 

Scrolling to the bottom, you’ll find the location to edit your company logo and colors. To get your company logo and hex color code, check out your internal knowledge base for your marketing department or ask your IT team. 

Once you’ve added those brand elements in Zylo, they will be included in your email templates going forward.

How to Build an Email Template in Zylo

To get to your templates, navigate to Automate, then Templates. Here you’ll find all the templates that have already been created in your account. At the top right, select Create a New Template to begin.

Step 1: Name Your Template

The first thing you need to do is give your template a name. Make sure it is aligned to what the template will be used for. Is it a renewal report? Is it requesting licenses? Is it emails going out to department heads? 

Make sure that once you create this template, it’s easy to find later when you need it. For this example, we’re going to call it Klowd Licenses.

Step 2: Select Template Category and Type

Next, select a template category and type. You have a few different options based on common use cases in the application. 

Automation Email

The first template category is Automation Emails, which are alerts and reports you’re sending to users. Here’s a breakdown of the types of automation emails:

• An Individual Alert is a single record. For example, you want to set an alert for a single application coming up for renewal in 90 days. It will send an email to that application owner, but just the application that they own.
• The Summary Report, this is for sending an actual report out to users. For instance, you want to send a monthly report to IT showing all applications with a low security score. 

Workflow Email

The second template category is Workflow Email, which you use for license reclamations. 

• A Return License Request is for when you want to notify employees that their license is not being used and ask for it back. 
• A License Revoked Notification is used to let those employees know when you have pulled that license back.

Continuing with our example, we are going to choose a Workflow Email with the Return License Request type. Workflows are a critical capability of Zylo, and companies that use Workflows to programmatically manage their licenses are saving millions of dollars on an annual basis.

Step 3: Customize the Message

After selecting Return License Request, you’ll see a starter email template populate, as well as features to further customize the message and style. Here’s a quick overview of the editing functionality.

Easy-to-Use Editor

The editor is a familiar WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor with the functionality to style the text, such as bold, underline, fonts, and alignment. This is similar to what you see in a Word or Google document. 

Auto-Populated Branding

Your company logo and colors are dynamically populated from the Admin page.

Dynamic Fields

In the example below, you’ll see text set in brackets throughout the email copy. Those are dynamic fields. Dynamic fields populate contextual data, pulled straight from Zylo.

In the Select Dynamic Fields drop down, there are many different dynamic fields that you can add into your email based on the types of emails and data available. 

Dynamic fields enable you to personalize and customize an email. For instance, you could type in, “Hello, Klowd employee.” Instead, with dynamic fields, you can add a placeholder for First Name and say “Hi, Thom.” 

If you’re building a Workflow Email template, you may want to include:

• Application name
• Activity threshold
• Username
• Last login

Step 4: Test Your Email

At this point, you can send a test email to yourself. We recommend this as a best practice to make sure the branding, dynamic fields, and messaging are working how you would expect. Once you verify the template, save it, and it’s now available for you to use on your license reclamation workflows.

Streamline Communication with Zylo’s Email Templates and Automated Alerts & Reports

Remember, your employees or app owners may be new to Zylo. Customizing your email message and branding helps drive consistent, recognizable communications from IT, as well as garner support for IT initiatives across the organization. To that end, follow these best practices:

1. Give your email template a clear name based on its purpose so it is clear to others on your team. 
2. Use dynamic fields to personalize information and data in your email.
3. Provide context to recipients, such as why they are receiving the email and pointing out a policy or intranet page as applicable.
4. Keep communications consistent with your brand by including your company logo and colors.
5. Test your email before sending to users to ensure everything is working as expected.

To learn more, check out the Knowledge Base for a deeper dive as well as technical details.