Message templates are the reusable building blocks of your engagement messages. Write one once — personalised with each customer's details — and use it across as many campaigns and flows as you need.
What a template is
A template is a saved message for a single channel — Email, SMS, or WhatsApp — with placeholders that get filled in with each customer's data when the message goes out. (RCS is coming soon as a fourth channel.)
Because templates are reusable, you can build your "Cart recovery" or "Order confirmation" message once and reuse it everywhere, instead of re-writing the same copy for every campaign.
Create a template
- Go to Engagement → Templates.
- Click Create Template.
- Pick the channel — Email, SMS, or WhatsApp.
- Write your template content, adding placeholders where you want personal details (see below).
- Click Save.
Your saved templates then appear when you set up a campaign or build a flow, ready to select.
Personalise with placeholders
Drop a placeholder anywhere in your content and it's replaced with that customer's real data at send time. A placeholder looks like {{name}} — the value between the braces is the field name.
Hi {{name}},
You left {{item_count}} items in your cart worth {{cart_value}}.
Complete your purchase now!
Common placeholders you can use:
| Placeholder | Fills in with |
|---|---|
{{name}} | The customer's display name |
{{order_id}} | An order reference |
{{item_count}} | How many items are in the cart |
{{cart_value}} | The cart's total value |
{{product_name}} | A product name (handy for win-back and upsell messages) |
Use simple, exact field names
Placeholder names must match exactly and be single words — dotted names like {{user.name}} aren't filled in. If a placeholder has no matching value for a customer, it's sent as plain text exactly as written (for example, the recipient would see {{name}}). Preview your template and double-check every placeholder before you launch.
Per-channel templates
Each template belongs to one channel, and each channel has its own format and rules. Build a separate template per channel for the same message when you want to reach people across more than one.
| Channel | Format | Keep in mind |
|---|---|---|
| HTML or plain text | Supports rich formatting, images, and links. | |
| SMS | Plain text | Try to stay under 160 characters — longer messages are split into multiple segments and charged accordingly by your provider. |
| Structured template | Must follow WhatsApp Business template requirements. UMAP360 doesn't check approval status for you, so make sure your template is compliant before sending. |
Pick the channel that performs
You don't have to use every channel. Build templates for the channels your audience actually responds to, then compare how each one performs once messages start going out.
Reuse templates in campaigns and flows
A template on its own doesn't send anything — it's the content you plug into something that does:
- Campaigns — when you create a campaign, you choose a message template and the channel to deliver it on. The same template can power as many campaigns as you like.
- Flows — in the visual flow builder, a send step asks you to pick a channel and a template, so you can use different templates at different points in a multi-step sequence.
This is also how you A/B test: create two or more versions of a template and compare their results to see which copy converts better.
One template, many uses
Editing a template changes the content everywhere it's used. If you want a tweak for just one campaign, create a separate template instead of editing the shared one.
Next steps
- Build a flow to chain your templates into multi-step sequences.
- Set up campaigns and recovery analytics to put templates to work and measure results.
- Connect your channels so Email, SMS, and WhatsApp are ready to send.
- New to engagement? Start with the engagement overview.
Last updated 2026-06-11