Creative Library Layout Editor

• Updated: Oct 11, 2017
• Audience: WhatCounts' User
• Version: 1.2

The Creative Library gives marketers the ability to easily design beautiful, responsive email layouts using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. There is no need to have any understanding of HTML or CSS to use this tool; its goal is to help provide an easy to edit modular based email layout.

Here are a few things you should know:

• When you open the Creative Library you are presented with three base designs to work from. These free themes are called Minimal, Corporate, and Whimsy and provide the same functionality with variations in color-scheme and drop shadow.
• There is no ability to edit HTML directly in the Layout Editor

Task Roadmap

1. Access the Creative Library
2. Select a Theme
3. Add / Remove Modules
4. Edit A Module
5. Save as a Template 

Preparing To Use The Feature

• Prepare email copy, with defined content blocks and calls to action.
• Have images available on the Media Manager, or locally on your machine to upload to the Media Manager while editing modules.

Terminology

Accessing the Creative Library

• Select Creative Library from the Content menu in the Navigation Bar
• Select a Theme to view available Layouts, or to create a new Layout from the base theme
• If creating a new Layout you will be presented with the following dialog options

Design the Layout

After submitting you'll be directed to a new layout canvas. 

  Add / Remove / Move Modules

It is easy to add, remove, or change the order of the modules in the canvas simply by dragging and dropping modules from the module selection menu, or inside of the canvas itself.

Let's walk through a few examples together:

• Add A Module
• Move A Module
• Delete A Module

 Our first step will be adding a module:

1. Drag the module from the menu on the left to the canvas on the right
2. Click the green Save button at top to save changes

Next, we will change the placement of a module in the layout by dragging:

1. Click to select the module you wish to move
2. Drag the module to the new desired location on the layout canvas
3. Click the green Save button at top to save changes

We can also remove any modules from the layout we do not want to use:

1. Move the mouse over the desired module to be removed from the layout
2. Click the red trash icon to delete
3. Confirm the selection
4. Click the green Save button at top to save changes

 Editing Modules

Now that we have selected our modules and defined the order they will display in our layout, our next step is to make changes to the text and images inside the layout

1. Move the mouse over the desired module to be edited
2. Click the blue Edit button to bring up the editing options
3. Make the selected updates to the text copy also any desired changes in text-formatting

It is also easy to add your own images either from assets already uploaded to the Media Manager or upload new content from your hard drive.

1. Click to highlight the image you wish to change
2. Select the image icon from the formatting options to replace the place-holder image

 Save To Template

The final step is to save the layout you have created as an HTML template. The WhatCounts platform will automatically convert your drag-and-drop layout to fully responsive and fluid HTML, you can make additional changes and test dynamic content from inside the WYSIWYG editor once converted. Note this conversion step is also required to use your design in Campaign Deployment or Marketing Automation.

1. Click the gear to show Layout Options
2. Select Save To Template
3. Give the new template a name and a description