Build an email template
Template Studio builds an email in your tool's own markup, so every block arrives in HubSpot or Marketo Engage as a named editable region rather than raw HTML. This article covers building the email. Pushing it into your tool is the next step, in Push a template into HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot or Marketing Cloud.
Before you start
Set your Brand Kit first, at Template Studio › Brand Kit. A new template starts with the kit's logo and colours already in place. Setting the kit afterwards means redoing work.
Plan required
Creating a template needs the Pro plan or above. On Starter the page still opens and lists the templates you already have. The check runs when you click Create template.
Tip
Decide the target tool before you start. The tool is chosen at creation and every block is written out in that tool's markup, so switching later means building again.
Create the template
Open Template Studio in the sidebar.
It sits under Content & AI Visibility. The row appears once HubSpot, Marketo Engage, Pardot (MCAE) or Salesforce Marketing Cloud is connected.
Type a name into Name under New template.
The name becomes the file name in HubSpot's Design Manager and the asset name in Marketo Engage, Pardot and Marketing Cloud. Name it the way your team names campaigns.
Leave Build a set to Email template.
Choose your Target tool.
Four tools are offered: HubSpot, Marketo Engage, Pardot (MCAE) and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Any tool you have not connected reads — not connected after its name. You can still build and export with it chosen. You cannot push or upload images.
Choose a Start from source.
The list holds up to four sources.
- Blank starter layout — a skeleton with your Brand Kit logo and width filled in.
- Starter layouts (MarqIQ) — Webinar invite and Case study announcement for an email.
- Saved layouts (your library) — anything your workspace saved from a previous template.
- Existing in <your tool> — a template read live out of HubSpot or Marketo Engage. This needs the Enterprise plan, and it reproduces the design exactly rather than rebuilding it.
Click Create template.
The builder opens on the new template.
Add the blocks
The left rail has two tabs, Add and Layers. Add is the block palette. Layers lists every block in the template for reordering and deleting, and prints the count after its name.
Click a block in the Add tab to put it at the end of the email.
Thirteen blocks are offered for an email: Heading, Text block, Image, Button, Two columns, Divider, Spacer, Hero banner, Image + text, CTA band, Speakers / presenters, Custom HTML and Footer (compliance).
Form (from your tool) is offered on landing pages only. Email clients strip forms, so the block would render as nothing in an inbox.
Drag a block from the palette onto the canvas to place it somewhere else.
Drop it on the top or bottom half of an existing block for a full-width row. Drop it on the left or right quarter and the two sit side by side. MarqIQ then says Placed side by side — drag the divider between them to adjust the split. Columns stack on mobile.
Drag the line between two columns to change the split.
The split snaps to 5% steps and stops at 20% and 80%.
A row holds two columns at most. A third drop lands below the row, and MarqIQ says That row already has two columns, so the block was placed below it. Three-way splits render unpredictably in Outlook at 600px.
Add a Footer (compliance) block.
It carries the unsubscribe link, the view-in-browser link, your postal address and the footer text, written as your tool's own structural tokens. HubSpot always prints the company name and address from the portal's own email settings, which it requires in every template, so a typed address is not used there. Marketo Engage has no address token: type the address here or keep it in your Brand Kit.
You write every line of the footer. You cannot remove the unsubscribe link: a push is refused on an email that has no Footer (compliance) block.
Write the copy
There are three ways to get words into a block. Type them on the canvas, load them from a Word or PDF file, or draft them with AI.
Type on the canvas
Click the text on the canvas.
Type the new copy.
The canvas does not re-render while you type, so the cursor never jumps mid-word.
Click away from the text.
That is when the block re-renders with your brand styling.
Note
Seven blocks carry one field you can edit on the canvas: Heading, Text block, Button, Hero banner, Image + text, CTA band and the footer text. It is one field each — a Hero banner's heading, not its eyebrow or its supporting line. Two columns, Speakers / presenters, Image and Custom HTML have no in-place field, so you edit their content in the right-hand panel.
Format the text and add a merge field
Select the words you want to change on the canvas.
Click a formatting button on the toolbar above the canvas.
The toolbar holds seven icon buttons — bold, italic, underline, bulleted list, numbered list, insert link and clear formatting. Hover one to read its name. They stay greyed out until you have selected text in a block that carries rich text, such as a text block or the footer text.
Click Personalize on that toolbar.
Nine tokens are offered: First name, Last name, Full name, Email, Company, Job title, City, Country and Sender name. The same nine sit under Personalisation tokens in the right-hand panel.
Pick a token to drop a merge field at the cursor.
You write one neutral token such as {{first_name|there}}. MarqIQ writes it out in your tool's own syntax on export — HubL for HubSpot, {{lead.First Name:default=there}} for Marketo Engage, %%first_name%% for Pardot, AMPscript for Marketing Cloud.
The word after the pipe is the fallback. Without one, a contact with no first name gets an empty space.
Load copy from a Word or PDF file
Click Word / PDF on the block.
The content-source switch is hidden on Image, Divider and Spacer, because those blocks hold no text.
Choose a .docx or .pdf file.
A .docx keeps its headings, lists and bold. A .pdf yields text split into paragraphs, because that is all the format holds. The limit is 8 MB per file and 30 uploads per person per minute.
A scanned PDF with no text layer is refused with an explanation rather than filling the block with nothing. A legacy .doc is refused with instructions to save it as .docx.
Draft with AI
Click AI on the block.
Describe what the section should say.
Click Generate content.
Drafts run on an AI account your workspace connects under Account settings › AI & Providers, never on MarqIQ's own keys. With none connected the builder says so and links straight there. The cap is 20 drafts per person per minute.
What lands depends on the block: the headline into a Heading, the button text into a Button, the body into any other text-bearing block. Nothing is written into Subject line or Preview text.
Add images
Select the block on the canvas.
Find its image field in the right-hand panel.
Click Library to pick an image already in your workspace library.
The picker filters by category — logo, headshot, product, social, other — and searches by name. Picking an asset also carries its alt text and width hint into the block, where the block has somewhere to put them.
Click Upload to put a new file into your own tool's storage.
HubSpot uploads go to the File Manager, named with a marqiq- prefix so they are identifiable inside the portal. Marketo Engage uploads go to Design Studio Images, keeping the filename with spaces and other punctuation replaced by hyphens and anything past 80 characters dropped. Images are never uploaded across portals.
HubSpot takes up to 5 MB as PNG, JPG, GIF, WEBP or SVG. Marketo Engage takes up to 4 MB as PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP, and refuses SVG. For a Pardot or Marketing Cloud template the Upload button is disabled — paste a hosted https URL into the field instead.
Type the alt text.
Many recipients block images by default, so the alt text is what they read.
Set the layout and the mobile behaviour
The Layout section of the right-hand panel shows only the controls that mean something for the selected block.
- Alignment sets left, centre or right.
- Width takes a percentage such as 100% or a pixel figure such as 180.
- Font size takes a number of pixels.
- Space around (px) sets Top, Right, Bottom and Left padding. Tick Apply to all sides to set all four at once.
- Visibility sets All devices, Hide on mobile or Mobile only.
Note
Spacing is written as padding on the wrapping table cell, not as a CSS margin, because email clients drop margins. Outlook for Windows ignores mobile rules altogether, so a block set to Mobile only is hidden there too. The builder says so under the control as soon as you choose it.
Show a block to some recipients only
Select the block.
Tick Show this block conditionally at the bottom of the right-hand panel.
Type the condition in your tool's own language.
The placeholder tells you which one. HubSpot takes a HubL condition such as contact.lifecyclestage == "customer". Marketing Cloud takes an AMPscript condition such as @country == "India".
MarqIQ never translates the logic. It wraps your block in the matching conditional and leaves the expression exactly as you typed it, so a mistake in the condition is a mistake your tool reports, not MarqIQ.
Take care
Marketo Engage and Pardot are the exceptions: neither can take a condition from a template. On a Marketo Engage template the tick box is replaced by a note: Marketo Engage shows a block to some people through a segmentation set in its own editor, so the block is pushed for everyone. Pardot keeps dynamic content in a separate account-specific asset, so the block is marked with a comment naming your condition and a marketer wires it up inside Pardot.
Fill in the email settings
The settings bar sits in the middle of the builder header. It holds Subject line, Preview text, From name, From email, Reply-to and Brand colour. These live on the email asset inside your tool rather than in the template file, so MarqIQ carries them across when the email is created: Create email in Marketo and Create email in HubSpot in the builder both do. The preview text travels inside the template itself.
Note
If your Brand Kit is locked, the per-template Brand colour is ignored and every render uses the kit's primary colour. Turn the lock off at Template Studio › Brand Kit if a campaign genuinely needs its own tint.
Check it before you save
Click Preview.
An email previews at 680px on desktop. That is wider than the 600px the email actually renders at, deliberately — a narrower frame would fire the template's own mobile breakpoints early and collapse side-by-side sections that are fine in a real inbox.
Click the phone icon to the right of the <your tool> code tab.
That is the mobile preview — hover it and the tooltip says so. It renders at 375px, which is past the 480px breakpoint, so what you see is what a phone gets.
Read Estimated size at the right of the toolbar.
It measures the rendered, tool-ready HTML. Past 100 KB the figure turns red and adds — Gmail will clip this. Gmail cuts messages at about 102 KB and shows recipients [Message clipped], which usually means the unsubscribe link is below the cut.
Click the <your tool> code tab to read the markup that will be written into your tool.
The tab is named after the target tool — HubSpot code, Marketo Engage code. Preview, Export HTML and the push all run through one renderer, so what you read here is what gets sent.
Read the warnings banner above the canvas.
It updates as you work. Three things raise it: an email with no Footer (compliance) block, an empty subject line, and a template with no blocks in it.
Only the unsubscribe warning blocks a push. An empty subject line does not.
Save, undo and reuse
Click Save.
The button reads Save while there are unsaved edits and Saved once there are none.
Click the undo arrow in the header to step back through your changes.
It is an icon button, with the tooltip Undo (⌘Z), and the redo arrow sits beside it. Every change snapshots the whole template. A burst of typing coalesces into one step, and the history holds 60 steps.
Inside a text field or the canvas, the keyboard shortcut runs the browser's own text undo, not the template's. That is on purpose, so it does not fight your cursor. The header buttons always step the template's history.
Select a block on the canvas.
Click Save module to library to reuse that block everywhere.
The save is a snapshot, so editing this template afterwards never changes the copy other people inserted. Ids are regenerated on insert, so one template can hold several copies of the same block.
Click Save this layout to reuse the whole structure.
Saved layouts are shared across your workspace and appear under Saved layouts (your library) in Start from next time you create a template.
Take care
Saving new blocks or settings on a template that has already gone into your tool resets its status from In tool back to Draft, because the copy in the tool is now behind. Push it again to bring the two back into line. Renaming alone does not reset the status.
If it did not work
Create template answers with an upgrade message
Why: Creating a template needs the Pro plan or above. The plan check sits on creation only, which is why the page opened and listed your existing templates.
Fix: The message names the plan that includes it and links to the pricing page. Move to Pro or above at Account & Team › Plan & billing. Everything you have already built stays where it is.
You cannot find Template Studio in the sidebar
Why: Two things hide the row. It is shown only when at least one of HubSpot, Marketo Engage, Pardot (MCAE) or Salesforce Marketing Cloud is connected, because with none of the four connected there is no tool to write a template for. It is also hidden from a role whose permissions do not include Template Studio. Your plan does not hide it: on Starter the row stays visible and the upgrade message arrives when you click Create template.
Fix: Connect one of the four under Integrations. Push a template into HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot or Marketing Cloud lists where each tool's credentials come from, so you are not hunting for the key. The row appears under Content & AI Visibility as soon as the connection reports as connected. If a colleague can see the row and you cannot, ask an admin to check your role at Account & Team › Team & roles — Template Studio sits under Content & AI Visibility there too.
The Upload button next to an image field is greyed out
Why: Image upload writes into the target tool's own file store, and only HubSpot and Marketo Engage accept one from MarqIQ. A Pardot or Marketing Cloud template has nowhere to put the file.
Fix: Host the image somewhere your recipients can reach and paste the https URL into the field. Alternatively register that URL in the Library so the rest of the team can reuse it.
An SVG logo is refused on a Marketo Engage template
Why: The Marketo Engage upload takes PNG, JPEG, GIF and WebP only, up to 4 MB. HubSpot's takes SVG. Marketo Engage's does not.
Fix: Export the logo as a PNG at twice the display width and upload that. Most mail clients render an SVG poorly anyway.
The AI tab says you need to connect an AI account
Why: Drafting runs on your workspace's own AI account. MarqIQ does not draft on its own keys.
Fix: Click Connect an AI account in that message, or open Account settings › AI & Providers, and add a provider. Then reopen the block and click Generate content.
The undo keyboard shortcut undoes your typing rather than the block you moved
Why: MarqIQ deliberately leaves the browser's own undo alone while the cursor is inside a text field, a select or the canvas, so the two do not fight.
Fix: Click the Undo button in the header instead. It always steps the template's own history.
A dragged block will not sit beside another one
Why: That row already holds two columns. MarqIQ caps a row at two and places the third block below it, telling you so in a banner.
Fix: Put a Two columns block in and edit both sides, or restructure as two rows. Three-way splits do not render reliably in Outlook at 600px.
You started from a template already in your tool and the palette has gone
Why: An imported template is reproduced exactly, so it is edited through its document outline and its section menu rather than by dragging palette blocks onto it. The left rail shows Document outline instead of Add and Layers.
Fix: Click any text on the canvas and type, click any image to swap it, drag sections in the outline to reorder them, and hover a section on the canvas for move, duplicate and delete. To build with the palette, create a new template from a starter layout instead.
Estimated size is red and reads Gmail will clip this
Why: The rendered HTML is over 100 KB. Gmail truncates at roughly 102 KB.
Fix: Remove Custom HTML blocks you pasted in, cut repeated sections, and move long copy to a landing page. Image files do not count towards this figure — only the markup does.
Next steps
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