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The visual editor is fine for a short, plain email. When you have a designed template from a marketing tool — or you need a layout the visual editor can’t produce — you can paste the email’s HTML in directly instead. This page covers only the email side of a touchpoint; everything else about building one is in Add and edit touchpoints.

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What the HTML editor gives you

  • Your own full email document, sent as written — Liftify does not strip or rewrite it.
  • Style blocks and media queries, so a responsive template stays responsive.
  • Table layouts and the conditional comments Outlook needs.
  • A live preview beside your code, in desktop and mobile widths.

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Switch an email to HTML

Open the touchpoint (or start a new one) with Delivery Method set to Email. At the bottom left of the form, click Switch to Custom HTML editor.
On a touchpoint you have already saved, this throws away the version you wrote in the visual editor. It happens the moment you click — before you save, and without asking you to confirm. Copy anything you want to keep somewhere else first.
The form then shows a small card reading Custom HTML email, with the line “Click to edit this touchpoint in the full-size HTML editor.” and an Edit HTML button. On a brand-new touchpoint the editor opens by itself.

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Work in the editor

The editor fills a large window titled Custom HTML email, split in two:
  • HTML source on the left. Paste or type your email document here — doctype, head, style block, body, all of it.
  • Live preview on the right, updating as you type. Desktop and Mobile change the preview width so you can check how the template behaves at each size.
Merge fields go in with the merge field button in the HTML source toolbar, labelled Insert merge tag. The dropdown is headed Insert Merge Tag with a Search merge tags… box; picking one drops it in where your cursor is. Typing {{ does not open the picker here — that shortcut belongs to the visual editor.

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The picker here is not the picker in the visual editor

This editor’s list is built for hand-written HTML, so it differs from the one in the visual editor in both directions. It has the raw-value tags, which give you a bare address to put inside your own markup rather than a ready-made link or image: And it leaves out the tags that build their own markup — {{landing_page_url}}, {{landing_page_cta_button}} and {{customer_unsubscribe_link}} — because they would drop a pre-styled link into the middle of your design. Use the _href version in the list above instead.
{{landing_page_cta_button}} and {{survey_url_button}} are no longer styled the same way in every campaign. Their text and colours now come from the Email Button section on this campaign’s Basic Info step — see Build a review-request campaign. If you are building the button yourself out of {{landing_page_href}}, that section does not affect it: your own markup wins.
{{company_logo_src}} gives you nothing at all in a plain-text email, or when neither the location nor the account has a logo uploaded. Put it inside an image tag with an alt, so a customer whose mail app blocks images still sees your company name. {{company_logo}}, the sibling tag, emits a fixed centred logo block instead and is the one to use when you don’t want to control the size.
Until you turn on the preview data described below, merge fields appear in the preview as small green chips showing the field name, so you can see where each one sits in the design. Close the editor with the close button in the top corner or the Esc key. Your HTML stays on the form; nothing is lost by closing.

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Preview it with real data

Tick Prepopulate merge tags above the preview. Two search boxes appear:
  • Location — Search locations…
  • Contact — Search contacts…
Pick one of each and the preview reloads with that location’s and that customer’s real details in place of the merge fields.
The preview also uses the Subject Line from the touchpoint form behind the editor. Fill it in before you preview or send a test, or the test email arrives with a blank subject.

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Send yourself a test

With Prepopulate merge tags on and a location and contact chosen, click Send Test. The test goes to the email address on your own Liftify profile. Click it too early and the editor tells you what’s missing rather than sending:
  • “Check “Prepopulate merge tags” and choose a location and contact before sending a test.”
  • “Select a location and a contact to preview real data before sending a test.”
  • “The preview isn’t ready yet — adjust a field and try again.”

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Save

Click Save in the editor to save the touchpoint. Cancel closes the touchpoint form and discards it.

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What Liftify will not accept

Because your HTML is sent as written, a few things are refused outright. You’ll see the reason when the preview refreshes and again if you try to save. Not allowed:
  • Script and embedding tags: <script>, <iframe>, <frame>, <frameset>, <object>, <embed> — for example “Disallowed tag: <script>”.
  • Form tags, which do nothing in email anyway: <form>, <input>, <button>, <textarea>, <select>.
  • <base>, and a <meta> refresh redirect — “Disallowed <meta http-equiv=refresh> (redirect risk)”.
  • Event handler attributes such as onclick — “Disallowed event handler attribute: onclick”.
  • Link addresses using anything other than a normal web, mail, or phone address — “Disallowed URL scheme: javascript”. Embedded base64 images are fine on an image tag.
Explicitly fine: style blocks and media queries, inline styles, HTML comments and Outlook conditional comments, tables with their email attributes, relative links, and merge fields used as a link address.

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Switch back to the visual editor

Click Switch to Visual editor. Liftify asks first: “Switching to the visual editor will clear the custom HTML content of this touchpoint. Continue?” Say yes and your HTML is deleted. There is no undo and no copy kept, so save the HTML outside Liftify if you might want it again. In practice, treat the move to HTML as one-way: going back means rewriting the email.

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Troubleshooting

“Unclosed HTML tag” — the message names the tag, for example “Unclosed HTML tag: <div>”. A tag was opened and never closed, usually a truncated paste. Find that tag and close it. The preview stopped updating and an error appeared. The preview is refused for the same reasons a save is — work down the list above. “Preview failed: network error. Please retry.” means the connection dropped, not that your HTML is wrong. “The HTML editor failed to load. Please reload the page and try again.” Reload the page and reopen the touchpoint. Send Test did nothing. Look for the message in red at the bottom of the editor — it names what is missing, usually the preview location and contact. My design looks fine in the preview but wrong in a real inbox. The preview shows your HTML as a browser renders it. Mail apps differ. Send yourself a test and check it in the app your customers actually use.