PortalHQ uses a drag-and-drop email editor (BEE Free) for designing campaign content. You build the email by dropping content blocks onto the canvas and editing each block’s content and style.
The editor layout
- Content blocks on the left — text, image, button, divider, social, etc.
- Canvas in the middle — your email as it’s being built.
- Block properties on the right — appears when you click a block on the canvas, lets you edit content, padding, fonts, colours.
Available blocks
| Block | Use for |
|---|---|
| Text | Paragraphs, headings, lists. Rich text formatting. |
| Image | Photos, logos, diagrams. Drag in or upload. |
| Button | Calls-to-action. Linked button with custom styling. |
| Divider | Horizontal line separating sections. |
| Spacer | Vertical whitespace between blocks. |
| Social | Row of social media icons linking to your accounts. |
| HTML | Custom HTML for advanced layouts. Use sparingly — email HTML support is limited. |
| Video | Linked video thumbnail (most email clients don’t play inline video). |
| Menu | Horizontal navigation links — useful at the top of newsletter emails. |
| Icons | Decorative icons inline with text. |
Designing for email
Email rendering is different from web rendering. A few rules:
- Use the editor’s tools. Pasting raw HTML often breaks across email clients.
- Stick to web-safe fonts — Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Times New Roman. Custom fonts may not render in Outlook.
- Use tables for layout — but the editor handles this for you. Don’t try to use CSS Grid or Flexbox.
- Optimise images — large images slow loading and hit attachment limits. Use the editor’s image compression where available.
- Provide alt text for every image — for accessibility and for clients that don’t load images by default.
- Test in Outlook. Outlook (especially older versions) is the strictest email client. If it looks right in Outlook, it’ll look right almost everywhere.
Structure that works
The typical school email structure:
- Header — school logo, optional title.
- Intro — short opener (1-2 sentences) setting context.
- Body sections — each topic as its own section with a heading, content and (where relevant) a button or link.
- Footer — school name, address, unsubscribe link.
Keep it short. Most recipients scan rather than read.
Adding links
Two ways:
- Linked text — select text in a text block and add a URL.
- Buttons — drag a button block onto the canvas, set the destination URL.
Buttons are more clickable than text links. Use buttons for important calls-to-action.
Tracking
PortalHQ automatically tracks clicks on all links in the email. You don’t need to do anything special — every link counts as a tracked click in campaign reports.
You can optionally add UTM tags to links manually for downstream analytics tools.
Personalisation
Insert recipient-specific tokens into text blocks:
{first_name}— recipient’s first name.{last_name}— last name.{full_name}— both.{custom_field:Year Group}— for custom fields on contacts.
Personalisation is subtle but effective — Hi Alice outperforms Hi there.
Saving as a template
If you’ve designed something you’ll want to reuse, save it as a template:
- From the editor, Save as template.
- Give it a name.
- The template appears in the template list — see Building and reusing email templates.
Tips
- Start from a template. Even a simple template saves time vs. a blank canvas.
- Test images at recipient quality. Upload at the size you want displayed; the editor doesn’t always handle huge originals well.
- Use the mobile preview. Half your audience reads on a phone.
- Keep button text action-oriented. Read the term newsletter beats Click here.