Free email templates for 8 everyday emails: wording to copy, designs in a free account

Write down the facts the email must carry before you look at designs, then test each candidate four ways:

• Every fact has a slot. Hold your list against the template. An order confirmation with no row for the delivery address fails, however good it looks.
• Pictures off, it still works. Send it to yourself, turn images off in your mail app, and read it. If the price or the code disappears, it was part of a photo.
• Phone width, one column. Open it on a phone. Two columns should stack, and every link you need tapped should be a button at least a thumb wide.
• The footer matches the email. A sale or a newsletter needs an unsubscribe link and your postal address. A password reset needs neither.

Whether the email reaches the inbox depends mostly on the domain you send from; a template’s part is the pictures-off test above and the size limit below. Sending from your own domain means proving you own it: you paste a few lines (DNS records) into the settings where you bought the domain, so mail apps can tell the email really came from you. Email domain verification walks through it, and the email deliverability guide covers the rest.

In Rasket, the starters are listed by goal on the templates library page. Signing up and sending tests to your own address need no card. Sending to customers, even on the Free plan, needs that verified domain and a payment method on the account. The card switches on the Free plan’s full allowance of 3,000 emails a month, and the Free plan still costs nothing, as the pricing FAQ explains.

The table is the short version, with the Rasket starter to begin from if you use Rasket. The wording after it is written for the roaster; swap in your own names and facts.

Welcome email

A welcome has one job: the first action. Give it one button. The roaster points it at a first order; the salon would point it at a first booking.

• Subject: Welcome to Northside Roasters: your first bag ships free
• Preview text: Use code HELLO at checkout. It works once, on any bag.
• Body: Thanks for joining, Sam. We roast every Tuesday and ship the same week. Your first bag ships free with code HELLO. [Choose your first bag]

The preview text is the grey line a mail app shows after the subject; use it for the second most useful fact. The welcome email guide covers timing and a short welcome sequence.

Sale or product launch

Name the product, show it, price it and say where to buy it, in that order. A sale adds the code and the deadline, both as text. Here is a product-launch template rewritten for the roaster:

A launch template adapted for a coffee launch

Part	The template says	The roaster's version
Subject	The fresh and minimal, now in the shop	Ethiopia Guji is here: first roast ships Friday
Preview text	A quiet arrangement for a busy desk, from $199.	Peach, jasmine and a clean finish. From $18 a bag.
Headline	The fresh and minimal.	Ethiopia Guji, washed.
Price line	Starting at $199	From $18 for 250 g
Story	Two paragraphs about a plant shop	Who grew it and how you roast it

For a sale, the subject carries the number and the end: “20% off every bag until Sunday midnight”. Before sending, hunt for sample text that survived. Template footers often promise things, such as free shipping over $75 or thirty-day returns, and once sent they are your promises. Some templates also hold a placeholder heading, such as “Your beautiful heading should encapsulate the essence of your brand’s identity”, that must be replaced.

Newsletter

A newsletter template should be quick to fill and quick to scan: a date, a headline, two or three stories with one link each, and a way to write back. Lead the subject with the best story, not “Our October newsletter”.

• Subject: How we roast decaf without solvents, and two more
• Preview text: Plus: a grind-size guide and a reader's storage question.
• Body: October at Northside. Three things: how we roast decaf without solvents, a guide to grind size, and a reader's question about storage. Each gets two lines and a Read more link. Close with: Reply with a question; we answer three each month.

A salon uses the same shape: a new stylist, the winter opening hours and one hair-care tip. With one story this month, send one story rather than padding three.

Gift card or reward

A gift from you, such as a loyalty reward, sets the value large, then the code, the expiry and one button. Put the amount and your name in the subject. Write the expiry in words, “December 31” or “31 December”, never 2026-12-31.

• Subject: A $10 thank-you from Northside Roasters
• Preview text: Use code THANKS10 before December 31.
• Body: You have ordered from us five times this year, so the next bag is partly on us. [$10, code THANKS10, use by December 31] [Use it now]

A gift card someone bought for a friend is a different email: open with the buyer’s name and their message, then the value.

Password reset

Keep it plain: a clever subject on a security email is harder to trust. Put the expiry in the preview text, say what happens if they did not ask, and give a support address somebody reads. Your website or app sends it the moment someone asks; it never goes to a list. If your tool rewrites links for click tracking, turn that off for this email: a reset link that detours through a tracking address looks like phishing.

• Subject: Reset your password
• Preview text: The link expires in 30 minutes.
• Body: Someone asked to reset the password for sam@example.com. [Reset password] If it wasn't you, ignore this email: your password has not changed. Need help? Write to help@northside.example.

A salon, clinic or studio sends two emails per appointment. The confirmation goes at once and answers when, where, with whom and how to change it. The reminder goes the day before and makes moving the appointment easy, because a moved booking is better than a no-show.

• Subject: Booked: haircut with Priya, Tue 20 Oct at 10:30
• Preview text: Add it to your calendar, or change it up to 24 hours before.
• Body: You're booked in. When: Tuesday 20 October, 10:30. Where: 14 Mill Street. With: Priya. Booking ref: B-2210. [Add to calendar] [Change or cancel] Changes are free up to 24 hours before.

For the reminder, use “Tomorrow at 10:30: haircut with Priya” as the subject and repeat the change button. If your booking tool sends these emails, keep it sending them and paste this wording into its notification settings: the tool knows when a booking moves, and a second copy from another tool would confuse the client.

A confirmation or reminder for an appointment the client made is, on our reading, a transactional message in the US, meaning an email about something the customer already did or asked for. The FTC’s CAN-SPAM guide lists email that “facilitates, completes, or confirms a commercial transaction that the recipient already has agreed to”, and says the categories are read narrowly. Put a promotion at the top or in the subject and it becomes marketing; transactional vs marketing email draws the line.

Rasket has no starter made for appointments. Its event starters, You’re registered and Event reminder, already have rows for date, time, place, a reference code and an add-to-calendar button: change “event” to “appointment” and add your cancellation policy.

Expect Gmail to file sales, launches and most newsletters under Promotions. That is still delivered mail, and Google’s FAQ says its deal annotations have no effect on the tab classifier; the Gmail Promotions tab guide covers what you can change.

The copy opens on the drag and drop email editor: click a block to change it, drag blocks in or out. Your brand kit’s colours apply to the plain starters and any block you add; the featured designs keep their own palette until you click a block and change it.

1. Set your brand kit — In Settings → Brand, add your logo, company name, address and footer line before you copy anything. A copy made while the kit has no logo gets no logo row, and you would add one by hand.
2. Open the starter library — Go to Templates and choose Starters. Pick a goal tab or search by name, then open a design to see the whole email drawn with your brand kit.
3. Copy it — Choose Start from this. You get a draft template of your own, open on the canvas, with no link back to the library.
4. Edit on the canvas — Replace the pictures and the copy, then give every link a real address: paste it into the button's Link field, or set it as a fallback under More actions → Variables. A campaign cannot be made from a template with an unfilled placeholder.
5. Test, then publish — Use Test email to send it to yourself, read it on a phone and on a computer with images off, then publish it. Only a published template can be sent.
6. Send it — For a campaign, go to Campaigns → Create campaign, open Template, and pick your copy under Your templates. Account emails such as a password reset are sent from your app's code.

Placeholders such as {{shop_url}} are filled in each time you send, and your company details fill in from your brand kit. The email template variables post explains how a contact’s first name gets into a campaign.

Order, shipping and cart emails go out when a customer does something, so Rasket has to be told it happened: by a developer’s code today, or by the Shopify app once it launches. Until then, keep your store’s own order emails on and improve them with the checklists above.

For developers. Rasket’s MCP server, at https://api.rasket.com/mcp, gives an agent such as Claude the same starters. In Claude Code, this line adds it with the two toolsets used here; then run /mcp in a session and choose Rasket to sign in and approve the scopes:

claude mcp add --transport http rasket "https://api.rasket.com/mcp?toolset=setup,send"

Asked to “set up our order confirmation and send Sam’s for order 1042”, the agent makes these calls. The first three run once; after that, each order is one send_email:

// Once: find a starter, copy it, publish the copy
list_starters {"goal": "receipts"}
create_template {"name": "Order confirmed", "alias": "order-confirmed",
                 "starter": "order-confirmed"}
publish_template {"template": "order-confirmed"}

// Each order: send the published copy with that order's values
send_email {
  "from": "Northside Roasters <orders@northside.example>",
  "to": ["sam@example.com"],
  "idempotency_key": "order-1042-confirmation",
  "template": {
    "id": "order-confirmed",
    "variables": {
      "order_number": "1042", "first_name": "Sam",
      "item_1_name": "Ethiopia Guji, 250 g", "item_1_quantity": "2", "item_1_total": "$36.00",
      "item_2_name": "Paper filters", "item_2_quantity": "1", "item_2_total": "$6.00",
      "shipping_total": "$4.00", "order_total": "$46.00",
      "delivery_estimate": "Thursday 22 to Friday 23 October",
      "shipping_address": "8 Elm Street, Portland, OR 97205",
      "order_url": "https://northside.example/orders/1042"
    }
  }
}

• list_starters returns each starter’s slug and the variables a copy declares, which is how the agent knows it needs thirteen values. A send that leaves one out is refused with missing_required_field naming it.
• Running create_template again with the same alias is refused with validation_error, so a second setup cannot make a duplicate.
• idempotency_key makes a retry safe: the same body within 24 hours sends once.
• The starter has two fixed item rows and no tax row, because Rasket’s {{key}} placeholders have no loop. For longer orders, add rows in the editor or send a summary line.
• list_starters’ goal names one of the library’s tabs, such as receipts or event; send_email returns the new email’s id. Real recipients need the verified domain and payment method described above.

The agent never holds an API key. It gets an OAuth token for one team, carrying only the scopes a person approved; this run needs templates:read, templates:write and emails:send. API keys are coarser: a full-access key can do all of this and more, and a sending-only key can send but cannot read a starter. You can revoke the grant under Settings → Team → Authorized apps.

An agent suits one-off requests. For a confirmation on every order, have your order code send the published template itself, with the same values (shortened here):

curl -fsS https://api.rasket.com/emails \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RASKET_API_KEY" \
  -H "User-Agent: northside-shop/1.0" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: order-1042-confirmation" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"from": "Northside Roasters <orders@northside.example>",
       "to": ["sam@example.com"],
       "template": {"id": "order-confirmed", "variables": {"order_number": "1042", ...}}}'

Let an AI agent send email with MCP shows how to make a person approve each send an agent makes.

The wording, yes: copy it into that tool’s own templates, since nothing in it is Rasket-specific. The designs are not files; the dashboard has no download button.

A developer can export a starter’s HTML with one request. Reading templates needs a full-access key: create one under API keys and delete it afterwards. Every API request also needs a User-Agent naming your app, and the command needs jq, a small JSON tool. Any slug from the templates reference works in place of storefront:

curl -fsS https://api.rasket.com/starters/storefront \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RASKET_API_KEY" \
  -H "User-Agent: acme-shop/1.0" \
  | jq -r .html > storefront.html

Before another tool can send the file, replace what Rasket would have filled in:

• {{brand.company_name}}, {{brand.address}} and {{brand.footer_text}} with your own text, and {{brand.font}}, which sits inside the CSS, with a font list such as Arial, sans-serif.
• Placeholders such as {{shop_url}} with your tool’s merge tags or fixed links, and the Newsletter’s {{{UNSUBSCRIBE_URL}}} with your tool’s unsubscribe link.
• The pictures, which load from www.rasket.com. Host your own copies, so the email does not depend on our server and opens are not fetched from it.
• The logo, which the exported file leaves out.

The reply’s text field holds a plain-text version generated from the same layout; send it alongside the HTML for mail apps that cannot show HTML.

Your next step: write down the one fact your next email must carry, then pick the template, in any tool, with a place for it.