Write an email once as a template, then fill it in for each person you send to. Every email carries that person's own share link, so you see exactly who opened what. Send it from your own Gmail with one click, or copy it into any mail app. Find Email templates and Lists in the sidebar, next to Contacts.
What a template is
A template is a subject and a body with tags in it: a person's first name, your document's title, the link. When you generate an email, LinkDrop fills each tag in for the one person it is for. A template is either plain text or HTML. An HTML template can show images and is aligned to the left by default; choose Alignment to centre it instead.
Every template contains the link tag, link.url. That is the point of it: the email always carries the recipient's own link.
Members, admins and owners can create, edit and delete templates; viewers can read them and their emails but change nothing. Roles are explained in Teams and workspaces.
Tags
In the editor, a tag is written between double curly braces. These are the ones LinkDrop fills in for you:
contact.firstNameandcontact.name: the person's first name and full name. The name your team gave a contact wins over the one they typed.contact.email: their address.contact.company: the company part of their address, empty for a personal address such as Gmail.link.url: their own share link (see One link per person).document.titleorproject.name: the document or project the email links to.sender.name,sender.firstNameandsender.email: you, the member generating the email.workspace.name: your workspace.
You can also add your own tags, named custom. and a word, such as custom.round, each with a description so a teammate or an agent knows what goes in it. A tag can carry a fallback after a |, used when the value is empty, such as "there" for a missing first name.
If a tag the email needs has no value, it stays in the email as written and the email is not ready to send. The preview lists what is missing. The editor's preview shows the template with example values, so you can check it before anyone is involved.
Images
An HTML template can show GIFs (animated ones too), PNGs, JPEGs and WebP images, but only images uploaded to your workspace. Use Add image in the editor, or Upload image on the Images tab of Email templates. Each upload gives you a ready-made image tag to put in the body. SVG files are not accepted.
Images in an email have to load in the recipient's mail app without signing in, so they are stored at public addresses: anyone who has the email can open the image. Do not upload anything you would not put in an email.
Deleting an image removes it straight away, from every template that shows it and from emails already sent; a copy cached along the way can keep loading for up to a day. A template that still shows a deleted image cannot be used until you take the image out.
Lists
A list is a named group of your contacts, such as "Investors" or "Board". Open Lists in the sidebar, or Lists on the Contacts page, to make one and add people to it. A person can be on any number of lists. Deleting a contact takes them off every list.
One link per person
When you generate an email, LinkDrop finds that person's own share link to the document or project, or makes one, labelled with their name. The same person gets the same link every time, so all their visits add up in one place, on the link and on their contact page. Visits to that link count as theirs even if they never introduce themselves. See A contact on a link.
If that person's link has been turned off or has expired, LinkDrop does not quietly make another one: generating the email stops and says so, because a link that was switched off may have been switched off on purpose.
Generate an email for each person
Open a template and use Generate for a contact: pick the document or project, then one contact, or a whole list under To everyone on. Generate emails fills in one email per person, each with their own link. A list is generated one person at a time, so a long list takes a moment.
Each email shows its subject, its body as the recipient sees it, and its link. From there you can:
- Send with Gmail, below.
- Copy the subject, the HTML or the text into any mail app, or copy a preview link to show a teammate. A preview link opens that one email and works for 7 days.
- Mark as sent, once you have sent it some other way, so the link shows when it was sent.
Recent emails from this template lists what was generated, sent or not. Generate again fills it in afresh, for example after you edit the template; an email that has not been sent yet is replaced.
Send with Gmail
LinkDrop can send the email for you from your own Gmail address, with its images, to the one person it was filled in for. It goes out from your Gmail like any email you write, and it sits in your Gmail's Sent folder.
Sending from Gmail is rolling out and may not be available on your account yet.
You connect Gmail once, the first time you send. Where you have not connected it yet, the button reads Allow Gmail and send. Google asks you to let LinkDrop send email as you; you then come back to the same email, and nothing is sent until you click Send with Gmail. You can also connect, see which Google account is connected, and disconnect on the Integrations page.
LinkDrop asks Google only for permission to send email and for your email address. It cannot read, search or delete anything in your mailbox. Your connection is yours alone: a teammate, or an agent acting as someone else, cannot send with it. Every member who wants to send connects their own Gmail.
Google may show a warning. While Google reviews LinkDrop's Gmail access, its consent screen can say that Google has not verified the app. To carry on, choose Advanced on that screen and continue to LinkDrop. If you would rather not, you can still copy each email into your own mail app and mark it as sent.
Disconnect on the Integrations page ends LinkDrop's access at Google and deletes the stored credential. If the same Google account is connected in another of your workspaces, that one keeps working. Leaving or being removed from a workspace ends your Gmail connection there too. You can also remove LinkDrop from your Google account's settings.
When an agent sends
A connected agent can do everything above: write and edit templates, manage lists, upload images and generate emails. It can send the email with its own mail tool and mark it as sent.
When an agent asks LinkDrop to send through your Gmail, nothing goes out until you say yes in your browser. The agent gives you a link. It opens a page, signed in as you, that shows the whole email exactly as the recipient will get it: from, to, subject, the body, every link in it and where its images come from. Approve and send sends it. The link works for 30 minutes and only for you. If the email is generated again after the agent asked, the approval no longer matches and nothing is sent. See Connect your agent.
In the activity feed
Every step is in the activity feed under Email, with who did it and, when an agent was involved, which agent: templates, lists and images created, changed or deleted, people added to or removed from a list, and each email generated, sent with Gmail or marked as sent. An email row also shows on that contact's page. Connecting or disconnecting Gmail is under Integrations. The rows name the template and the person, never the email's text.
Limits
These limits keep a mistake from running away. They are the same for every workspace:
- 100 templates and 50 lists per workspace, with up to 500 people on one list.
- 200 images per workspace, each up to 5 MB.
- 50 emails sent through Gmail per person, per workspace, in any 24 hours. After that, Send with Gmail says to try again later; you can still copy an email into your mail app.
Gmail has its own daily sending limits too, which Google sets.
How long emails are kept
Templates, lists and images stay until you delete them. A generated email, with the person's name and address, its text and its link, is deleted 30 days after it was last generated, whether it was sent or not. Deleting a contact deletes the emails generated for them. The share link itself, and its visits, stay like any other link. See Privacy and security, and the Privacy Policy for the full detail of what LinkDrop does with Gmail.
Sending responsibly
The emails are yours: they go from your address, to the people you choose. Send them only to people who expect to hear from you. Bulk or unsolicited email through a connected Gmail account is not allowed under our Terms of Service, and Google can limit a Gmail account that sends it.