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Aurora HiveHelp Centre

Templates

The texts your recipients read. One per stage, with placeholders, preview and design.

Click a question to read the answer.

What is a template?

Your text block for a campaign stage. Templates are what your recipients actually read — everything else in Aurora Hive Sales only decides who receives them.

A template consists of a name (only for recognising it in the list; the recipient never sees it), a subject line and the text.

On the left the three stages with the number of their templates, on the right the text. The “Placeholders:” line shows what Aurora Hive Sales can fill in.

Why do I need a separate template for each stage?

Path Templates → choose the stage at the top

Because the stages do different things. The first mail introduces, the follow-up reminds. Anyone who receives the same text twice notices at once that a machine is writing, and unsubscribes.

In practice this means: at the top of the template list, choose the stage first, then create the template. A template filed under the wrong stage does not appear in the campaign wizard, and the wizard then says there is no template for this stage yet.

How do I create a template?

Path Templates → choose the stage → “+ New”
  1. At the top, choose the Stage the text is for.
  2. Press “+ New”.
  3. Give it a name — only for recognising it.
  4. Write the subject and text, insert placeholders.
  5. Save and open the Preview.

The fifth step is the one people leave out and regret later.

Which placeholders are there?

The ones offered in the editor are: Salutation, First name, Last name and Company. They appear in the text in curly brackets and are replaced for each recipient when sending — in the subject line too.

The usual ones are salutation and company. Every further placeholder is a spot where something can stay empty — so always look at the test mail.

What happens if a placeholder is empty for a contact?

Then the stored fallback wording is used instead of a gap in the text. That is exactly what it is for: without it, the mail would say “Dear ,” — with it, a neutral salutation.

Set the fallback wording as soon as you insert a placeholder, not only after someone has noticed. By then, after all, the recipient has already noticed.

How do I check what the template looks like for the recipient?

Via the Preview. It shows the template with the data of a real contact — the quickest way to find a wrong salutation. It is also available as a Full-screen preview.

For the last step the preview is not enough: how a mail program actually displays the text, you only see in a real test mail to yourself.

What is the export as EML/MSG good for?

It lets you open the finished mail in your own mail program — so you see it exactly as it arrives for a recipient using Outlook, without sending it to anyone.

Useful when you agree a template within the team: the file can be passed on without anyone needing access to Aurora Hive Sales.

Can I copy a template?

Yes, with “Copy”. That is the usual route to a second variant: create a copy, change the subject, leave the rest.

This makes most sense for variants of the same stage — for example one text for existing customers and one for new contacts. Which variant a campaign uses, you choose when creating the campaign.

How important is the subject line?

It has more influence on whether a mail is opened than the text below it. Anyone who types the subject in passing and polishes three paragraphs has distributed the effort wrongly.

What helps: keep it short (about 35 characters are visible on a mobile phone), be specific rather than promotional, and use placeholders sparingly — a company name in the subject feels personal, a whole line of placeholders feels mechanical.

How do I design a template with images and colours?

That is what the template editor is for: drag blocks, insert images, choose colours and fonts.

Consider beforehand whether you want to. For a first business approach, a plain text mail is usually more effective than a designed newsletter — it looks like a personal message, is less often sorted as advertising and can be read on any device. Designed templates are the right tool for invitations, circulars and anything that is recognisable as a mailing anyway.

Can I include images in a template?

Yes — with three restrictions, all of which come from the recipient’s mail program and not from Aurora Hive Sales:

  • Images are often only loaded after a click. So your mail must also be understandable without images.
  • A mail consisting only of an image is a classic spam feature.
  • Large images slow down opening and harm deliverability.

As a rule of thumb: text carries the message, images decorate it.

How does my signature get under the mail?

Via the Sender mailbox: it determines the sender name, signature and reply address. So the signature does not belong in each individual template, but once on the mailbox.

That is also the reason why changing the sender mailbox in the middle of a campaign is visible to the recipient: name and signature change with it.

Can I delete a template that a campaign has used?

It can be deleted. Think about it all the same: the mails already sent are kept in the contacts’ history, but the question “exactly which text did we write to this group with?” is harder to answer afterwards.

For templates used in running campaigns, renaming or copying is almost always the better answer than deleting.

How long should a campaign mail be?

Shorter than you think. For a first business approach, five to eight lines have proved their worth: one sentence on why this particular recipient, two or three sentences on the matter, one specific question at the end.

For the follow-up, shorter still — three lines are enough, and the reference to the first mail belongs in the first sentence.

This is not a matter of style: most business mails are first skimmed on a mobile phone. Anything not recognisable there without scrolling gets swiped away.

Can I send campaigns in English?

Yes — simply write the template in English. The interface language of Aurora Hive Sales has nothing to do with it; the content of your mails is up to you.

For mixed mailing lists the clean way is: a tag for the language on the contacts, two templates, two campaigns. A template containing both languages one below the other looks indecisive to the recipient.

How do I structure a good first mail?

In four parts, in this order:

  1. Why you in particular — one sentence that establishes the connection. Without it, nobody reads on.
  2. What it is about — two or three sentences. What you do, not how great you are.
  3. What the recipient gains from it — specific, not as a promise.
  4. One single, small question at the end. “Would you have twenty minutes next week?” works better than “I look forward to hearing from you”.

What you should leave out: the company history, lists of services and every word that would appear in a brochure.

What do I write in a follow-up?

Less than the first time. Three lines are enough, and the reference to the first mail belongs in the first sentence — otherwise it looks like a new approach from someone who does not know they have already written.

What works well: give a new reason instead of reminding. An example, a short observation, a question that is new.

What does not work: “I just wanted to check whether you received my mail.” The recipient did receive it and did not reply — that in itself is the answer.

Formal or informal address?

Your industry decides that, not the software — in German, the choice between the formal ‘Sie’ and the informal ‘du’. All that matters is: consistent within a campaign — and consistent between template and signature.

The most common mistake is a mixture that arises when a template is copied and half rewritten. Read the test mail from top to bottom before you go live.

Can I test two versions of a text against each other?

Aurora Hive Sales has no built-in A/B test for campaigns. What you can do is test by hand: create two templates for the same stage, split the audience into two comparable halves — for example using tags — and run two campaigns.

For this to mean anything, you need enough recipients per half and only one difference between the versions. With fifty recipients it is not worth it; chance decides there.

Does a business mail need a signature with mandatory details?

Caution: Missing mandatory details in business mails can lead to a formal warning (Abmahnung). Check the mailbox signature once.

For corporations, yes: business letters — and mails count as such — must state the company name, legal form, registered office, register court, registration number and the authorised representatives.

This does not belong in every template, but once in the signature of the sender mailbox. Check in the test mail whether it actually comes along — a common finding is that the signature is only stored in the mail program and is missing when sending via Aurora Hive Sales.

We have twenty templates and nobody knows which one applies.

The usual state after a year. Tidy up in three steps:

  1. Name one main template per stage — the name only serves for recognition, so make use of it: “First mail standard 2026”.
  2. Archive or delete everything else that is not part of a running campaign.
  3. Label variants with what they are for — “First mail existing customers”, “First mail trade fair”.

After that, choosing in the campaign wizard is a decision again and not a guessing game.

Can I take over texts from Word or Outlook?

Yes — but paste them as plain text, not with formatting. Formatting copied along from word processors brings fonts, colours and invisible markup with it that look unpredictable in mail programs.

The safe way: copy the text into a simple editor first, from there into the template — and then apply the formatting in the template editor.

Check the result in the test mail; in the editor, even the mixture looks tidy.

Is your question not listed?

Try the search — it covers all chapters at once. And if something really is missing here, let us know: in the program at the bottom right via “Report a problem”.